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

I've not got Ultimate yet, but I've seen another bug in the PS/XB/PC versions that's also present when playing on Dolphin at 60fps. One of the Starlight Carnival Acts has lots of timed light dash sections, and the timer for the rings always runs out before you can finish the light dash. I always assumed that this was an issue caused by the timer counting in frames, and thus when playing via Dolphin at 60fps the timer with expire twice as fast as it did on original hardware. Could that also be the case for the non-Switch version of Ultimate? I've no technical knowledge to actually investigate or formaldehyde for myself. But it certainly seems as though the bump to 60fps has broken a few things.

I think something similar happened with the 3DS versions of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask; loot dropped by enemies etc is on the same frame-based timer as in the N64 originals with a lower framerate, leading to items disappearing much faster in the 3DS versions.

 

Wasn't there a patch sent out during the start of early access? Thought that was the day-1 patch.

 

Just realized while looking through the achievements: you know how there's been arguments over whether that one Chaos Emerald is supposed to be white or gray? This game officially calls it silver.

 

There was a patch sent out that day, yes.

 

Nope, those ring trails are broken on Switch too. No idea what the cause could be.

 

Being real though, there's no way SEGA would ever let any of its star franchises like Persona or Yakuza release a game with so many glitches and the thought process of "we'll fix it later".

This is supposed to be their mascot and his games get treated the way you'd treat a B list franchise by SEGA all while pushing him in movies and shows and merchandise heavily.

I know they wanted to outsource this to save costs but well...you get what you paid for.

 

I know this is pretty far fetched, but I'm starting to grow suspicious...

Is it at all possible Blind Squirrel deliberately left the unused/developer tools/assets in for the fans to find? Or am I just foaming at the mouth again?

 

Got all the S ranks and unlocked Super Sonic last night. I'm happy that you can use him in Rival Rush mode but not happy about Egg Shuttle still cancelling it. Hopefully there'll be a mod that fixes that.

 

Rented on Xbox and beat the main game on my One X. I didn't run into any of the seizure glitches, or stretch into nightmare fuel stuff. What really disappointed me is that this is so unpolished. Say what you will about the original, but it had a level of professional quality this game doesn't have. Sure it had the standard Sonic glitches of finding ways out of bounds, but the UX was consistent, effects worked as they should, sounds played on time and at appropriate levels. And weirdly enough, by default boost is on B, stomp is on X. This feels like a beta. It's just not a good look for Blind Squirrel or Sega to have this out there, obviously rushed to have some console game out for the 30th anniversary.

 

And I'll be surprised if we ever hear anything about it. Sega tries to keep these kinds of things under wraps in more ways than one, and right now Blind Squirrel is costing them big time beyond expectations. I can figure there's silent contracts, waivers and a very stern lawyer involvement somewhere along the line.

 

The huge increase in polygons seems like a big waste, aside from the rings, sonic model and a few other little things you can't tell geometry was touched, they should have just cherry picked the important stuff and kept most of the stage in it's original poly count. it doesn't help that it seems they just ran stages through a quad filter and called it a day.

Most of the issues I am seeing were expected sadly and then you get issues from running the gam at 60fps still in there, and OTHER issues on top of that, I had the switch version on preorder but because UK stock was behind my order was canceled and i'm glad because I would have sent it back anyway.

 

I wish the game kept separate records for Super. His inability to use Wisps makes for dramatically different scoring routes, but as such his totals are so much lower that you'll never surpass a record set with regular Sonic.

 

Speaking of Egg Shuttle mods, once people finish combining split acts, I would love them slotted into the Shuttle while removing the filler levels for a traditional 2 act+boss structure.

 

Likewise, but I do hope we get something of a roadmap for this game’s updates (I believe we’ve been told there’ll be patches plural?). And while it’s almost certainly not on the cards, I think a lot of people would like to know how exactly the game came to release in such a state.

 

It's gonna be the February 31st patch if you know what I mean.

I suppose the brand is still well-established enough to survive repeated kicks in the nuts. See Final Fantasy and Pokémon for other (less extreme) examples of this.

Maybe recreating this into Ultimate as a first step? Would it be possible with the newly found tools and files? I've played it and it's a fun, clean experience.

Spoiler

Now if only someone did the same to Generations and removed those awful mini-missions entirely it would be nice as well.

 

Just completed my second zone with Sweet Mountain and can safely say that I've been having an enjoyable first experience with Colours. I picked it up for Switch as it is my only current console, although I was aware of its shortcomings prior to making my purchase. I'd have probably still gone with the Switch even if it were already available for Steam. I've only played it docked so far, so it has played smoothly enough. The only real gripe I have at the moment is with Sonic's jump height being clearly off.

 

End-of-week review aggregate update.

Opencritic: 74 "Fair" (54 reviews), 50% of reviewers would recommend

Metacritic:
PS4 - 74 "Mixed and/or average" (39 reviews)
XBO - 75 "Generally positive" (7 reviews)
NSW - 64 "Mixed and/or average" (6 reviews),
PC - N/A (1 review)

 

Finished 100%ing the switch version (besides grinding for park tokens- I only had 1 boost and some player icons left). Quite a few glitches- some the game caused, some I deliberately did (found a hilarious pink spike sky climbing glitch in Planet Wisp act 2), other seemingly normal things sent the game into cardiac arrest, and I did get one crash. Fortunately however, that was at most 20% of the experience. Colors is still colors at the end of the day, but I did find Tails Save and the park tokens to be very worthwhile additions. Gonna make a video review soon, and finally kick off my "Forgive or Forget" review series I've been planning for months.

Colors Ultimate is forgiven, btw.