Buy Sonic Mania Some of the Sonic franchise's 3-D games have fared well. Sonic Adventures 1 and 2 have loyal followings among Dreamcast and GameCube players. Sonic Colors was considered by Wii owners to be a very good game, and Sonic Generations was regarded well enough by fans that it has become...

It appears that Saints Row is no more, at least for now. In its place we have Agents of Mayhem , which is set in the same universe as Volition's crazy open world series, and even shares some of the elements from it.

Volition's Agents of Mayhem ostensibly takes place in the Saints Row universe, but aside from this game's logo, appearances by Oleg and Pierce Washington, and an abundance of the color purple, one would be forgiven for not even noticing or caring about the connection.

In many ways, Agents of Mayhem feels like a child smashing action figures together and making explosion sound effects. On one hand (the one holding the bad guy), the game is a shallow rumination on good versus evil.

Agents of Mayhem seems desperate to prove it's a standalone franchise, unfettered by the Saints Row series it was (very loosely) spun off from. Where the Saints offered irreverent, stylish lunacy that celebrated chaos with surprising doses of humanity, Agents of Mayhem offers something far more...

Sonic Mania is a brilliant return to form for the series' long-time away from traditional 2D games. Even if a few less remixed stages and more new zones would have been a nice change of pace, Sonic Mania's joyful level of ingenuity even in reimagining familiar sights is a testament to some of the...

Sonic Mania is a wonderful celebration of what's made Sonic so great in the past while also striving to push it forward. This isn't to say it's perfect – it has some of the problems of the previous games as well – but it's such a perfect encapsulation of old Sonic games, it's impressive.

Overall, Sonic Mania is the perfect callback to the series that Sonic needed. Fans of the series will remember their old gaming days, while newcomers will see what made Sonic such a great series years ago.

When Saints Row first came out, gamers pegged it as a Grand Theft Auto clone. To many extents, they weren't wrong. It wasn't until the sequels that the Saints Row series stood out on its own with its whimsical game play.

Volition has been bringing us Saints Row titles for over a decade. What started as something that was essentially a Grand Theft Auto clone, transitioned into something really special that stood on its own as the developers started incorporating an over-the-top story that took a low level street gang...