Sonic Colo(u)rs: 10 Years Later

[Kuzu]

Today is the 10 anniversary of one of the games with the most...fascinating turnarounds of opinions in the past decade. Sonic 4 Sonic Colors. 

This game is rather funny to me because I actually like it for what it is, but got more critical of it when I was more involved with the fanbase. Nowadays I'm sitting more on the line of it just being a pretty good game. Nothing particularly special, but really doesn't deserve the vitriol it gets from the portion of the fanbase crying about another Adventure game. 

One big praise I'll give this game though, that can only be seen in hindsight, is that it is the last Sonic game with a truly unique aesthetic that is not based on prior games or the generic level tropes imaginable, and that's commendable. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

It’s a pretty basic game that was playing safe for what it can. My opinion on it hasn’t really changed much.

It wasn’t bad, but once you beat it, it doesn’t offer much incentive keep me playing. As much as I share the criticisms it has, I never thought it was outright terrible beyond that.

[Kuzu]

37 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

It’s a pretty basic game that was playing safe for what it can. My opinion on it hasn’t really changed much.

It wasn’t bad, but once you beat it, it doesn’t offer much incentive keep me playing. As much as I share the criticisms it has, I never thought it was outright terrible beyond that.

I'm curious, but what Sonic games do offer you incentive to return to them on repeat playthroughs? And how important is that for the series?

[Multikaris]

6 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Today is the 10 anniversary of one of the games with the most...fascinating turnarounds of opinions in the past decade. Sonic 4 Sonic Colors. 

This game is rather funny to me because I actually like it for what it is, but got more critical of it when I was more involved with the fanbase. Nowadays I'm sitting more on the line of it just being a pretty good game. Nothing particularly special, but really doesn't deserve the vitriol it gets from the portion of the fanbase crying about another Adventure game. 

One big praise I'll give this game though, that can only be seen in hindsight, is that it is the last Sonic game with a truly unique aesthetic that is not based on prior games or the generic level tropes imaginable, and that's commendable. 

Do the Boom games fall into the “generic level tropes” category, or are they more of their own thing? They did try to strike out from what the main series was visually. 

[caitash]

It’s still my favourite modern Sonic game tbh. By 2009 I’d mostly ‘checked out’ of the series after my interest started to fade following Adventure 2, the games somhow stopped appealing to me during that time except for one or two handheld titles. (Unleashed was half-tempting, but the werehog gameplay looked tedious). Colours was the first game in years that made me want to play it, it looked bright, happy, and fun. It looked like all the fun I’d seen from the daytime Unleashed footage without having to play the other half of the game that looked tedious. 
 

I didn’t mind the light-hearted story at all and it felt like some genuine heart and passion (and originality) had gone into the game and level themes. Sonic’s new voice had to grow on me a little but Tails’ new voice was perfect, a drastic improvement from what he had before.  Eggman’s random announcements during the levels were very amusing.  Music was beautiful.  The repeating-bosses was an issue for me, but other than that I loved it.
 

While I can see the temptation to point at Colours and say ‘This is the game where the story/gameplay/too much 2D/etc started to go downhill, let’s all blame Colours for the flaws of the games that came after it’ I just don’t see a lot of logic in that.

[batson]

I consider Colors to be the best Sonic games of the 2010's after Sonic Mania. It's a genuinly well made game. In retrospect, it's a terrible shame that the series failed to keep the momentum it seemed to gain with the game.

 

[Simasuu]

I remember buying Sonic Colors 3 years after it's release because I never were into Nintendo consoles, just by having a Wii U "accidentally" I managed to play Colors, and ...

I truly fell in love with the game on the spot. At first I had some hard time getting familiar with Wii controls but once I got the hold of them, the game was a pleasant experience. Can't say that the plot was anything groundbreaking and frankly I prefer the Japanese script now that I've managed to see them via YT.

Some of the Wisp powers were a fun add on but some felt absolute. I don't know am I alone in this post but sometimes I prefer Sonic Lost World Wisp powers to Colors - or then time has given me false memories.

There's pet peeves with the game, though. One critical complain I have is the exclusivity for Wii. I'm dying to replay this game but how can I do it nowadays without a functional console? I'm not familiar with Wii emulation on PC and I'm not going to buy another one just for the sake of one game - So if Colors ever gets a release on PC or some other platform, I'd definately buy it.

Also the soundtrack is spot on, but that's pretty much a standart concerning Sonic.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

12 hours ago, Kuzu said:

I'm curious, but what Sonic games do offer you incentive to return to them on repeat playthroughs? And how important is that for the series?

Perhaps the only Sonic games that offer any incentive to return to them are in order: S3&K (which I’ve played for practically two decades), the Adventure series (mostly SA2) for the Chao Gardens and exploration, and Unleashed for the collectibles (tho at some point I stopped bothering after about a year or so).

And I find it important to draw me into repeat playthroughs because that’s a testament to how damn good they are that I want to keep playing them longer than their completion times warrant. During the time I played S3&K for example, there were several hidden places in the levels I never discovered until years later after beating them, one example being a part in Lava Reed act 2 where I found a Special Ring somewhere in the lower section of the level. Also, I really wanted to find a easier way to get past the Barrel of Doom, so there was some stubbornness involved as well.

[Sonictrainer]

14 hours ago, Kuzu said:

One big praise I'll give this game though, that can only be seen in hindsight, is that it is the last Sonic game with a truly unique aesthetic that is not based on prior games or the generic level tropes imaginable, and that's commendable. 

Yeah, where a majority of the levels are basically amusement parks, each one is different and memorable on both versions of the game.

Sweet Mountain & Dessert Ruins are our only Food themed Sonic levels in existence. This level theme is the smallest right now, even more than the digital and train levels.

[RadicalLaRuby]

Colors is just one of those games that doesn't boast to be more than what it really is, that's why I appreciate it far more than Generations. I always thought Colors was just good, nothing amazing, but a short, good time. Even most of the wisps were actually fun to use despite how often they pop up, as it keeps plain Sonic with his current style from getting very stale very fast. 

 

But after I beat it and even got Super Sonic, not much left to do. No real reason to go back to it aside from appreciating the level aesthetics, which are still in their own, pretty great. In fact, I say it has the best classic esque 3D aesthetic of Sonic's world since Heroes.

[Speedi]

It's exactly the kind of game Sonic needed at the time so I do appreciate it for that. But on it's own I find it one of the least interesting titles in the series to think about and play. Everything about it feels so rigid and calculated that it kinda rubs me the wrong way. I see Sonic games as more arcadey adventures with lots of energy and action. Maybe a little messy compared to something like Mario, but it's made up for in the freedom you're giving to experiment with the mechanics in the levels. Not to mention the hard to match spectacle Sonic is capable of compared to so many of his platforming brethren. Colors feels like the total opposite of that philosophy, and because of that it has no lasting appeal to me whatsoever. But again, it was a necessary evil so I can cut it some slack for that.

The perfect Sonic game for people who don't like Sonic games is how I'd describe it (No, I'm not saying you aren't a Sonic fan if you don't like Colors lol).

[Kuzu]

2 hours ago, Speedi said:

 

The perfect Sonic game for people who don't like Sonic games is how I'd describe it (No, I'm not saying you aren't a Sonic fan if you don't like Colors lol).

I think it's more accurate to say, it's a Sonic game for the people who didn't like what Sonic was at the time, which was a very vocal amount of people. I posted this same topic on retro, and many have expressed how it was the game that got them back into the series after being burned by what the series was doing after the Adventure games.  So yea, that's the perfect description for this game and I think that's why it's so contentious; the people who love it prefer it for it's simplicity and easy to understand nature versus fans who prefer the wild experimentation the series was going for. 

[Speedi]

44 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I think it's more accurate to say, it's a Sonic game for the people who didn't like what Sonic was at the time, which was a very vocal amount of people. I posted this same topic on retro, and many have expressed how it was the game that got them back into the series after being burned by what the series was doing after the Adventure games. 

Yeah, tbf Sonic was trying a LOT of things in the early 2000s and I could see people getting burnt out just from the sheer amount of content we got in those 10 years, Although I still feel like for as much as the games experimented they never strayed too far from the core appeal unless that was the point of the game (specifically Sonic's appeal before the "modern era" began). 

56 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

So yea, that's the perfect description for this game and I think that's why it's so contentious; the people who love it prefer it for it's simplicity and easy to understand nature versus fans who prefer the wild experimentation the series was going for. 

This is partly why I said it's the perfect Sonic game for non Sonic fans. Beyond it just being a quality product because good games have an obvious universal appeal. Colors has a very pure and simple Nintendo-y charm to it. A lot of levels in that game are generally focused on one specific gimmick that you have to deal with for the entire level. The wisps are extremely situational powerups that remind me a lot of the many "we designed a specific challenge around this" powerups in 3d Mario games. If there was ever a 3d Sonic game I'd recommend to a nintendo fan it'd be Colors for sure, it feels very much in line with Mario's design principles.

[Blue Blood]

I replayed Colours' back at the beginning of 2020 and it was the first time that I'd played the game in years. I used Dolphin and a 60fps code. Barring a few minor glitches caused by running at 60fps, it was by far the optimal way to play the game. SEGA are really doing themselves a disservice by keeping this game on only the Wii. It's popular and was well-received. Why they choose to port things like Lost World and not the games that people actually care about is beyond me. 

When I played it this year, I discovered that the game wasn't quite as bad as I remembered. Back when I first got Colours in 2010, I remember being sorely disappointed. It wasn't bad, but the gameplay sure was dull. Sonic's controls are stiff and rigid, whilst the level design was bland and there were so many filler acts. It's officially a 3D game and we all know that in practice it's actually largely a 2D game with moments of 3D gameplay. My opinions on those factors haven't changed. However I think that the fact that this time I only bothered with the main story and completely ignored both Red Rings and the Sonic Simulator meant that the problems weren't being exacerbated quite so much. And the cutscenes? I skipped most of them. I'm the story of person who love story  or a narrative in any game I play, but in recent years I've learned that there's nothing worse than a boring story and narrative. Colours has the latter unfortunately, so it's best skipped.

Colours' reception both when it was new and amongst the fandom now really highlights how different groups view Sonic games differently. Nobody can argue in earnest that Colours is bad, but if you say that you don't like it at all then I could think of a million valid and fair about reasons why that might be. And the opposite is also true; even if you love the game, it's points of contention are understandable when outlined to you, regardless of whether or not they're issues to you. 

Personally I think it's a shame that Colours is held up in many circles as the gold standard of 3D Sonic games (and this also applies to Generations). Colours gets so much wrong without being offensively wrong. And everything it gets right it is just okay. Apart from the graphics and soundtrack, which I usually set aside when I'm analysing a game anyway, Colours just feels so tepid. The game doesn't elicit any emotions from me. It doesn't leave an impression. This is in stark contrast to every other 3D Sonic game, which give me a range of positive and negative feelings. I will always maintain that a large part of the reason for Colours' positive reception amongst critics and jaded fans was the fact that it was the first 3D Sonic game without major downsides. In the five years before Colours came out, we were given Shadow, '06, Secret Rings, Unleashed and Black Knight. Colours stands out from the crowd simply by not looking dubious from the outset. If for whatever you lost interest in Sonic before, Colours was just mild enough to be palatable.

Also there was a DS version. I actually played this first when it was new, and the Wii version a week later. It's basically Rush 3, but feels cheap and tacky. It's severely watered down compared to both it's Wii counterpart and other DS contemporaries. And it has some of the ugliest visuals I've ever seen in a Sonic game. It's forgettable all in all.

[azoo]

It's a pretty middle of the road game.

The visuals and music are fantastic, some of my favorites in the past ten to fifteen years besides Unleashed. Whatever there is of the 3D gameplay is pretty decent fun too, though there's not much. The rest of the game is non-offensive, but pretty dull 2D sections. The story and writing gets the most criticism, and it deserves it, but it was a very welcome change at the time I guess?

Sonic Colors is overall pretty good, and I like it okay! But I see why opinions have turned around. People were desperate for a Sonic game with no frills then, and were very quick to call it Sonic's best outing since SA2, or even earlier, just for that reason. The big hype around it's gameplay or whatever also seemed to stem from how none of the general public played Unleashed due to judging it by it's Werehog and swiftly dodging it, even if said game kind of has it beat in every department besides brevity lol.

I think that led to a sort of pedestal placement that was unwarranted, even in the eyes of the developers themselves, since they considered it a smaller, more children-oriented production to tide Wii users over as they made Generations for the HD console owners.

In turn of these events, Sonic Team realized it gained such overwhelming praise (for doing some pretty basic stuff, mind) that they decided to try to ape those vibes for every following game in hopes it would go down as well. It.. clearly didn't.

It's a weird situation that kind of came from a bit of overreaction. I feel like it was wrong for people to overhype that game as hard as they did, but I also feel like it's wrong to judge that game in a sort of bitter hindsight. It's just a neat little game. Nothing groundbreaking. I mean, you could argue that it could've been groundbreaking (and I would agree given how cool the ideas the game offered were), but that's another argument. 

Sonic Colors. It's fine.

[Kuzu]

10 minutes ago, Speedi said:

Yeah, tbf Sonic was trying a LOT of things in the early 2000s and I could see people getting burnt out just from the sheer amount of content we got in those 10 years, Although I still feel like for as much as the games experimented they never strayed too far from the core appeal unless that was the point of the game (specifically Sonic's appeal before the "modern era" began). 

This is partly why I said it's the perfect Sonic game for non Sonic fans. Beyond it just being a quality product because good games have an obvious universal appeal. Colors has a very pure and simple Nintendo-y charm to it. A lot of levels in that game are generally focused on one specific gimmick that you have to deal with for the entire level. The wisps are extremely situational powerups that remind me a lot of the many "we designed a specific challenge around this" powerups in 3d Mario games. If there was ever a 3d Sonic game I'd recommend to a nintendo fan it'd be Colors for sure, it feels very much in line with Mario's design principles.

This is why I feel Sonic Colors was the game the series needed, but not necessarily what some wanted. Like it or not, the series` reception was gradually declining due to, as you said, the constant experimentation and misfires. Sure, you had some gems here and there like Advance games, Rush, and the like. But almost everyone ignored those games and focused on the controversial mainline ones. To many people, Sonic wasn't who they remembered him as anymore and became something too alien from it's roots and needed to go back.  Hence Sonic Colors stripped ALL of that away for something more simplistic and casual friendly, but arguably at the cost of the identity the series had built up at that point. 

 

But that's what many people want Sonic to be; simplistic and easy to understand, whereas the appeal of the series lies precisely because it's a complete mess of itself that does whatever it wants. The problem is that approach isn't really conducive to long term game development, at least not anymore it isn't. In the early 2000's, games were pretty simple to make, so even if Sonic didn't necessarily have quality titles, there were enough of them to keep people satisfied. But after the 7th generation, with the rising costs of game development, games weren't as simple anymore and needed to be hits. It was do or die and that continued in the next generation.

That crazy ass experimenting isn't valid anymore, because that means potentially risking millions of dollars in game development for game that's not guaranteed to do well.  It was just easier for Sonic Team play it safe and simple, but that in turned alienated the people who preferred the wild ass experimentation. They could experiment again, but it would mean that they have to be on their A game and produce an actual quality product  

[Blue Blood]

8 hours ago, Sonictrainer said:

Sweet Mountain & Dessert Ruins are our only Food themed Sonic levels in existence. This level theme is the smallest right now, even more than the digital and train levels.

Let's keep it that way. Food levels are the worst. Sweet Mountain barely scrapes by as acceptable with its factory/amusement park themeing  and the fact that it's not just giant a a town made of confectionery or giant pieces of food floating in a void. Food levels in games just suck, don't @ me.

[Kuzu]

Like, I really do feel bad for this fanbase at times because the opinions of the masses always outweigh the voices within the fanbase. The public had deemed Sonic was "bad" and "needed to change" and Sega had almost no choice but to listen to move away from all of the controversy surrounding it. And all of that overwhelming praise this game got just reinforced the idea that everything from the 2000's was "wrong" and that Sonic Colors was the way to go. 

It's a game that is the complete inverse of its predecessors in a way; instead of getting unwarranted hate, it gets unwarranted praise unto itself for doing the bare minimum. 

 

And that is not a condemnation of people who like the game; if you feel like Sonic Colors was an amazing title, then by all means. But the contention surrounding this game cannot be ignored. 

[iambitter21]

I'm not even gonna start going at it with it's story or god forbid it's writing, so I'm just gonna say it's soundtrack is some good stuff.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

I actually massively prefer the DS version over the Wii version of Colors. Gameplay has a better rhytm, there's actually playable themepark rides, story is less cringe. That said, I would have preffered a Sonic Rush 3. Sucks this kickstarted the trend of only having watered down main games as handheld titles rather then them being spinoffs in their own right.
....
And then Handheld games completely died and now we only have the same endless runner phone game over and over. Yay.



I like to call Sonic Colors Wii to be the Best 3d Sonic game there is...
For people who hate 3d Sonic games.
In the same way Grand Theft Auto 4 is my favorite Bowling simulator.
As a fan of 3d Sonic games, I'm annoyed at it for being a sheep in wolf's clothing. If it was honest about it being a more Game Gear esque 2d Sonic platformer, I'd have a lot less vitriol for it.
But taking it for what it is, it's fine. Compotent enough, and definitly more easy going and clean compared to other Sonic games, so I can see the appeal.
The music and graphics are great. And Sonic definitly needed a more light hearted filler adventure after all the intensity of the 2000's.

The idea of levels taking place in an interstellar amusement park is great. I just really wish they focused more on that aspect and had more interactive themepark setpieces in the levels Like what Twinkle park in Sonic Adventure did. As it is now, the Themepark is merely background wallpaper and rarely takes an active part in the level design, minus some rollercoasters in the penultimate zone. Even Eggmanland in Unleashed got more mileage out of the themepark setting then Colors in it's entirity did.

Back to the positive side, like what some folks said before me, it's the only 2010's Sonic game that has a legit setting. The Themepark world is pretty cool. Especially after later Sonic games are nothing but throwaway aesthetics in limbo.
Ah right, forgetting about the Sonic Boom games again. The Boom games had a proper setting too but most levels are so generic that I can't remember a single level but the Gothic Disney castle zone from Fire and Ice.


The sense of humor tough, arghh. I love Sonic games to have a sense of humor, but this style of low energy, smug sitcom humor is exactly the wrong kind of humor that sucks Sonic's natural energy away.


Either way, if Sonic Colors gets a re-release, I'd love to read the new reviews for the game. I always had a hunch Colors got most of it's praise for merely being "not another Sonic 06" rather then it's own merits. Not to mention the return of more prominent 2d gameplay. I would love to see the public's reaction toward the game now that Sonic Mania stole most of it's thunder.
I've read various "THIS IS WHY MODERN SONIC IS DOOMED!" articles written in the past 5 years, and I'm always fascinated at how those articles go down the list of all the usual suspects, but curiously end their Sonic beatdown right when we're past 06 and Unleashed, about the halfway point of Sonic's lifespan. Maybe Rise of Lyric and Forces get a quick kick in the gut and Mania a small tip of the hat but most of the 2010 era of Sonic seems curiously missing in these articles, despite being an explanation of why supposedly Sonic's DOOMED in 2017-2020. As if the post Unleashed era is just so boring, everyone keeps forgetting about it.

[TheOcelot]

Colours was the first Sonic game since the Adventure games which managed not to piss me off in some form (first time I played Colours was around the time SLW came out).

I like Colours, it's a good game which nice visuals, a pretty basic story-but far from being the worst in the series. An excellent soundtrack and solid and-at-times fun gameplay. It's not great or anything and the gameplay style is far from what I'd class as ideal for a Sonic game, although I did appreciate that Sonic Team limited the boost gameplay compared to Unleashed. I never felt the need for the wisps gameplay (which I like in Colours) to return in future games.

Maybe it's fair to say Colours received too much praise when it came out and now receives too much much hate. Overall it's a good inoffensive Sonic game, which when it comes to Sonic games post-classics is quite rare.

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, TheOcelot said:

Maybe it's fair to say Colours received too much praise when it came out and now receives too much much hate. Overall it's a good inoffensive Sonic game, which when it comes to Sonic games post-classics is quite rare.

This is absolutely not true at all. The people who like Colors still do as we see in this topic. 

The only "hate" it gets is from the vocal minority of Sonic fans who never cared about the game to begin with, its just that their voices were drowned out by the game's praise in 2010 and were just forced to stir.

10 years of this game dictating the series direction has only made said vocal minority louder in their hate towards it. 

 

And that's just kind of how it goes with Sonic games. There's always going to be a subset of fans who hate what the series does that's not to their specific preferences, and they vocalize it over social media.

"Its not Adventure" "Its not classic" etc etc. Colors is absolutely still loved by the people who loved it back in 2010, but the vocal people who hate it for stripping the things they loved about the series away have only just grown up to be more vocal...hence all of the video essays of Adventure fans tearing the game down and why its shit.

[Wraith]

I used to like this game a lot when I didn't have Generations or Unleashed to reference it to, but it didn't take me long to realize that almost no mechanic it has holds up under any real scrutiny. Sonic is easier to control but part of that is just because they removed as many obstacles and options as they could from the last game. Sonic only isn't sliding off the map because it's nearly impossible to die that way outside of very specific sign posted areas. The drift "works" now because they made it a scripted segment. Didn't like the QTEs? Well, they're still here except now there's no reason to worry about failing them or dealing with the fallout of that. Platforming is re-emphasized but only in the most restrained way possible. In a way, it feels like it's cheating a lot of the time instead of addressing any real problems. 

Wall jumping, quick stepping light dashing and drifting weren't useful outside of specific places but at least there were at lot of places in Unleashed where you had to chain them together to get by. It's a fun reflex/knowledge test even if it's shallow. Sonic Colors basically locks them to their own segments of gameplay when they don't remove them outright, which feels like it's missing the point. The drift in Sonic Unleashed is kind of like a drift in a lot of racing games where it has a surprising amount of application outside of the places where you're obviously supposed to use it. Sonic Colors can't hope for that type of emergent gameplay because it doesn't allow for anything outside of the script to happen.

The wisp system is like a beat for beat emulation of the power up system from Mario Galaxy, and most people are willing to admit it doesn't hold up well in that game. Simplistic puzzle solving is alright for an initial playthrough, but Sonic games, good or bad pride themselves on some kind of flexibility that makes replaying them fun that these types of mechanics really don't suit. To put it another way, there's not many unique ways to use the laser wisp, You either point it in the right direction and get the obvious score/time benefit or you don't. 

Compare this to like, grinding in SA2. Hopping on the rail is just one part, but there's enough of a benefit for balancing on the rail properly that there's ways to clean up your play on a subsequent run. You won't exactly die if you can't balance yourself in SA2's early stages, but that little bit of optimization along with things like the tricks in the down hill segments or the poles Sonic can spin on makes replaying an easy level interesting.  In Sonic Colors, most of the optimization is either done for you already or too easy to achieve. There are some wisps that have some margin for error here and there and that's the most interesting the game gets, but they feel like the exception to the rule of stuff like the rocket wisp that are just kind of hard to get wrong or the frenzy wisp which just feels kind of unfinished. The Drill Wisp is like the clear standout because of how much more fun it makes swimming. I wish the other ones had multiple uses like that. 

The game's atmosphere is great, but I'm a little underwhelmed by it compared to Sonic Unleashed because it doesn't take any opportunity to let the player take it in. A more straightforward approach for an action game isn't bad, but in a case like this where the stakes are so low and and the atmosphere so jovial, some more ways to cool off between levels would have been a good fit. A hub world in a new Sonic game is probably a pipe dream, but even something small like gens would have been nicer than what we got. An overpriced souvenir shop, a small little plaza you can acces levels from instead of a map screen, a place to talk to the first round of patrons trickling in, anything to make it feel more like you're at an amusement park. 

Sometimes the game is such a strong mood piece that I feel like the cutscenes focusing entirely on it's sense of humor was just a bad choice. Almost everything that Eggman has done wrong this time can be conveyed with a simple glance at the map screen. Freeing wisps is pretty satisfying. I like the way that the first 3 levels are such extravagant, playful experiences before Planet Wisp hits you with a nice dose or reality that you probably won't shake entirely for the rest of the game. The ever alert Eggpawns now fill out the park's staff. Eggman's PA announcements provide a nice splash of humor and world building without being overbearing. A lot of the more understated storytelling in this game is actually great, so much so that the cutscenes feel like they were bolted onto something that already works at the last minute. I made a long post about the story not too long ago that I'll link here since nothing has changed. TLDR: I think they blew a golden premise. 

I don't like being so mean to a game that's obviously supposed to be light reading. For all it's faults, I don't think it's a bad way to introduce new players to Sonic before they move onto something more interesting. It's just constantly brought up as a highlight of the series when I just don't think that it's true by any metric. It's used as an example of Sonic getting things back on track and being competitive again when in terms of content and depth it comes up short of most of it's competitors on the same platform. It's not as tight as the classics and doesn't offer the experimental factor of the dreamcast era. Gens even nails a lot of it's strengths in polish and pacing with better level design to go with it.

'Ambition' is starting to be seen as a dirty word nowadays, but it's absolutely true that this game lacks mechanical ambition imo. Almost every gaming classic has mechanics or ideas that were absolutely game design "do nots" at the time including Sonic himself. I don't like to float the terms overrated or underrated around because I think most people are being genuine when they say they like this game, but I wish people would be more...open minded about the experimentation in the other ones? Idk, it definitely made them a lot more interesting to me which goes a long way toward making up for the lack of polish. There's no way Sonic can compete with Mario or Donkey Kong or Crash in the 'solid 2.5D platformer' space. It stands a much better chance being it's best self. 

 

[Sonictrainer]

19 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Let's keep it that way. Food levels are the worst. Sweet Mountain barely scrapes by as acceptable with its factory/amusement park themeing  and the fact that it's not just giant a a town made of confectionery or giant pieces of food floating in a void. Food levels in games just suck, don't @ me.

Speaking of which, what is everyone's favorite & least favorite level in the game?

 

[Blue Blood]

30 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Speaking of which, what is everyone's favorite & least favorite level in the game?

Colours just nails it when it comes to level themes. Not only is it currently the latest 3D Sonic game with entirely original levels, it has a great mix of realistic details and bases and believable settings for mixed with fantastic sci-fi/cartoon/fantasy motifs. It's got a strong identity, which is make makes Sweet Mountain so much better than Dessert Ruins, fit example. It's a location and not just a colourful background.

Aquarium Park is my favourite. It's a creative idea and the colour scheme mixing deep blues and dark reds works really well. And the whole thing is a traditional Japanese town built on coral reefs under a biodome. It's so good. My other favourite would be Tropical Resort. It's a blend of traditional Sonic themes like Green Hill and Casino Night, but stand out completely on its own. Again it takes realistic ideas, in this case a theme park resort, and puts a delightful spin on it.

And one note on Planet Wisp. Sure it's been overused since Colours, but at the time it was great. It was a beautiful alien world that was being destroyed by Eggman. It looked original and felt like traditional Sonic. Win win.

38 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Speaking of which, what is everyone's favorite & least favorite level in the game?

Colours just nails it when it comes to level themes. Not only is it currently the latest 3D Sonic game with entirely original levels, it has a great mix of realistic details and bases and believable settings for mixed with fantastic sci-fi/cartoon/fantasy motifs. It's got a strong identity, which is make makes Sweet Mountain so much better than Dessert Ruins, fit example. It's a location and not just a colourful background.

Aquarium Park is my favourite. It's a creative idea and the colour scheme mixing deep blues and dark reds works really well. And the whole thing is a traditional Japanese town built on coral reefs under a biodome. It's so good. My other favourite would be Tropical Resort. It's a blend of traditional Sonic themes like Green Hill and Casino Night, but stand out completely on its own. Again it takes realistic ideas, in this case a theme park resort, and puts a delightful spin on it.

And one note on Planet Wisp. Sure it's been overused since Colours, but at the time it was great. It was a beautiful alien world that was being destroyed by Eggman. It looked original and felt like traditional Sonic. Win win.