 Hello there everybody and welcome to a somewhat eclectic and fairly laid-back review of Sonic Mania Plus. I have already written a more complete review which has been published on the website Observe.com which I write for regularly but I also wanted to do one that was a little bit more informal where I can just kind of chat and where because the other review goes out to a largely more casual audience this is one where I get I feel like I'm really digging into the issues that that I love and the kind of slightly bother me about the game as in such as I as I start this I'd like to say that because I knew that I was going to be reviewing this game professionally I knew that I couldn't approach it just as a fanboy and so as the game was getting ready for release I was really thinking to myself what are the problems with Sonic Mania like the real genuine problems that I feel needed to be addressed in an update and in an expansion such as the one that we got with Sonic Mania Plus and as I thought about that I felt like obviously the the my biggest complaint with the game is that it doesn't feature Amy Rose and I've got Bretton structure bang on about that endlessly because I feel like that's an important issue that representation in games needs to be improved but I'm aware that not everybody shares my passion for that particular subject so as I was thinking I felt like probably aside from that the biggest issue that I have with Sonic Mania is that it lacks its own distinct style its own flavors if it had doesn't have its own identity it's got a lot of fun levels and it's got a lot of great stuff it pulls from all the other Sonic games but because it's such a hodgepodge of ideas from all of the different 2D Sonic games it doesn't have one unifying feel whereas I feel that if you look at each individual Genesis or Mega Drive title in the Sonic CD itself each of these games feels distinct feels unique it has its own kind of theme and I'd love to at one point in the future go through this and actually analyze the different themes that are present in the Sonic games because they are very interesting but I don't feel like that's present necessarily in Sonic Mania because it is such a remix of all ideas there are good stuff in there and I feel like the the starts of the seeds of an original unique game a present especially with the original levels that were made for the game but because it borrows so heavily from other titles I don't feel like it has its own unique identity I'm drawing tales by the way in case you can't tell this being the case as I went into Sonic Mania plus I was a little bit hesitant I wasn't necessarily certain if I was going to absolutely love it or if there was necessarily going to be enough new things there to make me want to come back to it again and again and again instead of just say playing through one of the Genesis titles all the way from start to finish I have to say the team making this game have done an absolutely stupendous job with the new expansion on core mode really adds that unique flavor that thing that I was looking for it does so in several ways it's first off the palette swap I feel instantly gives everything a far fresher more original feel like you're playing through familiar old levels but they look different they feel different just by changing the colors involved you get a completely different sense for them a completely different sense of identity beyond that I also feel like I think the really the the best thing that on core mode has is the character switching so instead of just picking one character and going through the entire game playing that character in on core mode you're constantly switching characters so you're playing a sonic one minute and then you get a special destroy a special TV and then you turn into it makes no sense if you don't have the context for people who have not played the game who might be watching this I apologize you might want to go and look up some footage because it probably do a better job than explaining this trying to try to describe it while also drawing but basically you start with sonic you're then able to switch out characters you've got one backup character with you at all times you're able to add additional characters through bonus stages and through picking them up through levels and so you've got a roster of up to five characters that you can then switch through and kind of mix and match and so you're constantly changing the way that you're playing you're playing a sonic and so you're going very fast or then you switch to rain you've got to try and balance out the kind of the the flight mechanic which can be a bit tricky then you're mighty and you're relatively impervious and then your tails and you're flying around to find secret passages and then your knuckles and you're gliding across the level of climbing up walls like it constantly switches and constantly changes and I think that's a fantastic way of doing something new with sonic because it's more than just playing another game or playing a very similar game that feels like much of the old ones it does something different I do I also really love the the new bonus stages so there's a new bonus stage in the game which is kind of based on pinball and introduces more shields into rotation and it introduces the ability to pick up these characters when you're playing in encore mode and I think that's absolutely fantastic because it means that first off these benefits are more easily available the problem with having blue spheres mini game for all bonus stages in the vanilla sonic mania is you just end up going through the motions for something that doesn't actually add to the gameplay whereas with this new bonus stage you play the bonus stage for a minute or two and you pick up a new shield or you pick up a new character to players or you've you've added something else to the game you've got more ring as you've got an extra life I don't know it's things like that it just it it means that there's a purpose for stopping and pausing and entering the bonus stage which I don't feel was necessarily there in the original mania so it's it's great to see how sonic team not sonic team was the opposite of sonic team it's great to see how Christian Whitehead and his team have gone through this game and looked at a lot of the negative feedback or the criticisms that people had of the original sonic mania and said right what can we do to make this different how can we make this stand out and how can we fix the issues that are present I don't think that sometimes I think that's not quite enough of that like in encore mode like for it to be easier to switch between your character roster but I also understand that putting limitations there means you're forced to play with characters that you don't like for example I'm not a fan of Ray yet brand new character very interesting very cute design I love seeing him I mean not brand new but you know brand new to 2d sonic games of this genre and yeah I just can't quite get to grips with his gliding mechanic it reminds me too much of the hand glider from Sonic 2 on the Sega Master System which I absolutely hate is as a child in which I'm now vaguely passable at playing when I go back and revisit the game which is relatively often I'm just not a fan of that mechanic and I know it's borrowing a lot from say Super Mario's shield not shield his cape in Super Mario World but it just it doesn't quite work for me mighty I love I love that he's basically an easy mode for the game and that he's relatively impervious I'm not concerned about it like being making the game easier like I have a veteran Sonic fan I've been playing these games for a very long time I don't mind the game getting slightly easier because that doesn't mean it's any less fun because Sonic let's be honest has never been a particularly challenging platformer it's not like Mario where you have three lives and then you're dead or kind of you you have a power up and then you lose the power up and suddenly the game gets significantly harder with Sonic you lose your rings that's a shame that means you've lost some of the bonus score that you were going to get at the end of the level or a chance to gain an extra life if you've got a hundred but who cares pick up a few more ring keep playing it doesn't really matter like these aren't challenging games and so when you kind of remove even more challenge from I don't think that that necessarily hurts it in fact I think it's actually more fun it's kind of it's a lot of fun to play through as mighty and just smash through everything and really not care about what's coming your way so basically to kind of to reiterate I feel like a lot of the stuff that's been added in Sonic Mania is really it elevates the game it makes it more enjoyable and it gives it that unique sense of identity it makes it feel like something beyond just playing through Sonic one levels again and then instantly switching to Sonic 3 and then instantly switching to Sonic 2 you know it kind of there's a consistent flow to it now it all feels more unique I also like that now I'm playing on the PlayStation 4 because I did have this this is just a personal quibble I did have it on my Surface Pro computer which is what I used to do all the drawings for these videos and making the videos and it was always a bit of a pain to actually start up the game I had to deliberately start up Steam I had to open the game I had to wait for it to load I had to connect my controller to the computer which is a hit or miss process it was a lot of there was a lot of faff involved and then I wanted to get on the TV I had to plug it into the TV separately with it with a connecting cable that goes to HDMI it was not particularly easy now because I've got on PlayStation 4 I just press the button on the controller it turns on the machine and I'm playing instantly and that's great because it means that I can just sit down and play for a level or just pick it up and go which is how I used to play the Mega Drive Sonic so I used it for a very long time I had these older machines plugged in to the TV next to the latest consoles and nine times out of ten if I was very just wanting something to pick up quickly I would just pick up so I can play that for a few minutes and now I can do that with Sonic Mania which is really good which makes the game feel more accessible and I can play more of it it also means that baby gamer has been seeing it a lot more but we've got into a kind of routine is my little tale he's looking pretty good just gonna do some coloring bear with me while I find my pens so when I turn this on for the first time when I was playing it in front of baby game as she came over and she said oh look at that and I said it's a new character playing as mighty and she said oh cool I like Amy and I said oh okay I'm sorry but Amy is not in this game and she says oh and then she kind of just wanders off and picks up her Disney princess dolls and starts playing with those instead like her interest in the game disappeared the moment that Amy was not on screen and I think that that's telling because I feel like it reflects her need for representation and if anybody wonders why I've banged the Amy drums so hard in trying to get Amy included in this game or trying to let the people at Sega know why this character is important it's not for me it's not because I have a particular love of Amy Rose I do not I find her annoying as a character I think that she's very poorly written and that's why she's annoying like it's not her fault necessarily but I feel like she's often overlooked and because of that there's less representation in the Sonic games and for people like my daughter who would otherwise be thrilled to engage with these games when they see that they're not being catered to they're not going to take it personally necessarily but they are going to go and look at things or engage with other media where they are represented such as picking up Disney princess dolls so what we've been doing instead is whenever she sees me playing Sonic Mania now she'll come over and just kind of start watching and if she feels like seeing you done I'm watching for a long time she'll ask if I can play as Amy instead and so what I do is I then turn off the PlayStation and I turn on the snares classic which has a couple of ROM hacks on it from Sonic games and we'll play that instead and we'll have a very good time doing that except now she's her favorite is Sonic 3 she likes when Angel Island's own catches fire and so she wants to play as Amy in that and that doesn't seem to run particularly successfully on the snares classic it always seems to crash on me and so when that happens I've then got to turn that off and start playing on my phone instead which is not quite as enjoyable of an experience but at least like she'll come and snuggle up close and watch over my shoulder while I'm playing it on the phone so yeah like I know that I've gone on and on about this but I would love to see Amy included in whenever comes next for Sonic not necessarily for my benefit let me know by the way if you feel it you'd like to hear another video on Amy Rose because I'd love to do one and get Breton Strabs to voice it because she's better at this obviously and talk about how Sonic Team and Sega in general have kind of overlooked and underwritten Amy Rose and made her a bit more of a annoying character and why people dislike her but I that that's definitely a subject for another day let me know in the comments if that's something you actually want to watch or if I should just shut up about Sonic and Amy Rose as one person did say in the comments to the last video just shut up about Sonic sorry I like Sonic and I want to keep hammering on about it so we're here again but yeah anyway there's my little tails look I finished him and you look cute thank you very much for watching basically my review of Sonic Mania it's great it just needs a little bit more Amy