Review – Sonic Colours

When you think about it, Sonic has it better off than Mario. Like a triple A platinum disc selling band on its fifteenth sell out album, Nintendo’s plumber has to hit the right notes every time in every new piece or face public humiliation for the slightest misstep.

Sonic on the other hand, with his long, disheveled hair and ailing drug problem, is the one hit wonder that continues to attack the charts with lackluster efforts. He had a few good tracks but has since been running on borrowed time, attempting to hit those golden notes that once came so easy.

This puts Sonic at an advantageous position. Rather than having to produce solid gold every time he makes a go at it, when Sonic struts into the public’s attention everyone has already set dials to ‘massive disappointment’ after more than a decade of facepalm worthy embarrassment. This situation ends up making a ‘good’ game something of a real surprise and reason for celebration.

Sonic Colours is that game.

Flying Colours

Taking place on Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park, the game starts with Sonic and Tails investigating the location because ‘it’s Eggman, and he must be up to something’ whilst amusing tanoy announcements broadcast to the park that the evil Doctor has reconsidered his moral standing, and that this park is his recompense for years of world domination attempts.

It soon transpires that Eggman is indeed hatching a nefarious plot (who would have guessed (Sonic apparently)) involving colourful aliens known as Wisps and it’s up to Sonic and Tails, and only Sonic and Tails, to defeat him.

The story is told in a largely entertaining style reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon. Sonic and Tails have some entertaining dialogue but Dr. Eggman and his faulty robots are inviting as some truly appealing comic relief, with exquisite animation and pinpoint writing helping the simple story progress swiftly, and with no hedgehog/human relationships to spoil the broth. Fantastic.

This fun plot is just one surprise in a game full of them, with Sonic’s very core gameplay receiving an equally respectable amount of reconsideration. Colours manages to easily avoid any Warehog or open world style ‘gimmicks’ by just focusing on how the blue rodent should and could traverse a simple level, a back to basics approach that Unleashed trumpeted but ultimately failed to deliver.

Indeed Sonic’s trip, tumble, and continuing splat into the third dimension has been well documented by lamenting fans and ailing review scores for generations but finally, finally, Sonic Team have discovered a way to integrate 3D environments into a genuine Sonic experience and here’s their new found secret; don’t use many.

Light Fantastic

The majority of Sonic Colours is a 2D affair, and that includes the slow platforming kind as well as the ‘hold right to win’ kind, with fleeting uses of 3D employed, for the most part, to excite and add spectacle to the occasionally stunning architecture of the intergalactic theme park.

These 3D sections add gameplay diversity as well. After a 2D section the game may switch to a behind Sonic lane format view, the player moving quickly to avoid obstacles, before throwing the hog into a freefall, moving deftly around to pick up rings, before landing and shooting off on a rollercoaster esque grind rail, or perhaps even an actual rollercoaster, a scenario that one only hopes is Sonic Team making a sly jibe at their own game design. This scenario alone would be a step up from previous adventures and we haven’t even touched on the Wisps yet…

The aliens Eggman is trying to manipulate for his nefarious ends also fashion as Sonic’s powerups, unlocked as you progress through the adventure and retroactively added to previous levels upon first use they imbue Sonic with many different abilities such as inflating like a balloon, ricocheting quickly off surfaces, or even drilling through soft ground. These act as fleeting powerups, brief moments of context sensitive action that gel perfectly with the swift pace associated with Sonic, and add much needed moments of flair to the otherwise standard platforming.

Regrettably there are elements of Sonic Colours that haven’t been handled as deftly as those described. Jumping itself has an annoyingly floaty feel that makes pinpoint platforming a pain, while some mechanics such as the wall jump are undercooked and inconsistent in their implementation.

The game also falters in terms of an inconsistent presentation, bosses repeat twice each, some aspects, such as enemy explosions, are limp and unsatisfying and while some levels stun and amaze with captivating dreamscapes, others look like they were made in an afternoon by a bored intern, copy pasting the template platform a hundred times over a static backdrop.

All that and those instant death drops are still present, and when you combine those with an archaic lives system it’s a combination that’s bound to grate.

Ray of Light

But then a levels hurls you toward, and asks you to platform in and around, a gigantic cheeseburger cake where you deftly combine dashes, slides, and well placed hops to navigate the level, using a wisp to find a hidden location while some incredibly funky jazz beats play in the background. When Sonic Colours works, it works well and argues a great case for its character being able to hit the notes he once managed so easily.

At 4-5 hours this isn’t a terribly long adventure, but for OCD types this playtime is easily doubled, perhaps even tripled scouring the levels for fiendishly hidden collectibles and striving for the highest rank on every stage, while online leaderboards will coax competitive sorts to replay endlessly.

It may never be as clever as say, Mario Galaxy but Sonic Colours manages to embrace some of that games penchant for diversity and stunning sense of scale and to be honest any favourable comparison to Mario Galaxy, no matter how fleeting, is surely worth some bonus pay to the design team. While the presentational and gameplay quirks can, and do, mar an otherwise solid platforming foray, Sonic Colours finally beats out a worthwhile tune to show that Sonic still possesses some of that classic vigor we remember him belting out all those years ago.

It may not be the best platformer around, and maybe it’s just easy to be impressed that Sonic is in something halfway decent as opposed to the gaming form of a terminal disease, but Sonic Colours is good fun and finally shows, after the years of hurt, that SEGA’s once great mascot might just be able to write another number one after all…

Tweet