Sonic Colo(u)rs Ultimate released for Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Epic Games Store

Does it restore the OG version of Reach for the Stars to the intro? At work right now.

 

It does not.

 

So is it almost Ultimate now?

 

I'd say so, just a few little things need cleaning up then I'd say this is a good remaster.

 

To my understanding they just full-on removed the Metal Sonic pop-up, so when you trigger Rival Rush it automatically starts. (Which I actually prefer over the pop-up - you don't trigger the Rival Rush pop-up just to say "lol no".) The menus are still laggy. Not as bad as they were but still a lot slower than they should be.

 

I took this for a spin last night. I can't believe the level load times are still around 10 seconds each, it's crazy!

 

I ran through Egg Shuttle on the Switch since I hadn't done so just yet (I kept getting cock blocked by random crashes and other bugs so I decided to wait until there had been a few patches), and while the game felt more solid than before, the Switch version still suffers from frequent slowdown when there are a lot of effects on screen (adding a Boost aura also adds to this, VS playing without one equipped). Otherwise the only things that stuck out to me were:
-At the end of the Motobug chase in Starlight Carnival 1, where Sonic is about to enter another ship, his animation still wigs out as the path curves up and around into the ship. It didn't happen to me last night, but he's fallen off and careened into space there before. Seems like it could still happen.
-Even though the patch notes mention fixes for the Hover Wisp ring trails, it still kinda chokes on itself in Starlight Carnival 6, and it's almost TOO accurate in Aquarium Park 6. It would gobble up a ring trail in that long section over a pit (before that room filled with Egg Pawns and a couple of Crabmeats), but circle around from the top and shoot me back in the direction I came from, causing me to not have enough meter left to get to the next Wisp capsule.

 

Sonic Official channel is playing Colors now, and we can see that the laser wisp line is actually visible indeed.

 

Just wanted to correct myself - I was wrong about the Rival Rush thing. The pop-up is still there.

 

The Starlight Carnival Act 3 glitch...is still present, HOW AND WHY!?

 

How: They didn’t put anything towards fixing it.

Why: It’s an entirely visual glitch that, while jarring, doesn’t affect anything else in the game outside of the three seconds during which it occurs. As such, the developers likely didn’t see it as a high priority fix in comparison to stuff like general audio fixes, gameplay impacting visual bugs like the Big Chaser lasers, etc., and quite frankly I agree with them.

It sucks, but if, when all is said and done, this game’s worst technical issue is a bugged act start animation, then I can absolutely live with that.

 

Now that all of this has calmed down, and most of the glitches have been patched, Colors Ultimate is a pretty good remaster at this point.

The only things I have a problem with now, is that the new content doesn't really mesh well enough with the old content (Example: the Jade Wisp just feeling tacked on and literally just used for Red Ring location changes), but new content is still new content, right? (Still a lot more new content than some other remasters cough cough 3D All Stars cough cough Skyward Sword cough cough)

I'd actuallly highly reccomend it if you haven't played the Wii version yet, if you already have the Wii version, theres basically no point. (I still prefer the DS version though but that's a completely different game.)

And as a footnote, I miss the optimism that were present in the first few posts in this thread back when it was just a accidental early listing from a German Dubbing company. We should've known better considering Sonic Team's previous experiences with horrible ports.

 

I'd argue that it's been a while since anything SEGA had an outright bad port, and Sonic's in particular have had very few real problems. (The only thing that comes to mind is Generations not playing nicely with DirectInput, and there were easy enough fixes for that.) We're long past the days of Sonic Genesis and SADX.

SEGA's still got a bit of backlog that'd be nice to see find new life on PC, so hopefully this'll turn out to be an exception rather than the new rule.

 

Until they patch out the Starlight Carnival Act 3 bug people are just going to keep checking for it every patch, drawing further attention to it. In a vacuum I can understand it not being given priority, but it's one of the more obvious bugs remaining and is trivial to trigger. Just feels dumb to keep kicking that can down the road when this has to be a pretty simple fix.

 

Also the fishes fricking on Aquarium Park background.

 

It's the presence of bugs like these, the bloody spring sound effect playing when it shouldn't, the entire implementation of the Jade House, laggy menus and Rival Rush that makes this game feel sloppy. The game used to be much worse and the patches have improved it. But I still don't like it as product, because it's still not in great shape three months after release.

 

On the contrary, I'd say it's definitely the version I'd recommend now, especially after the patches. A few graphical quirks, questionable lighting choices, and sloppy new features are unfortunate, but the core game is still there, and it plays so much better at 60fps, and flows so much better with the timed homing attack (which really is a game-changer for the formerly-boostless levels.

It's not definitive, but the pros more than outweigh the cons at this point.

 

I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just saying that it rubs me up the wrong way that this is the way the industry now operates. The mostly minor issues that are left don't interfere with game, but they make for a sloppy product.

 

I really don’t think it can be overstated how much the Perfect Homing Attack improves the rhythm of the game despite being a very minor change at its core. I wish they had been able to improve the game in more ways like this.

 

I mean thats the rub isnt it? The core game is still there. If you werent a fan of Colours before then this package doesnt really do much of anything to convert you. It certainly isnt for me.