Our favorite blue hedgehog hasn’t had the easiest transition from 2D to 3D. While Mario was blowing the minds of children across America in 1997 when he moved from 2D to 3D, Sonic’s transition has nearly killed his franchise. One sub-par game after the other from Sonic team have made the words “Sonic” and “3D” together have become the most feared in gaming. But with Sonic Colours, Sonic Team is looking to remove all of the stigma.
From the start it is easy to see that Sonic Colours is focused towards a younger crowd. The story of Sonic Colours has Sonic and Tails going to an amusement park built by Doctor Robotnik. Robotnik claims that the amusement park was built to show how sorry he is for all of the times he tried to defeat Sonic. But the blue speed demon isn’t going to be believe such non-sense. He knows that Robotnik is up to something and goes to find out what it is. At the amusement park Sonic and Tails talk to these alien creatures called wisps. Sonic soon discovers that the point of the amusement park is to attract the aliens and capture them for their resources. Sonic then must team up with the wisps to defeat Robotnik once and for all.
None of the Sonic games have ever been about the narrative, so it’s no surprise that Sonic Colours’ story isn’t that great. The whole premise and everything else down to the Wisps is very childish. Usually this isn’t a problem, such as in Kirby’s Epic Yarn, but Sonic Colours chose to have some humor in it too which is groan worthy. The worst part is that the cut scenes appear after every through levels of gameplay. It is obvious that Sonic Team wanted to tell the player a story, they just don’t have a particularly good story to tell.
Where Sonic Team begins to regain respect from fans is in the gameplay of Sonic Colors. It’s obvious that the team went back to the drawing board to see what gamers want in a Sonic game. In the end they came out with a fantastic combination: speed, platforming, and exploration. Unfortunately they had a hard time balancing the elements of this combination. They then fall flat on their face as they try too hard to copy the Super Mario Galaxy games.
Getting some speed in Sonic Colors is a fantastic feeling. There is nothing better than having the camera positioned behind Sonic and watching as the environment passes by in a blur. But in typical Sonic Team fashion, they have to ruin it. Every time Sonic gets a good amount of speed going, the developers throw a platforming section or large group of enemies to stop Sonic right in his tracks.
The same thing happens when the camera switches to a 2D side-view. In this position the platforming is great, but the placement of the platforming sections and the balance between them and speed is horrible. If the gameplay in Sonic Colors had been left at this, my opinion of the game would have been much higher. But unfortunately, the developers had to “pay homage” to the two best games on the Nintendo Wii: Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. They do this through the use of characters called “Wisps”. Wisps are pretty much the power-ups found in any Mario game — but more specifically the Galaxy games — as in-game NPCs.
This a pretty good concept on paper, but the execution is horrible. Each of the Wisps’ abilities aren’t that useful. With the exception of one or two Wisps, Sonic is able to complete levels perfectly without their help. For the most part they act as more of a visual treat than helpful solution. You can either just run through the level as Sonic, or use a Wisp and look “cool” completing the level. Despite my distaste for the Wisps, I will give them one thing: they are great for exploration. While they aren’t helpful most of the time for completing levels, they are useful for finding little hidden items and exploring around the levels. This is great except for the fact that the majority of Sonic Colors’ players just want to beat all of the levels and not bother with exploring.
Sonic Colors may have a lot of problems when it comes to gameplay, but thankfully Sonic Team doesn’t force you to spend 15+ hours with these faults. For anyone who wants to just beat all the levels and never touch the game again, Sonic Colors is a very short game. It took me around 5 hours to play through each level only once, and that seemed to me like the perfect amount of time to spend playing the game. I don’t mean to sound condescending, but the brevity of Sonic Colors works in it’s favor.
What also works in Sonic Colors’ favor is it’s controls. Sonic Team was smart to not force tackle motion controls down the throats of players…for the most part. The standard control layout is a horizontal Wii Remote, just like all other platformers on the Wii. However some motion controls are thrown in when players activate the special abilities of the Wisps. Thrusting the horizontal Wii Remote is how the Wisps are activated, but it doesn’t work very well. Having this control fail multiple times lead me to discover that my Gamecube controller works with the game. The Gamecube/Classic controller option is vastly superior to the Wii Remote as it doesn’t require any thrusting. The only downside is that it makes the game seem like it would have been the exact same experience on a last generation console such as the Gamecube or PS2.
Visually Sonic Colors is once again mediocre. The game has some fantastic looking CG rendered cut-scenes, but from there it gets much worse Much of the game is in either dark lighting or uses dark colors. There is a ton of black, brown, purple and red which do not work well on the Wii. There are some bright areas that look nice, but even in the right lighting, Sonic Colors doesn’t look spectacular. As I said earlier, this game very easily could have been on the PS2 with it’s graphical quality. Unfortunately the audio isn’t much of an improvement either and features a generic sound track. Most of it seems unique, but is hopelessly boring and completely unmemorable. I don’t even remember hearing the classic Sonic theme.
Overall Sonic Colors is a mediocre attempt at cloning Super Mario Galaxy. The Wisps and the sort-of space environments all pale in comparison to easily the two best games on the console. The story is childish and irrelevant, the gameplay has some major faults and the visuals and audio at mediocre. One of the best things about Sonic Colors is that it knows exactly when it should end. This however is a slight turn in the right direction for Sonic Team. They have all the elements of a fantastic Sonic game here, they just need to figure out how to balance them. Sonic fans will more than likely enjoy the blue hedgehog’s latest attempt at returning to relevancy, but everyone else should just turn and run away from this pile of mediocrity.
PROS
- Has all the elements of a good Sonic game
- Beautiful CG cutscenes
- Wraps up at the right time
CONS
- Story is childish and irrelevant
- Gameplay balance doesn’t work
- Bland graphics
- Forgettable soundtrack
