I remember being at the reveal for Sonic Colors at E3 a dozen or so years ago. The game looked good, and fellow Senior Editor Eric Layman reviewed it way back in December of 2010, although that article was lost years ago in a server mishap. Anyway, it’s a game that has always been in my backlog, just getting perpetually bumped for other pursuits. When I discovered the a remaster was in the works, and the game was going to be released on other systems than the Wii and DS, I decided now was the time. This past week I was pleased to finally experience and play through this remaster known as Sonic Colors Ultimate, and it’s even more fun than I expected.

The premise has Sonic and Tails coming to the rescue of the Wisps, a peaceful alien life who are under attack from Dr. Eggman, (aka Dr. Robotnik). The mad but somehow lovable goof of a scientist is up to no good again, as he’s harvesting Wisps to power not only his Interstellar Amusement Park, but his doomsday machines, including one that will have far reaching mind control effects. Sonic and Tails decide to take on Eggman to set the Wisps and their home planet free from the grip of Eggman.

So Sonic Colors is a 3D Sonic adventure that has players racing through a half dozen worlds (or zones), each with about six stages and also a boss stage to cap off each world. The worlds take place on different parts of the amusement park that Dr. Eggman has constructed. Each world has a unique theme and they’re actually all really cool. My favorite was probably the asteroid one that has Sonic zipping around and through an asteroid field (even while riding a roller coaster at times) to the candy world (Sweet Mountain) that is fully of gummies and donuts and all kinds of sweet snacks. The wild Starlight Carnival is a visual mind-bend, and the mostly-underwater Aquarium world — the variety and design of all of these is great. The stages that make up these worlds showcase the various elements of a Sonic adventure, including of course the insane speed that Sonic can achieve, riding rails like Ratchet & Clank, and lot of platforming as well as fast button-mashy action as there are lots of robots to destroy (simply by pressing X to jump and X again when the reticule appears — bonus points for timing the hit just right when the reticule turns green). Platforming is general pretty forgiving and a considerable part of the design is on rails, meaning you can’t really fail as long as your timing is ok and you don’t fly or fall off the course. Still, as anyone who plays Sonic knows it only takes one hit to kill you if you aren’t carrying any rings, and even if you are you can fall or be crushed, etc.

Unlike 2D Sonic games, players don’t need to accumulate lives by collecting 100 coins or finding the 1up power-ups; rather, you have an infinite number of lives and continues, with checkpoints even at pre-determined spots in stages. This makes the game a lot quicker and more efficient to play through. For the final level, Terminal Velocity, I appreciated this because it took me a while to realize I was making the boss fight harder than it needed to be until I watched a video, hah. Anyway, this Sonic adventure is one that you can breeze through in just five or six hours, but, probably at only 30-40% total completion. You can revisit any world or stage at anytime to try to get a new best time or best score, and to pursue those elusive S ranks. For the most part, I got Bs, with a few As, Cs, and Ds, but never an S. To get an S rank, everything has to align as far as your time, score, and picking up the bonus Stars. You can readily see most of these pickups as you play, but it takes precise timing and hitting off-beat paths to get to them, such as taking a high risk route littered with environmental hazards to secure the pickup. Personally, that completionist mentality is not something I pursue in most games, and I was having an ample amount of fun playing through Sonic Colors “naturally” — just taking each course fresh and doing my best as I went through, and not worrying about high scores and ranks.

That said, besides whatever bragging rights and Trophies players collect for being persistent with their scores and ranks, you also get points to spend in-game on various cosmetic upgrades for Sonic, such as different colored gloves, shoes, and the ‘speed’ graphic around Sonic. By that I mean the little art and animation that shows he’s running can be changed from the default color to another color if you so choose. I ended up buying Sonic some silver gloves and shoes, but many of the upgrades were well out of my price range, requiring repeated playthroughs to secure more currency. As far as I can tell, there are no hidden stages or anything of real gameplay value to be earned by repeated play throughs, unlike similarly structured games like Mario or Kirby whereby finding all of the pickups in the stages unlocks an intriguing bonus stage.

All that said, one of Sonic Colors’ trademarks is of course the different colored Wisps in the game. There are nine of these, including a new Jade one that gives you the ability to fly right through solid objects with the Ghost ability. Other Wisps give you abilities like Frenzy, which turns Sonic into a hungry and growing purple monster — a rocket, to reach new vertical heights (orange) and a drill (yellow) to dig down or over into different areas. Cyan turns Sonic into a laser to ricochet around different points and the white Wisps fill up Sonic’s boost meter for maximum speed. One huge reason to want to revisit previous stages that you have finished is that, as you advance through the story, different colored Wisps arrive to your old stages. For example, in the opening Tropical Resort zone, there were Wisp power-ups that were locked — these get unlocked later in the game as you complete other stages. By unlocking these Wisps, you have a great reason to go back and play and discover new gameplay angles with these alternate Wisps, smart design.

Blind Squirrel did a nice job on this remaster. You can expect 60fps and 4K resolution, for one. Better lighting is included as well. The cutscenes look dated, but they aren’t bad, and serve their purpose to advance the story and provide some bits of humor along the way, too. Other components are also new to the Remaster, I think, but they could be from the original — things like the Park Tokens to buy those cosmetic upgrades I mentioned earlier, and power-ups that looks like Tails’ face give you a sort of custom checkpoint if you should fall. The soundtrack has been remixed as well, though most of the soundtrack didn’t appeal to me. There’s also a Rival Rush mode whereby you race against Metal Sonic to unlock additional rewards.

Sonic Colors Ultimate takes one of the best 3D Sonic games from the past and brings it to platforms it has never reached before, all in a fairly-priced, nicely done Ultimate package. It’s easy to recommend to any fan of Sonic games, including those like myself that never got around to playing the original in the last decade.
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