Sonic Colors arrived astatine a pivotal clip successful the past of the series. While respective games during that epoch were of questionable quality, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) served arsenic a stone bottommost for the franchise, and Sonic Team needed to close the ship. Thankfully, 2008's Sonic Unleashed restored a batch of goodwill to the instrumentality base. Its follow-up 2 years later, Sonic Colors, continued the inclination and remains a beloved rubric to this day. Sonic Colors: Ultimate gives players a accidental to acquisition the erstwhile Wii-exclusive rubric again oregon for the archetypal time. And careless of which campy you autumn in, Sonic Colors: Ultimate is worthy playing.
As with each bully remaster, Sonic Colors: Ultimate looks acold amended than the archetypal version. The biggest leap guardant comes successful the signifier of the crippled yet being disposable with HD visuals aft spending its full beingness to this constituent connected the 480p Wii. Sonic Colors: Ultimate not lone blows past that meager solution but tin scope 4K connected compatible devices. Add to that 60 FPS show (though immoderate dips happen), amended lighting, and graphical tweaks, and this caller mentation of Sonic Colors often looks large successful action. However, it tin beryllium hard to spot Sonic amidst the overly engaged backgrounds successful immoderate side-scrolling sequences erstwhile the camera pulls mode back. Also, in a fewer cutscenes, lighting connected immoderate characters (I'm looking astatine you, Tails) is inconsistent.
Other additions to this mentation see the Park Tokens and the Tails Save mechanic. Both travel successful the signifier of tokens recovered successful stages and done the people surface aft completing a level. Park Tokens let you to acquisition in-game cosmetics similar shoes, gloves, boosts, auras, and subordinate icons. I don't truly similar astir of the palette-swap customization options available, but it's each optional, truthful I could disregard it for the astir part. The Tails Save mechanic allows you to effort a leap again if you autumn into a pit, arsenic agelong arsenic you person a Tails token successful your inventory. This is much intrusive than the Park Tokens mechanic, and portion I privation it were togglable, I volition admit it's bully not to person to commencement backmost astatine a checkpoint due to the fact that you fell into 1 of the game's galore instant-death pits.
Once you cod 15 red rings successful an area, you summation entree to Rival Rush mode, which pits Sonic against Metal Sonic successful a contention done 1 of that area's levels. Sonic is simply a spot faster, but Metal Sonic is efficient; I needed to execute a alternatively fluid and mistake-free tally done the signifier to apical Sonic's metallic nemesis. You're rewarded with a heap of Park Tokens to walk connected customization items for beating Metal Sonic. Rival Rush mode is fun, and Metal Sonic is ever a welcomed summation to a Sonic game, but I could speedrun levels successful the basal crippled without having to slap a rubric connected it.
Sonic Colors: Ultimate adds to and tweaks the archetypal crippled successful respective ways, but astatine the core, this is precise overmuch the aforesaid crippled players retrieve from 2010 – for amended and worse. Sure, Sonic Colors delivers awesome high-speed sequences, breathtaking brag battles, and unsocial powers, but immoderate of the stages weren't the champion successful 2010, and they consciousness adjacent worse successful 2021. The 3D gameplay remains choky and adrenaline-fueled, but floaty 2D gameplay and convoluted 2D platforming sequences excessively often propulsion a halt into the fast-paced action; though, it's amended than it was successful the original, I inactive hatred the partition jumping successful this game.
I recognize that Sonic can't conscionable sprint through the full crippled from commencement to finish, but patience shouldn't person to beryllium a virtuousness erstwhile you're controlling the fastest quality successful gaming. I overmuch much consistently bask the 3D gameplay of Colors, but that suffers from entering autopilot sequences wherever it feels similar my inputs don't mean anything. Still, Colors features immoderate of the astir breathtaking and memorable moments and levels of immoderate 3D Sonic game, and it was conscionable arsenic overmuch of a thrill to acquisition them contiguous arsenic it was astatine the archetypal release.
Despite the issues from the archetypal crippled and the mostly inconsequential additions successful this version, I'm blessed Ultimate exists. Sure, the amended visuals and remastered sounds are nice, but the biggest vantage of Sonic Color: Ultimate is that it yet frees 1 of the champion early-2010s Sonic games from an obsolete portion of hardware. I've loved having games similar Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations readily accessible done Xbox backward compatibility, but I knew that was ne'er an enactment for the Wii-exclusive Colors. As a instrumentality of Sega's Blue Blur since the aboriginal '90s, being capable to play games from each epoch connected a azygous strategy is amazing, and it ever felt similar a monolithic portion of the series' past was missing earlier Sonic Colors: Ultimate's arrival. It whitethorn not beryllium the cleanable Sonic game, but it's surely 1 of the amended modern titles since the Adventure series.
Sonic Colors: Ultimate launches connected September 7 connected PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
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