Complimenting Sonic Colours

And it's an overcorrection they've tried to address in... a very peculiar way. Mostly just by crowbarring more Shadow-style awkward edgy grittiness, if Lost World and Forces are any proof ("I'll rip out your black hearts" anyone?). People are already memeing on "torturing him for months", at this rate it's gonna become the anti-"baldy nosehair".

 

This is basically how I feel about it too. Sonic's big character flaw is that he's cocky, over-confident and impatient, not that he's the kind of kid you don't want to be friends with in high school. He's not a try-hard, he simply is a cool, charming character. I'd personally like to see more of his laid back qualities, and maybe even some selfishness to a small extent (like the OVA).

 

People dismiss Colors' story as having no "stakes", or say that Sonic doesn't take things seriously, but I don't agree with this. I hear people saying that they want a Sonic who "knows when to drop the jokes and be serious", but he does that three times in Colors and it just gets ignored. Once when Eggman uses the mind control gun on Tails, again when they discover the captive Wisps (he notices Tails' discomfort and assures him he'll find/rescue Yacker), and most notably before the last boss, where he pushes Tails back into the elevator for his safety (which seems like a very serious moment of "If I can't survive this, I'll protect my best friend first").

On "stakes", I really don't see how Colors is that different than Unleashed. Eggman is still the primary threat in both of them, Dark Gaia doesn't speak or have that much agency of its' own, and it only really shows up at the very end. The entirety of Terminal Velocity is a similar setpiece to the beloved Unleashed opening scene, and I don't get what isn't cool enough about outrunning a black hole. I get the feeling people just zero in on the bad jokes and discard the rest of the setting/tone.

 

It's tone, direction and execution. The stakes are high in the Looney Tunes shorts where Marvin the Martian wants to blow up the Earth, killing every living thing on it. But you don't feel the weight of those high stakes, nor are you supposed to - it's all a goof for some yucks, they're not designed to be thrilling action adventures.

Most Sonic games have struggled with finding a tone that works. In the light and comedic games the dramatic moments often end up feeling flat and hollow, in the super serious games they feel overwrought and silly because a talking cartoon hedgehog with rocket skates is on a mission to kill the President.

 

This Sonic isn't unlikable to me. He's still cool he just feels more like a teenager now, which he is. Someone who's WAY more confident in his abilities than he should be. Doesn't mean he doesn't have skill he's just not at the level he think he's at yet.

That's not the type of person I'd hate or not want to talk to at school. Because he's still cool, adventurous, and kind hearted at the end of the day.

 

I think Colors is a game that's a lot more fun when you try to 100% it than it is to just blaze through it. Just playing through it regularly, you can definitely feel the problems people have with it. A lot of the levels are short, there's an abundance of slow and blocky platforming, the game is more of a 2d platformer than a 3d one. Definitely when I first played it, and for quite a few years afterward, that's how I felt about it.

It's when you try to go for the red rings and S ranks that a lot of those "problems" start to morph into just aspects of the design. Exploring the levels for rings with wisps and trying to maximize your color bonus is a lot more fun than just running through the levels normally. Makes a good game, into a great game.

It's not how I would ever try and make a Sonic game, but it works for what it is imo.

 

It just sounds like you got used to it and accepted it as it is, which allowed you to fully enjoy it. That's good, but not fair: good game or not, you wouldn't have bothered in 100%ing it if you didn't enjoy it enough on your first run. 100%ing a game is something I do when I like a game, not something I do to like said game.

 

Colors has the most vibrant & unique levels since the Genesis era. The surreal & abstract styles was breath of fresh air after the realistic designs of 06 & Unleashed.

Music just absolutely slaps. Having 3 remixes per zone just really made the levels feel more unique & fresh than they actually were.

I like how slow this game is compared to the other boost games. Boost is more limited due to wisps and the game is better off for it.