Sonic Colors: Final Thoughts

Sonic Colors is one of the best bad games I’ve played in a long time. This game does a variety of things wrong, but every sin it commits is nullified by another, more positive design choice. The result is a game that is more-or-less fun to play, start to finish, but never really strikes the same chords as an actually-good game would.

As an example: the visuals in this game are astounding. Every zone is gorgeous, and has its own unique sense of personality. Whereas the old Sonic games were largely just piles of thematic blocks, the stages in Sonic Colors are constructed as real places. Sonic zips through buildings and along roller coasters, climbs construction sites and dives through undersea grottoes. The sense of place in Sonic Colors is very strong… but this also means that every level is exceedingly busy, visually speaking. It can be almost impossible, at a moment’s notice, to tell which objects are important and which are background scenery. Since everything looks so impressive and important, it’s easy for Sonic to get lost in the muddle, which means lots of cheap deaths.

In fact, except against some of the bosses, I can’t honestly say I felt any of my deaths were “my fault”. They pretty much always happened as a result of me not being able to tell a pit was a pit, or an enemy was an enemy, or because I was moving too fast to notice some onscreen cue. Upon respawning and trying again, though, I’d know right where the pit or the enemy or the cue was, and be able to jump it/destroy it/respond to it in kind.

Sonic has essentially infinite lives, and respawning only takes a second. So when the game kills you with stupid unfair bullshit you almost never have time to really dwell on that fact. You learn where the hole is by falling into it. The whole game is structured like this.

As a result, the levels really have the feel of colorful roller coaster rides. You blaze through the first time, bumping your head on everything, until you figure stuff out well enough to win. Rinse and repeat for the next level. You could go back later to find the hidden stuff and to rack up enough points to earn S-rankings, and no doubt a lot of players will do exactly this… but that requires you to really learn the individual levels. Really knocking these levels over would mean knowing when to take every individual action ahead of time, and I bet we’re going to see some really impressive looking YouTube videos of players doing it. I suspect, though, that because the levels are so short, no stage will require more than a few dozen such actions. This means any player can reasonably S-rank the entire game, if they were of a mind to do it, not just the reflex-king superstars who are able to speedrun the old Sonic games.

Another area where the game really falters is Sonic’s range of action. Sonic has a lot of different things he can do, but he never has access to his entire moveset at once. Most of the stages take place on a standard side-scrolling 2d plane, but sometimes the camera moves behind Sonic instead. Some of these sections are standard “run forward really fast” sections, where Sonic can run anywhere he wants and steers like normal. Some are “sidestep” sections, where Sonic can only run on one of three pre-determined tracks at a time, and tapping the control stick sideways will automatically snap him to the next track over. Still others are “drifting” sections, where Sonic skids around turns as though he were sliding on a sheet of ice. What sort of section you’re in is never clear based on graphical cues alone, and seems to be chosen completely arbitrarily.

The duct tape they slapped on to make this work is twofold. First, there are big cartoon icons that pop up saying “this is a drift section” or “this is a sidestep section”. These are ugly, but informative; you always know exactly what you’re getting into. And second, if you try to guess what type of level you’re in, and are wrong, you will probably die. But that’s no big deal, because you get another chance a second later.

I think what happened was: Sonic Team made a fundamentally broken game, and instead of fixing anything they simply spackled over the whole shebang so well that nobody noticed it was broken. (Or, if they did notice, they wouldn’t care.) Then, as a consolation prize, they included one of the most pleasing soundtracks in recent memory and cutscenes just cheesy enough to remind the player what Saturday morning cartoons used to be like.

That way, nobody has a bad time playing… even though the game is pretty bad.

I recommend buying this. You’ll have fun.

14 comments to Sonic Colors: Final Thoughts

  • Little E

    Brick, is it just me? When I first saw Sonic Colors I saw Super Mario Galaxy 1 and/or 2. Even the whole new drill power, it just seems like SEGA is trying to copy Nintendo now…Please explain if im flawed in thinking this, seeing as I’ve never played Sonic Colors.

    • Brickroad

      The game is actually very, very different from Mario Galaxy, as far as gameplay goes. The magic powers Sonic gets from eating the little candy alien guys are a very small part of the game… you use them about as frequently as you use Mario’s magic hats in Galaxy (which is to say, not that often).

      That said, Nintendo has been making fun Mario games for years and Sega kind of hasn’t made a really fun Sonic game since the Genesis. They could do a LOT worse than try to copy Mario.

  • Little E

    I see. I’m also prolly’ a little biased seeing as I grew up with nothing but NES’s, SNES’s and N64’s.

  • […] news. Is the Sonic Cycle still turning? Sonic the Hedgehog 4 was certainly lamentable, and while Sonic Colors was bad I definitely had a bit of fun with it. Enough fun, in fact, that I didn’t mind picking up […]

  • Αdmiring thе ԁeԁicatiοn you ρut intο
    your blog аnԁ detaіleԁ informаtion you
    оffеr. It’s good to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the
    ѕаme old rehashed material. Excellent гead!

    I’ve bookmarked your site and I’m including yοuг RSЅ feeds to
    my Gοοgle аccοunt.

  • If you could do something you never did before would you?
    I mean writing about Sonic Colors: Final Thoughts

  • tinnitus cures

    Today, while I was at work, my sister stole my iphone and tested to
    see if it can survive a 40 foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation.
    My apple ipad is now broken and she has 83 views.
    I know this is completely off topic but I had to share it with someone!

    Also visit my web page :: tinnitus cures

  • Now I am going to do my breakfast, once having my breakfast coming over again to read more news.

  • Hi! Quick question that’s completely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My blog looks weird when viewing from my iphone4. I’m trying to find a
    template or plugin that might be able to fix this problem.
    If you have any recommendations, please share. Thank you!

  • Hello, its good article concerning media print, we all be
    aware of media is a fantastic source of data.

  • My partner and I absolutely love your blog and find a lot of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for.
    Would you offer guest writers to write content for you?
    I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on many of the subjects you write in relation to here. Again, awesome web site!

    Look at my webpage :: http://www.caribbeanfoodcentre.com

  • Heya just wanted to give you a brief heads upp and let you knolw
    a few of the images aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure wwhy but I think its a linking issue.
    I’ve tried it in two different browsers and both show the same results.

  • Oh my goodness! Awesome article dude! Thank you
    so much, However I am going through issues with your RSS.
    I don’t know why I cannot join it. Is there anyone else having similar RSS problems?
    Anyone that knows the answer will you kindly respond? Thanks!!

    My weblog; best global seo services

  • Cogeré tu rss ya que no he podido ver tu email para suscribirme a tus link o
    servicio e-newsletter . ¿ Tienes una dirección?
    Si eres tan amable hazme saber cómo hacerlo. Sólo me encantaría subscribirme.
    Gracias!.

Leave a Reply to eating spicy food during Cancel reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>