#Sonic mania pc plus#

Best of all, if you already own the original release, Plus will only cost you $5. Angel Island from Sonic 3 makes an appearance, as does a new boss.

Competition mode now supports four players and there are a number of small changes to the overall levels and boss fights that make a huge difference. There’s a number of smaller changes, too. On the contrary, overcoming those moments is half the fun. You may end up with a pairing that’s not always ideal for what the game is asking you to do, but I never encountered an area where the character combination I had couldn’t do what I was being asked to. It’s a great addition that simultaneously adds more variety to the levels and forces you to take advantage of what makes each character unique. This continues until you run out of characters, at which point you’re returned to the start of the stage. If a character dies, they’ll be replaced by another from the reserve roster. Certain power-ups scattered around the levels will allow you to switch characters, which keeps things interesting.

You’ll start playing as Sonic, but you can gather up all of the characters in the game as you progress through gorgeous, palette-swapped versions of the levels and pair said characters up to create custom combinations that aren’t available in other modes. You’ll start playing as Sonic, but you can gather up all of the characters in the game as you progress through gorgeous, palette-swapped versions of the levels and pair said characters up to create custom combinations that aren’t available in other modes.' He can also smash through enemies and takes an extra hit before he loses his rings, perfect for newer players or those of us who aren’t very good at Sonic games. His ground smash allows you to discover hidden areas lurking beneath your feet and adds new paths to the game’s already impressively varied levels. Ray’s ability to glide allows him to reach high places more easily than most of the other characters and will no doubt remind some of Tails’s floating technique, but Mighty is a new beast entirely. The two new characters – Mighty the armadillo and Ray the flying squirrel – add their own thing to the game as well.

The original didn’t lack either of those things, but it’s nice to see a set of passionate people who aren’t settling for good enough. There’s always the worry, when messing with a good thing, that tweaking it will end up making it worse, but Whitehead and crew have done an admirable job here the original Mania stages were already grand, but Plus’s levels add new verticality and replayability. Sonic Mania Plus further remixes the levels from the original release. In this regard, Sonic Mania Plus is very much like last year’s release because it’s built on the back of that game. Most of Mania’s appeal comes from this reimagining of the past: only five of the thirteen original levels in Sonic Mania were new, but they’re just as lovingly crafted and fun to play as the remixed levels. Most of the levels are remakes of classic areas like Green Hill Zone or Flying Battery Zone, and feature both new and familiar bosses to tackle. There’s no annoying animal friends, no obnoxious story, and no pointless nonsense. It feels like a sequel to Sonic and Knuckles that got shoved into a box and forgotten for two decades. The graphics are better, the controls are tighter, and the music is on point. Mania is the way you remember the Genesis titles, not the way they actually were. If you haven’t played Sonic Mania, it’s a retro homage to the old Sonic games on the Genesis. 'Mighty’s ground smash allows you to discover hidden areas lurking beneath your feet, and adds new paths to the game’s already impressively varied levels.' The question is, can you tweak something that was already nearly perfect and make it better? Plus adds two new characters, a new mode, and a number of other things to Mania’s already great core. If the original release of Sonic Mania was the version that played in theaters, Sonic Mania Plus is the director’s cut you get on home media. But Christian Whitehead, Headcannon, and PagodaWest Games apparently aren’t satisfied with excellent. Spoiler alert: it’s excellent and it deserves both the fan and critical acclaim that has been showered on it since launch. I was lucky enough to review the original game when it released. But pretty good is a hard fall from the days of the Genesis and the fact that the game was followed by Sonic: Lost World, Sonic Forces, and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric didn’t give people much hope that SEGA had learned from what made Generations work. That the best game of the modern era prior to this point was probably Sonic Generations was a scathing indictment of a franchise that once stood shoulder to shoulder with Mario. Prior to the release of Sonic Mania, things were looking pretty rough for SEGA’s Blue Blur.