Under the tree this year were copies of Sonic Colors and Donkey Kong Country Returns. Both of these games are really fun, but they’re different kinds of fun.
Sonic Colors is a pretty easy game that’s all about blinding speed. Oftentimes it’s impossible to tell where I’m going or what I’m doing just by looking at the screen. Thankfully the game is designed around this concept and has a lot of pretty “on-rails” sections where all you have to do is press the button as the targets pop up, and Sonic does the rest. Sometimes these sections are literally on-rails as Sonic grinds along a roller coaster or somesuch, hopping only to get rings or avoid the helpfully-telegraphed breaks in the track.
The rest of the game is pretty standard Sonic-style 2d platforming, which means a lot of aiming jumps and working your way through mazes. This was always the weakest part of the old games, in my opinion, because Sega designed these huge overly-elaborate levels to explore… and then gives you a hero who is designed to be the antithesis of exploring them. This happens in Colors as well, but with two key differences: 1) there are five red rings to find in each level, giving you more incentive to explore than simply having a different path, and 2) you can play any level you’ve cleared at any time.
Is the “Sonic Cycle” broken? Hard to say, considering I haven’t played a 3d Sonic game… uh… ever. But the game is fun, flashy, and doesn’t ask very much of you. I’ve had a few cheap deaths because I lost track of Sonic on the screen, and there have been a few levels that had long, boring sections where the player doesn’t get to do much of anything. On the whole, though? I’m pretty okay with a goofy little Sonic game that doesn’t try to overstep its bounds.
Donkey Kong Country Returns is exactly what the title states: a return to the classic DKC formula. That’s probably the highest praise I can give it. The level design, the level and types of challenges, the boss fights, the bonus rooms… everything is perfectly in place. I’m going to have a blast making my way to the end of this game, then I’m going to have two more blasts going back and finding all the hidden doodads.
Weird that all my Christmas gaming acquisitions were on the Wii this year. I’d forgotten I even owned a Wii!
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Sonic Colours is basically making a game with nothing but the speed staged from Sonic Unleashed. Which is great! There’s nothing wrong with that!
I actually found, though, as a result that the only thing I didn’t like about Colours is that your super-speed gauge is reloaded by picking up the Wisps, instead of rings, like it is in Unleashed. That meant that your super speed is much more limited, since in a lot of Unleashed stages, I could basically turbo dash the entire length of the stage once I was good enough in it.
Donkey Kong Country Returns is just so much fun to play. It has all these great ideas and designs executed very well. It’s interesting to note that DKCR was made without the big-wigs at Retro who had made the Metroid Prime games.