3/5 ★ – RPGLover2000's review of Sonic Colors.

I hate Sonic Colors. I feel like I need to explain my statement “hate” in autistic detail here-it doesn’t *exactly* mean what most people might think it means here. First: the positives; The level design works with the Wii, and the Wisps work with the waggle. Sonic can swim. Finally. It’s still slow without the drill wisp, but it’s no labrynth zone, that’s for sure. The levels aren’t very difficult. Most of the levels are on the shorter side-although some of them are **way** too short, and I’ll get back to that. After a lot of sonic games that came out before it that didn’t resonate with as many people, for said people this was a breath of fresh air. But, times change, people change, and we look back at things in hindsight with hopefully a greater knowledge of certain things. Which leads us to the Second Point; This game is **not** the end of the “Dark Age” of Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s the **beginning**. You might be thinking; but it’s a solid game, with barely any glitches and a gameplay that functions. Well, that’s my issue. My issue is exactly that it works. The games in the era referred to as the “Dark Age” were Shadow the Hedgehog through Sonic Unleashed (some say it started with Sonic Heroes, but that game would have gotten so much less flack if they hadn’t made you play the same stages at the very least four separate times, if not eight for completion and then one more as Team Sonic in Super Hard Mode. Which I thought was fun). This era had (and now has) sooo much content even outside the games-esp the comics. But it was almost every year we would get one game, and then next year we would get a main game. After Unleashed this deep well of water dried. People seemed to hate the experimentation a bit too much. So after about think a two or three year hiatus, out came Colors to resounding success. Well, I for one enjoyed the experimentation-Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 show that 3D sonic is built on this principle of experimentation. Sonic isn’t sonic without it. The only way Colors got away with this is because the Wisps are power ups. Remember how I said the problem is exactly that the game works? Well, like most things Sonic team did during that almost ten year period of the “Dark Ages”, they took **all** the wrong lessons. First, Sonic Generations. A very good game overall. But, almost twenty years later, as people play Sonic’s half of Sonic x Shadow Gens, most people realize something; the last two to three stages of Sonic Gens, are awful. **Esp** Planet Wisp. Why? Because, in a way that doesn’t make sense for a clean 3D Sonic in a 3D sonic game, they rebuilt the zone as one insanely vertical stage-which is incredibly reminiscent of the incredibly verticality of all of Sonic CD’s stages. Now, you might say but there is verticality in sonic stages. You are correct. But they aren’t **solely** vertical (unless it’s CD)-Colors even balances its more vertical levels with certain other features of good level design that was mostly lost after Generations-like (and this part is important) *automated* dash pad sections*. But even those are balanced out by sometimes having to homing attack asteroids for a little bit of interaction to avoid a stale level. Planet Wisp in Generations doesn’t do this. I haven’t played Lost World yet, but I have played Forces (to completion)-and the fact we had to wait so long between Lost World and Mania and Forces instead of the crazy amount of absolute content during the “Dark Ages” should say something, but, unfortunately, no one heard it or paid attention to what it was saying. So, what’s wrong with Forces, then? Everything. The 3D stages are completely dead straight levels without any paths-and any sense of verticality is redacted by all separating paths being absolutely meaningless. Further, its stages are **even shorter** than some of the most short stages in Colors. All barely last a minute-even the boss fights. And speaking of these boss fights, let’s take a look at Colors. Colors bosses are an odd bunch. There are two Ferris wheel bosses, two ship bosses, and then two space ship bosses that are railroads, and a purple monster robot. The Ferris Wheel is stupid short with the right use of the wisp-less than 50 seconds. Barely 35 for the one. Barely 47 for the other. The ships are a bit harder. Which is good, but the discrepancy between the two in difficulty of obtaining a decent score is rather large. I always have trouble with the aquatic ship, not because it’s hard, but because the boss has a pattern that takes so many tries to read. But the space ship bosses are weird. The RNG that makes them teleport makes zero sense to me. The bosses in Forces are absolutely pathetic. With the sole exception of the final boss-which has three phases. Which was a great idea. And then they made the third phase another Colors style boss. So they took all the wrong lessons from Colors, and made Forces. Within almost ten, only three mainline sonic entries released(Lost World, Mania, and Forces). Compare the dry state of the sonic cash cow at that point to the era referred to as the “Dark Ages”. You have not one, but over four games before you even get to Colours. Sonic is a franchise that is built on experimentation. When this is rejected, the wrong lessons are learned. The comeback of the franchise after Forces through the release of Frontiers is vivid proof of this, where the experimentation was accepted, and is now often considered a better “sonic” game than Colors by many-even if it’s not as polished (not by a long shot). But then we must ask the question; why? I already answered this: sonic is a franchise built on experimentation. When this experimentation is accepted, unlike back when Unleashed was released (unlike nowadays where many fans consider it one of the greatest 3D sonic games, and no longer hating the werehog stages), sonic team learns the **right** lessons. Let me explain that last thought a little bit more clearly. When we go from Colors; a decent game, to Generations OG, a great game with two to three terrible levels at the end; then to Lost World-which everyone seems to like the parkour idea but hate the level design (from what I’ve seen anyway)-to Forces (skipping mania since it’s a 2D game); to Frontiers (where the open zones were widely praised as having much to do, without being absolutely forced to get anything in any specific way); to the incredible Shadow’s half of Sonic x Shadow Generations, where they took everything that worked from Frontiers and nearly perfected it. Even the JUMP!! Was finally made perfect. The jump hasn’t felt right since adventure 2. And I think people, especially after the failure that was the “remaster” of Sonic Colors Ultimate, now realize this. Maybe not in so much words, or in a clear thought process as this, but intuitively, having played the best parts of most sonic games-even the parts that worked in the “Dark Ages”; which worked more than they did in Forces (…except Secret Rings. Tho I have a soft spot for it…) This is why I don’t like Colors. It’s not the end of the Dark Ages. It’s the beginning. It marked a turn in the series where its creators took all the wrong lessons, released one of the most critically panned games in the series after 06 and Boom, and lost almost all sense of the experimentation they were good at. Frontiers returns to the idea Sonic Adventure 1 had, but on a greater scope. Shadow Generations perfects it (well. 99%. They should’ve added a few more features for that map for the collectibles. Something like the same feature in Frontiers with a beacon-basically like any open world game map nowadays). I’ll reiterate: Colors isn’t a mess of a game. It’s not poorly designed. But the future it gave the series was a terrible one for almost ten years. And for that, I find it hard to forgive it. 3 stars.