![]() ![]() The wider pantheon of sidekicks - Shadow, Silver, Big the sodding Cat - have been cast headlong into the screaming cosmic abyss from whence they came, reducing the playable line-up to the Holy Trinity: Sonic himself (who can use each shield power-up's special ability), long-suffering fox acquaintance Tails (who can fly and swim) and beefy echidna rival Knuckles (who can smash through certain walls, climb and glide). To put that in slightly less grandiose terms, Mania is Sonic without 20-odd years of slowly accumulating bullshit. The handling is spot-on - Sonic 4's wrongheaded physics are a distant memory. It's representative of a project that doesn't merely restore the past with the care of a museum curator touching up a faded portrait, but also twists and expands it, to create an experience that is equal parts nostalgia pang and giddy excitement. I won't spoil it, but Act 2's concluding clash is the kind of gleeful nod to a certain other Sonic game that should have any long-in-the-tooth fan laughing hysterically. And the bosses, above all, have been completely reimagined. Entire sections of the course have been uprooted, rearranged and spruced up with new fixtures, such as troughs of gel you can harden into bounce pads by jumping on giant syringes. Dotted throughout the 2017 incarnation of Chemical Plant you'll find power-up TVs lifted from Sonic 3 - including the Bubble Shield, which staves off the threat of suffocation. That flooded shaft kept my eight-year-old self from the relative peace of the Aquatic Ruin Zone for months - and it's back in Sonic Mania, Christian Whitehead's absurdly lovely homage to Sonic's 16-bit heyday. Is there any track in all of video game music more nightmarish than Sonic's drowning countdown? And is there anything more dreadful, when you're in the teeth of that music, than having to wrestle with the game's underwater physics - wilting in horror as you graze a block by a pixel, precious seconds squandered as the blue blur drifts lazily to the platform beneath? Nothing too horrendous in itself, but as you climb to the top the zone's underlying ocean of toxic purple goop surges abruptly, flooding the shaft even as the door slams shut behind you. Tucked towards the end of the second act is a shaft filled with moving blocks, sliding around in clumps of four to create a precarious series of stairways. There's an area in Sonic 2's Chemical Plant Zone that still has me clutching my chest when I think of it. Christian Whitehead and team turn in a beautiful rewrite of the 16-bit Sonic games with all-new stages. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |