“Baldy Mc-Nosehair! I’ll be sure to call Eggman that the next time I see him!” Ha. Nice joke Sonic. You really made everyone laugh with that one.

For the longest time between myself and my closest friends, I have been a very vocal critic towards Sonic Colors… without ever having played the game. At a very surface-level look, I called Sonic Colors a bad Mario Galaxy clone because it took place in space and came out for the Wii. Unfortunately, I WISH that this game was more of a Mario Galaxy clone, as Colors doesn’t follow some of the most basic rules of modern platformers, while STILL managing to borrow and mess up a handful of ideas from Galaxy. To genuinely learn more about Colors and give it an honest chance, I took the very unorthodox approach of playing the whole thing on the convenient somewhat-recent release of the Ultimate remaster on PlayStation 4. Please keep in mind that I have played the most recently patched version of the game, so almost all of the game-breaking bugs present at launch did not affect my playthrough.

To begin with the positives, I liked a very small portion of the game’s music (the original tracks), being the songs from Planet Wisp and Aquarium Park Zone. That’s it. The rest of the music is average at best and nothing to go crazy over like some Sonic fans may believe. A few of the wisp powerups also interested me, like the blue wisp which could switch certain platforms back and forth between rings and blocks, and the drill wisp which was always fun to dig deep with. Some other wisps with interesting ideas were held back by lackluster execution…This is the pitiful conclusion of my positives for the game.

To explain to my readers why I disliked the game so strongly, I will summarize my points in a simple one-to-six-point format as follows:

1. The game feels cheaply put together, both as a remaster and standalone game. Many small glitches, boosting in front of walls, wall jumping physics, garbage cutscene upscaling, etc., all make the game feel very cheap, completely opposed to what you would expect from a studio with so much experience (Sonic Team). The boss fights are also too short and easy, creating disappointing endings to conclude each planet (final boss was decent, though).
2. My greatest issue with the game, its HORRIBLE platforming. This really killed the game for me. Sonic is incredibly slippery and hard to precisely platform and move with. The double jump sucks, as the single-jump timing makes you feel like you’ve already double jumped, and then when you DO double jump, it barely adds any height to your first jump. The level design does NOT complement Sonic’s movement, incentivizing you to complete the stages as quickly as possible, but many stages hinder this with slow-moving platforms or other restrictive stage elements… I’m looking at you, 2D sections.
3. In the Wii version of the game, multiple controller options are given to the player, and in the remaster, players are able to remap buttons, but not movement controls. Why can’t Sonic be controlled with the D-Pad in 2D sections? I've played plenty of PS4 games and none of them made the left joystick feel uncomfortable until I played Sonic Colors with it.
4. Ideas taken from Mario Galaxy: simply taking place in space doesn’t warrant calling the game a rip-off, but Colors steals ideas such as the 2D-section antigravity flips, Mario Galaxy bubbles in the form of the green wisp, and a couple spherical mini-platform planets in Asteroid Coaster (later seen fleshed out in Sonic Lost World). To ruin each idea, Sonic Team: made the antigravity flips occur without an audio/visual queue, made the green wisp slow as hell and not able to gain momentum, and made the mini planet platforms very far and few between, not being memorable.
5. Some common remaster gripes that I share: There is virtually no new content. Poor upscaling and a plethora of unnecessary glitches were added to the unpatched game, ruining a decent origin from the Wii. The unlockable costumes/customizability is pathetic. Very few people want to play a sonic game with chrome gloves and a flower trail behind them. Tails’ death-rescuing is a completely unnecessary addition.
6. These are not as important to the review, but I do have a fair share of personal gripes: the jokes are consistently not funny and intended exclusively for an audience of 7-year-olds or younger. Many wisps are not interesting as powerups. Tails is fucking annoying. Rings feel useless, as there are NO special stages after collecting 100 on each stage.

One of my specific close friends that I mentioned generally in the 2nd paragraph will be reading this review. He always shared a consistent sentiment regarding difficulty in games, saying how increased difficulty in games is done wrong when failing in the game feels more like the game’s fault, not yours, akin to an old NES game with broken balancing. This is exact same feeling I derived from Sonic Colors Ultimate. It was not a hard game by any means, with easy bosses and tons of handholding. But almost every death, every dumb “aaugh” muttered from Sonic’s mouth, felt like the result of poor programming, not my human error.

After completing this mess, all I want is a burger and a shake like Eggman. I feel you bro, wholeheartedly.

If you’ve read this far, please feel free to comment your opinions down below. I am completely open to discussing my opinions with others and very curious to see what everyone else thinks of this game, both the standalone release and remaster.

If you’re TLDR; A bad remaster of a bad game.