Sonic Mania is bad, and I was clearly right to think that Sonic has always been bad.
Also this game has lives and game overs in 2017. There's nothing I love more than replaying an entire zone because I got launched at top speed into spikes that I couldn't have seen coming nor reacted to.
Would you rather deal with having to replay the entire damn game with no save feature or stage select like in Sonic 1, 2, & Knuckles (because you need 3 attached)?
I never got a single game over (but S3&K is one of my favorite platformers so maybe I just knew what to expect), but I don't get the complaint when zones don't take more than 10 minutes to beat & offer different paths to take, meaning you can change up how you explore for the most part. I'd rather replay a zone in Mania than deal with crap in Sonic Unleashed like Eggmanland which took me an entire damn hour to beat.
Sonic games are trial-and-error score attack games, not platformers.
Some of the later 3D ones like Unleashed, absolutely. The DS games were also guilty of having a few too many bottomless pits (something I think only was in one or two levels in Mania). Generations in its final stages got way more platform heavy & became less about speed.
I generally find leaderboards, time attack modes, and ranking systems in most single player games to be either completely forgettable or annoying.
Especially ranking systems that use letter grades to judge my performance. At no point do I ever want to finish a level and get told I did a C- job on that level. (Or for that matter get a bronze statue that only exists to mock me. Looking at you Bayonetta.)
Unless I get some kind of reward, yeah, I've never been one for leaderboards or time attacks (unless the game is designed for speed running). I can deal with rankings if it feels fair since there can be a satisfaction getting really good rankings, but as mentioned, it can also suck that you feel like you did a rather decent job but got a crap ranking. But I also play a lot of rhythm games, so I'm super used to them.
Crash 1 is the perfect example where time trials were CLEARLY not designed for that game, but they decided to shove it in there anyways in the N. Sane Trilogy. At least 2 gave you the sneakers to run faster, giving you some sense that you were going through the levels faster, but god, Road to Nowhere's time trial can go to hell.
Next week...
N I P P L E S
FCC: "NOT ON MY WATCH" *places censor bar*