Best Sonic game in years despite a few shortcomings.
Some levels are really cool, like the one with the playing cards, others aren't as good, like the one where you have to constantly find and jump into cannons.
The bosses are also very familiar, and many are just the same bosses from Sonic 1 and 2 with a few new attacks. Some people, and a certain review website criticised the game for having a too difficult final boss, I hope the reviewer meant a secret boss I haven't encountered yet, because the regular last boss is not THAT difficult, I mean, sure, I died numerous times, but there have been far more difficult Sonic bosses. He does have a pretty cheap final attack though, if you don't know what to do instantly, you're dead, trial and error man.
The game looks fantastic, no slowdown that I could notice, maybe a few times when losing numerous rings after running into an enemy, the music is mostly not up to the quality set by the first 3 games in the series, sure it sounds better and clearer, but the tunes are not as memorable, still there's some good music here. Anyway, this is titled as "Episode 1", so I guess that means more levels in the future, if you collect all the chaos emeralds which is a lot easier than before since you don't have to collect them all in one playthrough, if you do collect them all, not only do you get to transform into super Sonic, but after finishing the game, you'll get a "to be continued" teaser and the silhouette of a certain metal hedgehog. Looking forward to that. I finished the game in under 2 hours, despite dying multiple times, now I can finish it in under 50 minutes, so it's a pretty short game, like the others. Sonic 4: Episode 1 is a great game in the series, I would not say it's quite up to the quality of the genesis classics, but it's easily the best Sonic game I've played in years.