Be Excellent To Each Other

GTA4: 10/10
GTA5: 9/10

Fuck off, Eurogamer.

Having only liked sonic 1 and (to a passer extent) 2 on the Master System, I bought Mania.

And, I can't believe I'm saying this.

It's... good.

Really good.

Really, really, good.

It's actually a platformer, not just a hold right simulator. It's beautiful. The music is great. It controllers fantastically (subtly better than the originals, but still with proper heft, speed is earnt). It's a labour of love.

"Faith schools, scientologists and 2-D platform games."

Christ, it works!

You know it!

I bought the collectors edition of this and was hugely disappointed in it. So much so in that I sent it back to Amazon for a refund. Looking at the reviews online for it, I'm not the only one either.

The box set contained a statue, a metallic collectors card, the game via a download code and a Megadrive cartridge which slid out at the bottom and contains a gold ring.

The statue was amazingly cheap feeling and hollow. It takes 2 AA batteries and plays the classic "Sega" jingle when you slide the on/off switch but mine kept sticking. It felt like the switch underneath was slipping out of the plastic molded switch on top. It was also the wrong size! They've clearly done their homework but the Megadrive that Sonic was standing on was too big by a couple of inches. Rubbish.

The metallic card was nothing special and the cartridge was again, cheap feeling.

If the game was £39.99 or more than I could have looked past all this but it's not. It's only £15ish so it would have meant paying £65 for tat. So yeah, it went back.

I'm not going to let that cloud my judgement of the game however as it's brilliant!

How does sending something back affect your spreadsheet?

Is it a real, working cartridge?

Did you take any pictures of what you got?

It doesn't. It never made it on there.



Nope. The gold connectors on the bottom are what you grab to make it slide out. It was slightly too big to be a real cartridge anyway.



Nope. I guess I should have done really.

I’ve completed this and it was brilliant. Really enjoyable.

I completed it with Sonic and Tails so now I guess I’ve got to play through as Knuckles? I think the missions are slightly different for him because if the whole gliding thing.

I also need to get the Chaos Emeralds. They proved quite tricky in the end.

I’ve been playing this (trying to finish quick games init) and it’s only solidified my opinion that Sonic is a load of old shit.

You run fast to the right and sometimes left. Then you hit something you could never have seen coming and lose all your rings. Then you scoop up your coins and do the same. You’ll never die unless you fall off the bottom of the screen (there’s not many of these levels, fortunately), you’re unlucky enough to lose that last ring that always keeps your alive (a rarity) or you drown underwater. Because that’s not fucking annoying, is it!?

Here’s every Good thing in a list:

The music (wow. It’s fucking ace)
Green Hill Zone (love it)
Sonic’s animations (his face when he gets frozen in ice is so funny)
Some of the boss fights (one of them is a Mean Bean fight and it’s glorious)

The Bad things:
Everything else. The levels are so goddamn samey, so Chemical Plant is exactly like, say, Stardust Speedway. Green Hill Zone feels like an area, like a place that might exist in Sonic’s world, whereas everywhere else feels like a series of platforms and loops haphazardly put together. Plus there’s a clear approach to the level design that I’ve seen so far: (a) you have a section where you do some traditional platforming and then you hit a “thing” that throws you into (b) “a speed section” where it’s all on rails and you put the controller down and wait until you reach the next platforming section. There’s the usual problems too: no backtracking; fenced off areas; entire levels that are just a series of blind jumps into, well, fucking anything cause you’ll never know until you do it; jumbled graphics so sometimes you don’t know what to stand on or avoid; A FUCKING WATER LEVEL; goddamn Sonic moves so slow underwater; map sizes that are far too large and abstract so you’ll never be able to memorise or visualise them; oh those fucking Casino bumpers; Metal Sonic...and so on. Some of the boss fights aren’t very good either and don’t do a great job of telling the player what they should be doing.

I’m up to THE FUCKING WATER LEVEL and already I want it to end. It started off fun and I was really enjoying it but when Green Hill Zone finished (the first 2 levels then) it all goes to shit. It becomes repetitive and boring. The devs have done a great job of trying to add in unique elements into each level but it just never recaptures the feeling of that first level, well, not so far anyway, and I must be about halfway through or something.

So yeah, fuck you Sonic, your games such dick.

You basically can’t lose to the boss in Hydrocity Act 2. The fights takes place in a tight pit so each time you get hit all your rings fall to the bottom ... exactly where you’re standing.

Christ, this is a real chore to get through. The next level was quite good with Sonic stood on a plane for a bit but it’s way too short whereas a “normal” level can take upwards of 5-10 minutes to complete. Which doesn’t sound very long, but when you’re repeating the same old loop de loop that you’ve been doing for the last couple of hours you don’t feel like playing games any longer.

And the next level set in a desert is the 2nd best area since it feels like a ’place’ again. I think the backgrounds are the problem. When you’re on Stardust or the others the backgrounds are just a bit blank and empty or worst still jumbled and busy. Press Garden’s background is, like, a fast moving boxes or something that’s always present and is nauseating.

“Oil Ocean” is weird as well as Sonic does nothing about global warming and set swathes of oil on fire. Act 2 sees him choking on fumes constantly unless you reach a chain to extinguish the smoke. It’s like an underwater level but without any message about the benefits of renewable energy.

Then I played the lava level and finally died after inertia made me slip off a falling box and have the box I was just standing on top of now land on my head and instakill me. 3 times.

Oh and here’s my new biggest big bear for this shitty game. You’re running around and in the corner the lives counter says:

SONICS FACE “X 1”

How many lives have you got left? NONE. You die it’s game over. Fucking useless shit.