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Thursday, August 17, 2017

The Sonic Mania Effect


When Sonic Mania was revealed a year ago, the reception was overwhelmingly positive. A brand new 2D Sonic game done in the spirit of the early Genesis era titles. Developed by the same team that brought us those outstanding iOS/Android Sonic the Hedgehog 1-2 and Sonic CD remakes, there was little to no doubt that Sonic Mania would be a phenomenal game. Now the game is out and it has been scoring 8s and 9s, which is of course, splendid news. Having spent some quality time with the game myself. I can say that it does live up to the hype. Unfortunately, Sonic Mania's success has caused some to once again hop on to the ridiculous notion that Sonic games have been terrible since the character entered 3D, leading to eye rolling, click bait videos like WhatCultureGaming's "Sonic Mania Finally Nails What Sega Messed Up for 23 Years."

Nostalgia, as warm a feeling as it is, can a be very blinding. It can cause one to focus on nothing but the good, completely dismissing or even failing to acknowledge any faults. Whether it is with critics or fans, many Sonic players suffer from one of the worst cases of selective memory that I have ever seen.

While Sonic's heyday may ave been the early 1990s, even those games had their fair share of flaws. Sonic 2, what many consider to be the best Sonic game puts the camera focus on Sonic at all times and Sonic's sprite is pretty dang large. because the camera is centered on the Blue Blur, enemies often get the drop on you. Mystic Cave Zone has an infamous spike pit that's easy to fall into, Metropolis Zone is home to to some of the worst Badniks in any Sonic game, often placed in the worst spots and the aforementioned camera focus only compounds this problem. The first Sonic game had level design and a speed cap that mitigated surprise enemy attacks, something Sonic 2 fails at.

It isn't unusual to hear Sonic CD being labeled as the best Sonic game ever. The game has some cool, interesting concepts like time travel and the levels encourage exploration even more than Sonic 2, but the zones in Sonic CD are some of the worst of any Sonic game. I'm not saying that to make a bold statement or get people riled up. I'm serious as a heart attack when I say that. Collision Chaos takes the pinball nature of earlier Sonic games and goes way too far, culminating with a boss fight that can either be finished in seconds or be drawn out. Wacky Workbench has a crazy floor mechanic that sends the player bouncing sky high, making it exasperating to play through. Metallic Madness is a maze that's irritating to navigate because so much of it looks the same. To make matters worse, Sonic CD's stages are loaded with more springs and spikes than in any other Sonic game and springs are often positioned to where they will launch you into said spikes or an enemy. Stardust Speedway is one of the zones from Sonic CD that was used in Sonic Mania and when I arrived there, I was met with a sense of dread. The same annoyances from Sonic CD cropped up when I played the level in Sonic Mania for both acts. Stardust Speedway is a mess of a level that has you bouncing back and forth from springs and curves more than anything else. I can appreciate Stardust Speedway from a cosmetic and audio standpoint, but that's pretty much it. It has always been a crappy level and as much as I like Sonic Mania, the level's inclusion (with the exception of the killer Metal Sonic fight) is a low point for me.

Do those mars make Sonic 2 and Sonic CD awful games? No. Sonic CD doesn't crack my top 5, but I certainly would never call it bad. However, these games do have problems, problems that have been ignored by both fans and critics time and time again. Any 3D Sonic game that has the issues I mentioned above are heavily scrutinized. So why do Sonic's earliest games get a pass on this stuff while his 3D games with camera troubles, cheap deaths and whatnot get crucified? Just because one style of games gives you the warm and fuzzies does not make them immune to criticism.

Things labeled against the early 3D Sonic titles are usually the voice acting and bad cameras. Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes like any other games released during the periods are products of their time. How many games released at the time actually did have good voice acting, good lip syncing or a camera that didn't suck? Mega Man 8's voice acting is well known for being atrocious at this point but Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a game held in very high regard, had a lackluster voice acting. Even Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time had camera problems. Yes, the first Sonic Adventure is glitchy, but some of those glitches you have to go out of your way to trigger. Dunkey brought up the glitches of Sonic Adventure when reviewing Sonic Mania, and this struck me as odd because one of his favorite Mario games is Super Mario Sunshine, a game that is rife with glitches and a host of other problems. Not enough to make Sunshine bad, but you can tell that his bias is clearly showing when he's willing to let early 3D Mario get away with it, but not early 3D Sonic.

This lovely thing called "middle ground" gets tossed out the window for a lot of people when it comes classic and modern Sonic games. It's either good or bad, and when it comes to these games, often the case being good if it' a classic game and bad if it's a modern game and I've never understood that.

Sonic Mania is not perfect. It's still possible to suffer from some cheap deaths and due to SEGA's meddling, we've got numerous Act 1 stages that are basically ripped from old games, which means a good chunk of the levels are not original. It also includes one of the worst zones in a Sonic game. Despite those problems, though, Sonic Mania is still an awesome game. Best Sonic game ever? I'm not ready to make such a claim this early, but it is shaping up to be one of my favorite games of 2017. I'd love to see more Sonic games like Mania, but at the same time, I don't feel the entire franchise should be dictated by it because contrary to what many would have you believe, Sonic can be good outside of two dimensions.

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