Sonic Colours
There is a god and he's a Sonic fan!
Sonic Colors doesn't make you wait with intro videos or anything, but starts without further ado. Title screen appears, push the button - And it starts "Tropical Resort Act 1". Less than ten seconds later Sonic is blasting through lush tropical landscapes with his familiar speed of sound. You can almost hear the defiant calls of "You wanted this!" from the developers. Yes, we wanted this. We wanted a pure Sonic game. Without a surfboard, without a Werehog, without a Knight of the Roundtable. And we got it!
Colorful Carnival
Okay, after two opening levels there's the first cutscene of the story. Dr. Eggman has built an intergalactic amusement park to pay for all of his crimes and from now on to only spread mirth and joy. At least that's what he says, but that it's just a pretext for some new crime should be obvious for every last hedgehog on the planet. In truth Eggman has only built this amusement park to attract Aliens and stealtheir powers.He especially has it in for the Wisps - friendly little aliens with special powers. With them, Eggman wants to build a brain washing machine to take over the world.
Of course, Sonic can also use the Wisp powers. Of course only with their permission and good intentions. The Wisps are spread around the levels and are trapped in capsules. Once freed they give Sonic their powers and transform him into different beings. For example in a drill. Or into a pink gear (? lolwut), that can roll along walls. There are 8 types of Wisps in total, but they aren't all available from the start. You'll find them in the course of the game - until then you'll just run through empty capsules. Once you've "unlocked" new Wisps, you can go back to past levels and explore new areas that were unreachable before. This gives you a respectable depth and hightens the replayability, because the levels are designed so that you can always find something new.
Best of Sonic
The orientation on replaying the levels fits wonderfully to the retro character of the game. You must by no means memorize the levels, you can also just play through them normally. However if you know the levels good and can use the Wisp-Powers skilfully, you can gallantly evade places that slow you down and practically go through the levels without a break, which ups the fun factor of the game. There isn't really a given path anyway. On the contrary, you can by accident land in a different place and find yourself level areas that you had no idea about before. Here too, the Wisp-Powers become important. If you see for example blue rings somewhere, you'll know "Okay, I'll come back here later with the Blue Wisp, than I can turn the rings into blocks and create a new path"
The classic Sonic-gameplay isn't left behind in all of this and still includes everything the fan wants: Springs, Crane Hooks (Don't know what they mean with this>_>), boost pads and the Homing Attack. This most known of the fighting techniques allows Sonic to dash in to an enemy in mid air and destroy him by bouncing of of him. Like this Sonic can shoot himself from one enemy to another, which is used to get over pits and to reach higher places.
The Final Frontier
In anyway the level design is very good. What Sonic Colours conjours to the screen, let's even past Sonic games look like comfortable forest walk. There has never been such a funky (? xD Google xD) hell ride like this in any Sonic game. Sonic Colours is however not a pure "racing game". Next to the half automated high speed sections with loopings, corkscrews, intricate railings and even crazier neck-breaking, knotted paths, there are also calmer areas that are about platforming skills.
At the same time the game always stays fair - past unfairnesses, like running in to a spiked wall, are nowhere to be found in Sonic Colours.!
What Sonic Colours has to offer with level designs, is nothing in comparison to what they brought out graphically. Sonic Colours lives up to it's name - The game is so colorful, that self proclaimed "Next-gen" titles on both competitor's consoles almost look like Black&White games. It's flashing, glittering and shimmering everywhere and by those crazy high speeds you can't see all of that. It's like a visit to Disney Land: Everything is stylized to the last square centimeter and by the end of the day you can't really comprehend all of it. Everywhere the eye can reach the levels are stuffed full with structures, plants fantasy worlds - Hell, against it even the overwhelming Super Mario Galaxy (2) looks empty. What SEGA created here is overwhelming and can hardly be put in to words. What's more unbelievable is that Sonic Colours has technically no problems and still runs at a framerate at high speeds, that you wouldn't expect of the Wii.
Joy Everywhere
After all of the praise about the graphics and fantastic level design, it's hard to praise the music as much. Let's say it like this: A more fitting soundtrack to a Sonic game doesn't exist. Happy upbeat music, great catchy melodies to whistle to - Sonic Colour isn't only fun, it also gives you a good feeling. With Sonic Colours SEGA has done everything right and has finally (finally!) created a clean, unadorned, dazzling Sonic. The world is right again, life is beautiful - Thanks to Sonic Colours
Things just went downhill for me from announcement on.
