I'm going to write this review primarily about the Sonic 3 & Knuckles component of Origins, since that's where all my time went.

I'm not sure what to say for this one. I've been pretty hyped for Origins, since S3&K is genuinely one of my favorite retro titles and we haven't seen any kind of re-release for it in some time. Unfortunately it seems like we didn't actually get that, and instead we ended up getting something dancing around trying to pretend it's S3&K. As someone who plays through the original on a very regular basis, this port just feels *off*.

Sonic does NOT handle smoothly. You seem to stick to some surfaces, mid-air control is nonexistent, some surfaces will send you flying at weird angles, and some gaps will be "fine" one second and then randomly crush you the next. The original genesis Sonic titles were always about fast paced gameplay with extremely tight controls and it feels like NONE of that transitioned over. There seems to be an inconsistent input latency layered on top of everything, as some times Sonic would wait before responding to my jump, while other times I had to purposefully slow down my input of spin dashing because the game would arbitrarily decide to respond to the jump button BEFORE the fact that i was holding down.

Maybe the included versions of Sonic 1 / 2 / CD are great (since they use the pre-existing mobile ports), but the attempt at S3&K most certainly is not. I could forgive the $40 pricetag for yet another re-release, the lack of original licensed music, the use of Denuvo, or even the blatant cash grab DLC; But somehow Sega took a nigh perfect game, and found a way to drain the fun out of it. So please don't reward Sega for such a shoddy effort. Just go play Sonic 3 AIR instead.

I'm going to write this review primarily about the Sonic 3 & Knuckles component of Origins, since that's where all my time went. I'm not sure what to say for this one. I've been pretty hyped for Origins, since S3&K is genuinely one of my favorite retro titles and we haven't seen any kind of re-release for it in some time. Unfortunately it seems like we didn't actually get that, and instead we ended up getting something dancing around trying to pretend it's S3&K. As someone who plays through the original on a very regular basis, this port just feels *off*. Sonic does NOT handle smoothly. You seem to stick to some surfaces, mid-air control is nonexistent, some surfaces will send you flying at weird angles, and some gaps will be "fine" one second and then randomly crush you the next. The original genesis Sonic titles were always about fast paced gameplay with extremely tight controls and it feels like NONE of that transitioned over. There seems to be an inconsistent input latency layered on top of everything, as some times Sonic would wait before responding to my jump, while other times I had to purposefully slow down my input of spin dashing because the game would arbitrarily decide to respond to the jump button BEFORE the fact that i was holding down. Maybe the included versions of Sonic 1 / 2 / CD are great (since they use the pre-existing mobile ports), but the attempt at S3&K most certainly is not. I could forgive the $40 pricetag for yet another re-release, the lack of original licensed music, the use of Denuvo, or even the blatant cash grab DLC; But somehow Sega took a nigh perfect game, and found a way to drain the fun out of it. So please don't reward Sega for such a shoddy effort. Just go play Sonic 3 AIR instead.