Glubbfubb

Been playing Sonic Colors during the last week, and it's the Sonic game I am most mixed on. My primary issue with it is that it is both too long and too short. On one hand, the zones having 6 required levels plus a boss fight is just too long, especially since the levels themselves don't vary enough in layouts and gimmicks to make the worlds fully interesting. On the other hand the levels housed in each world take about a minute and a half to complete each, even when taking a suboptimal path, so the levels themselves feel uninteresting. One mechanic I am also split on are, of course, the Wisps, I feel Laser, Spike, Drill, and Frenzy are excellent power-ups, they give Sonic new capabilities and focus on his speed (Laser, Drill) or momentum (Spike, Frenzy) which naturally evolve his capabilities. Then there are the likes of Rocket, Hover, and Cube, abilities that just exist and aren't that interesting to use, they don't evolve Sonic's capabilities and feel more like key cards to access to parts of the level. You could make the argument for the four wisps I do like as well, but they at least allow interesting level design. The slowness of the later three color powers makes the sections focusing on them clunky. If Sonic Colors focused more on the five wisps I liked over the three bad abilities, I might have more fun with it. I feel like the Wisp system we have right now is simply a first draft, a mechanic to be improved with a future game, like how Generations improved the boost gameplay to make it fully refined. It would be cool to see a Sonic-like with a more expanded Wisp mechanic.