Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania is a darn good game; a classic after all these years, even. A videogame that was conceived as a celebration to Sonic's early years from the Sega Genesis somehow still carries on it's hyper, colorful, dazzling and jamming aura presented in 2017 to this day. Unfortunately Mania suffers from shortcomings inherent to the roots it lovingly attempted to revitalize: I condemn the restoration of the bad tendencies from the classic Sonic games, such as having a boss at the end of every single Act, the not-rare sections where the player blitzes through portions of the level in heavily automated sequences that don't require any input and exist merely for the sake of spectacle giving the player a fake sense of speed, the lack of multiple buttons in the face of obtaining an elemental shield (the Drop Dash/Insta-Shield is too awesome! It pains that it goes away until you take damage), etc. On top of that, Mania does little to improve the formula left by Sonic 3 & Knuckles, much to it's further detriment. Sadly enough, the mere existence of this game may even be a cruel testimony of how Sonic itself can't seem to move on from it's radiant past.