First off congratulations on the birth of your child! That's awesome man

So I go to play some Sonic Mania which for some reason was at a Video card company's booth at PAX and it felt very much like to Sonic 1 to me. In fact one of the levels seemed to be a barely modified Green Hills Zone Act 1. I think it even had similar routes through the level, it felt like I was playing through muscle memory. Hard to say to say if that's a good or a bad thing, probably depends on what you want out of it.

Sonic Mania felt more like an expansion or a level pack to one of the old Genesis games than a proper new entry or a re-envisioning like New Super Mario Brothers was to classic mario. I'm personally ok with that, but I was hoping for something a bit more ambitious though. The performance on it was great though, didn't notice any latency whatsoever and framerate was buttery smooth. Couldn't even tell I wasn't playing on a CRT.

2017 is so stacked with games from killer franchises, it's nuts man. I'm happily drowning in Zelda as it is and I doubt I'll personally be done with it until I get 200 hrs in it at the rate I'm going, no idea how I'll even get to a lot of the good stuff this year.

Sonic Mania seemed like it was in a great place when I played it at a Switch event, so more polish or content is fine by me.

Forces looks like Generations 2. And since I got 1000 achievements in Generations, I'm super excited about that.

@eder: Yeah I'm with you, Playing on the WiiU myself. It plays a lot better on the gamepad than I would have expected, still prefer TV for the draw distance,

Mania looks good. Haven't seen much of it but the pitch is good so I'll keep my eye on it for sure.

Forces looks good. Generations seems like it was decades ago now. I didn't bother with any of the Sonic Boom games but I really enjoyed Colors and Generations. Thought they struck a good balance of speed and actual platforming. Glad to see a new game like that.

And I'm rockin' BotW on the Wii U gamepad too lol

Sonic Mania has been a day 1 buy for me since it was announced, and the delay doesn't really bother me that much.

As for the game, it looks like what Sonic 4 should have been in that it's picking from where Sonic 3 and Knuckles left off gamplay wise (elemental shields are awesome). Sonic 4 felt like more like a tribute game to Sonic 1 and 2 rather than the what a post S3&K 2D Sonic game made in the 90s would have been. The Sonic 4 titles both needlessly regressed to the Sonic 1 days and needlessly added modern elements like the homing attack. Sonic Mania looks way better.

As for Sonic Forces, I'm looking forward to it. I loved Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations, and it feels like someone at Sonic Team finally realized they were on to something with that gameplay style. After they'd made two consecutive well received game that finally managed to make Sonic work in 3D, I never understood why they squandered that potential and customer good will by ditching it for a Mario Galaxy clone (Sonic Lost World) and farming out a spin off to an outside developer that ended up terribly (Sonic Boom). The series was heading in the right direction and they destroyed that momentum almost immediately.

Still, I'm glad to see they've realized they had something good going and decided to build on that rather burn it all to ground yet again and start over. Plus, it's been 4 years since Sonic Lost World came out, so presumably this game has had a lengthy development cycle. Hopefully that means they've been able to make a solid 10+ hour game without having to resort to filler like Werehog stages, all those challenges in Generations, or having like 7 acts per zone like Sonic Colors.

A lengthy Sonic game in the Generations style with no garbage filler content would be amazing.

Sonic Generations was a really good foundation that I thought they needlessly scrapped, so I'm glad they appear to be building on it.

@ll_exile_ll: Oh man Sonic 4, what a dumpster fire. Not the game itself that was fine but like you said it really didn't know what it wanted to be. So much win in your post very good insight.

Sonic Forces looks floaty and automatic, like the mediocre Generations. Sonic needs a haircut.

Sonic Mania looks overpriced for what it is. Basically, an enhanced mod. But it looks more fun than Forces.

@ezekiel: I do like the more strut or jog like feel of SA2 I have to admit. I'm guessing you're not a fan of the series. Don't blame you there have been some crap Sonic games over the years but some of us have learned or gotten used to the "floaty" gameplay.

Sonic Mania looks alright, but I've always been more of a Modern Sonic guy. I do like some of the classics, and adore Sonic CD, but the design decisions tend to put me off. Definitely a play for me though, but not jumping out of my seat or anything.

On that note, Sonic Forces looks freaking fantastic. A sequel to my favorite Sonic game, building on that near-perfect gameplay? Sign me up!

Sonic Mania really is the culmination of all the work fans have been doing with hacks and fan games and it's really amazing to see SEGA just let them straight up make a new game.

My only real worry with it is that it seems like it going to be more remixed levels than new ones which is a kind of a bummer. tho they did show off some cool things like a fire shield burning some bits of Green Hill act 2 and opening a new area.

Yeah, I preferred the way momentum worked in SA2 as well. But none of it works as nicely as the momentum in the 2D games. Out of all the Sonic games I played, the only good ones were the Mega Drive trilogy.

I wonder why they keep using the Sonic 1 sprites instead of the Sonic 2 and 3 sprites in all these games. A proper sequel to Sonic 3 should look more like 3 than 1.

@ezekiel: Oh thats right! I loved the sprites from Sonic 3 & Knuckles why not update those or use them?