Review: Sonic Colours

That set of lyrics right there, pretty much sums up how I feel about the newest release:  Sonic Colours (-u if you’re American.) Available on the Wii and DS since mid-November, DS review will be done later on. Colours is the main one I’ve practically been waiting to get my hands on, even with the demos that were available at Summer of Sonic 10 I hadn’t touched it until it got released.

Starting a new game will give you the option of having a navigator, which is basically having the button icons appear onscreen as well as having Tails give you advice via the help markers. Turning this off is simple just by going into the options menu; this will remove the markers from the game. However, turning off the navigator will turn off the handy warning of incoming deadly pitfalls, so if you are going to turn it off it’s up to you to guess where they will be if they come up or just to simply remember after the first time you die.

The game hands you the reigns off the bat, allowing you to play two acts before giving you your first cutscene of the game, which is quite a change. In the levels the background has various things going on, the egg pawns are all unique to the world they are on, like the resort pawns holding welcome signs and Eggman’s announcements over the PA system are enjoyable when you can hear them.

Wisps are the game’s power ups and you’ll unlock more as you go through the levels on the worlds and release them into previous levels you’ve played to unlock more routes, the wisp music that accompanies them are either very calming (Hover) or fit for a rave (Drill).

The default controls which are the Wii Remote & Nunchuck rely on shaking the remote to activate Wisp Powers and pressing buttons for the required homing attack or wisp actions (such as Spike’s spindash move); this is probably best as having the remote do more than that would be slightly more hectic.

One thing that becomes slightly problematic is the wall jump which needs to be done correctly for you to even begin, you’ll find yourself jumping to try and stick to the side of the wall in order to jump from side to side. Still its a matter of timing and something you need to properly master.

At the end of the levels there’s either a vat of wisps to be released which is a call back to the old games or a giant goal ring like in Sonic Unleashed. The score will then come up, but is actually destructable and allows you to inflict damage upon it and the rank you’ve achieved to get a few more rings or an extra life if you’re lucky before you have to move onto the next level.

In the levels you’ll find red rings that will after sometime unlock levels in Eggman’s Sonic Simulator, once you collected all of them, meaning you’ll play through the game once to unlock all levels and then play through all the levels multiple times, and playing through all the simulator acts, you’ll get seven shining emeralds, yes Super Sonic is in the game. Super Sonic while only playable after you’ve played the game helps those people who have a hard time getting S ranks on certain stages as you’ll literally decimate everything, like Super Sonic should.

The cutscenes are scattered sparingly and of course the voice actors have been changed and I have no real preference on that fact, Sonic’s voice (done by Roger Craig Smith) has been matured slightly, and the character maintains his arrogance as you’d expect him to have, as shown in the cutscenes, bragging to already destroyed robots and moon-walking anyone?

Tails has also matured and rather being a follower is more of an individual, as he does his own stuff and takes hardly little notice in what the blue hedgehog has been up to, as seen in what was the exclusive cutscene on Wrecks, where he waves off Sonic’s comments with a single “they have shopping here?”.

The final boss is an ingenious one, using a combination of the wisp powers you have used throughout the game against you, it was so entertaining the rest of the Wrecks Crew was pulled away from their stuff to watch me, there’s no cheap deaths here, as the combinations are called out, you have the time to see what’s coming, it’s all human error, my human errors were on the deadliest wisp power known to man… Cube.

After that, the game gave me one last act, an act that had me go: “What…? Wow… Really?” before the last cutscene.

The soundtrack to this game is absolutely brilliant; no really it is, the map music, the stage music, the boss music, all of it, just gushing out enjoyable tracks one act after the other, okay ‘Speak with Your Heart’ is a bit naff but it’s just one song. By no means does the act music stay exactly the same every time but they have their little differences to the main piece to keep things familiar yet fresh. Luckily for you ViViD SOUNDS X HYBRiD COLORS or just “Hybrid Colors” was released in December 2010, no matter how bad the cover looks, (and it looks BAD – Ed)em> it’s definitely worth it for the music.