I think this sometimes feels too much like an extended QTE segment - where you just watch things happen for a bit and uninvolvingly press the A button a few times. Though where with weaker games I would write that off as 100% a bad thing, with this imo it can be at least partially excused due to it being used as a window into this game's wonderful energy - a sight-and-sound display of some phenomenal art direction in a series already chock full of it. Aquarium Park and Planet Wisp have some of the best music in SEGA's entire already stacked catalogue, and there isn't a single world here that doesn't look simply dazzling. The wisps I feel are also rather unjustly maligned, as not only are they visually creative but if there's any series that could benefit from even a couple more possibilities in its formula it's modern Sonic - so I'm all for being able to whip across the level as a spike ball or drill underground, shoot back up, then dive back into the ground again. Laser still kind of sucks though. On the one hand I think this gets a little too much praise (for me, putting this above Sonic Generations seems like actual insanity) but on the other, it is a damn fine experience that shows the texture this franchise is capable of when it actually tries.