Corye
2 reviews liked by Corye
Sonic Colors
2010
i need every character in this game to shut the fuck up
Sonic Colors
2010
When discussions surrounding this come up, it's usually about one of two games: Sonic Colors, the game that pleased fans old and new alike and, after constant mixed to negative reception for years, truly saved the series, and Sonic Colors, the game that ushered in a lot of the series' worst traits of the modern era and supposedly doomed the series. If you couldn't already tell, Colors is a pretty controversial entry, and to some degree I can understand why. Despite how close it appears to Unleashed, it's wildly different to it, or really any other Sonic game, in terms of design. But I want to put that on the backburner at the moment, for now I want to talk about everyone's favorite aspect of this game: the story.
This might be a bit of a hot take, but I don't actually mind the downsized scale of Colors' story. I think that lower-scale more Saturday Morning Cartoon-y Sonic plots have their place in the series, and I find the more comedic take of this plot fairly charming. ...most of the time, sometimes the writers clearly think some jokes are much funnier than they are, most notably the Wisp translator gags. I only think Pontac and Graff's writing style only really became a problem with Lost World, where it tried to merge Colors' writing style with a semi-serious storyline. All that being said, I'd much rather that Sonic stories fall more in line with the Shonen-like plots that the 2000s games had than this, it's not my preferred writing style for Sonic in the slightest. Even so, I do think it gets more of a bad rap in this regard than it deserves as a one-off adventure.
Like I said earlier, Sonic Colors' design is very different from any other entry in the series, in some ways for the worse. However, I think that the way people judge it is purely on a first-playthrough basis. It likely won't really stand out all that much when you go through it for the first time. However, once you try mastering its levels on replays, arguably the most important part of the Sonic experience, that's where it really starts to shine.
A while back, I did a run of Colors where I attempted to S rank every stage, and that's where it really clicked for me. Colors puts a much stronger emphasis on smart usage of the Wisps in this context. You can't just blitz through a stage and get an S rank that easily. I had to strategize the way I used Wisps a lot of the time in my attempts at these runs and know when to hold onto them. The most notable example was the infamous Sweet Mountain act where you slowly rise up on a platform with red laser beams, but holding onto a tricky to obtain laser wisp from earlier let me just go right past that. Having all of the wisps accessible in every world is the most important part, like with how new routes open up in the later acts of Tropical Resort with the Spike Wisps. This is the hardest that replays have been encouraged in the series, and I'm all for it.
However, I'm not going to argue that the first playthrough shouldn't matter, cause it absolutely does leave the strongest impression. And despite how creative it can be with its design, I don't think the game presents it all too well with its 6 act structure. Presenting its challenges like this makes a good chunk of the acts feel like ways to bloat out the game, which is ironic since it's an incredibly short title even with them included. I think the approach they should've taken was having three main acts, whichever ones they are can vary depending on each world, and having the remaining three be bonus levels that aren't required to fight the boss. Kirby's Epic Yarn dealt out levels in a similar way, and that really worked in its favor really well. I think if Colors took a different approach with handling giving out content, then it wouldn't look like it needs the massive overhaul people claim it does.
On the topic of presentation, can I just say that it has one of my favorites of any Sonic Game? It's one of the best looking 3rd party games on the Wii, hell one of the best looking on the Wii period. It's matched really well with some of the most gorgeous locations that Sonic's ever been to. They perfectly fit with that "intergalactic theme park" motif while still all being very distinct from one another. Planet Wisp seems to be the crowd favorite, given its appearance in Generations, but I think Asteroid Coaster might be my favorite. It's the most "alien planet" feeling one of the whole lineup, I love it. The music is also phenomenal, probably in my top 3 Sonic OSTs of all time.
I previously had a brief review claiming that this was Sonic Team's Bayonetta. What I meant was that it has a lot of choices in design and writing that work well on their own, but the team ended up taking the wrong lessons from the success it had in later entires. I wish that this game wasn't constantly under fire from the fandom for what came after it, cause once it's looked at in isolation, the Colors feel so right.
This might be a bit of a hot take, but I don't actually mind the downsized scale of Colors' story. I think that lower-scale more Saturday Morning Cartoon-y Sonic plots have their place in the series, and I find the more comedic take of this plot fairly charming. ...most of the time, sometimes the writers clearly think some jokes are much funnier than they are, most notably the Wisp translator gags. I only think Pontac and Graff's writing style only really became a problem with Lost World, where it tried to merge Colors' writing style with a semi-serious storyline. All that being said, I'd much rather that Sonic stories fall more in line with the Shonen-like plots that the 2000s games had than this, it's not my preferred writing style for Sonic in the slightest. Even so, I do think it gets more of a bad rap in this regard than it deserves as a one-off adventure.
Like I said earlier, Sonic Colors' design is very different from any other entry in the series, in some ways for the worse. However, I think that the way people judge it is purely on a first-playthrough basis. It likely won't really stand out all that much when you go through it for the first time. However, once you try mastering its levels on replays, arguably the most important part of the Sonic experience, that's where it really starts to shine.
A while back, I did a run of Colors where I attempted to S rank every stage, and that's where it really clicked for me. Colors puts a much stronger emphasis on smart usage of the Wisps in this context. You can't just blitz through a stage and get an S rank that easily. I had to strategize the way I used Wisps a lot of the time in my attempts at these runs and know when to hold onto them. The most notable example was the infamous Sweet Mountain act where you slowly rise up on a platform with red laser beams, but holding onto a tricky to obtain laser wisp from earlier let me just go right past that. Having all of the wisps accessible in every world is the most important part, like with how new routes open up in the later acts of Tropical Resort with the Spike Wisps. This is the hardest that replays have been encouraged in the series, and I'm all for it.
However, I'm not going to argue that the first playthrough shouldn't matter, cause it absolutely does leave the strongest impression. And despite how creative it can be with its design, I don't think the game presents it all too well with its 6 act structure. Presenting its challenges like this makes a good chunk of the acts feel like ways to bloat out the game, which is ironic since it's an incredibly short title even with them included. I think the approach they should've taken was having three main acts, whichever ones they are can vary depending on each world, and having the remaining three be bonus levels that aren't required to fight the boss. Kirby's Epic Yarn dealt out levels in a similar way, and that really worked in its favor really well. I think if Colors took a different approach with handling giving out content, then it wouldn't look like it needs the massive overhaul people claim it does.
On the topic of presentation, can I just say that it has one of my favorites of any Sonic Game? It's one of the best looking 3rd party games on the Wii, hell one of the best looking on the Wii period. It's matched really well with some of the most gorgeous locations that Sonic's ever been to. They perfectly fit with that "intergalactic theme park" motif while still all being very distinct from one another. Planet Wisp seems to be the crowd favorite, given its appearance in Generations, but I think Asteroid Coaster might be my favorite. It's the most "alien planet" feeling one of the whole lineup, I love it. The music is also phenomenal, probably in my top 3 Sonic OSTs of all time.
I previously had a brief review claiming that this was Sonic Team's Bayonetta. What I meant was that it has a lot of choices in design and writing that work well on their own, but the team ended up taking the wrong lessons from the success it had in later entires. I wish that this game wasn't constantly under fire from the fandom for what came after it, cause once it's looked at in isolation, the Colors feel so right.