Since I'm essentially finished shooting and uploading my Sonic Colors LP I might as well review it, not like there's gonna be any more gameplay that happens after the credits right?
Sonic Colors is a 2D platforming Wii game by SEGA, and a good one too. First positive mark is that it lets you choose between WiiMote, WiiMote+Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and GameCube controller schemes. I played all the way through with the GC controller for numerous reasons. I can't criticize the plot, it's simple: Eggman has made an outer-space amusement-park, is attempting to take over the world as usual etc, etc. The level-design is pretty good, there's enough margin for error that you can succeed or fail depending on what you've done up until that point. What am I saying? It's a Sonic game, you know how it plays if you've played others in the series and even if you haven't it's pretty self-explanatory, although hard to describe in text.
One thing I need to call foul on is the live system, it's completely unneeded, and causes you to restart levels (and bosses) from the beginning if you screw up too many times. That might sound like a complaint about the difficulty if I didn't follow up with the fact that the star-posts are far enough apart that it can be fixed with starting the clock from where it was when you died, sort of like how Sonic and The Black Knight did. I know a lot of people didn't like that game (Myself not included) but that doesn't mean that you can't learn from it.
Another thing is the "online", if you're not going to include and kind of versus multiplayer then don't have any online rankings, Mkay? I don't want to not be able to move my save to an SD card and back them up on my PC for the simple reason that SEGA didn't want to have competitive multiplayer in the game, and that's more a gripe with Nintendo than with SEGA, but SEGA shouldn't include pointless features like that in the game. An unfortunate thing is that lack of actual multiplayer seems to be a standard, Black Knight didn't have it, AFAIK Unleashed didn't, and although Generations: Blue Adventure had something resembling multiplayer, it was barely a step up from rankings. Another thing I need to address is that without the lives system the game would be much shorter on the first playthrough, I'm pretty sure the constant setbacks added an hour or so to my play time. Fortunately they implemented autosave, so if you get fed up and decide to take a break you don't have to deal with save-points. The level-selection is pretty good, it's a step up from the Unleashed method, it's better than the Black Knight one (Although it's just a re-tooled version of that one). One gripe I have is that sometimes you have to time your usage of wisps perfectly. Now, since I skipped over describing the gameplay I need to specifically cover the wisp system. Most wisps you collect will fill the boost meter, which allows you to move faster and insta-kill enemies if you run into them (A good idea, since any other implementation of it would have been fairly broken), but others manipulate the world around you, allow you to break things you wouldn't normally be able to, drill through water (Doesn't make sense, but it works) or other things to be able to travel faster, get out of the water before your air runs out, or take shortcuts or find secrets, fly up into the air and collect bonuses, move along walls and break certain blocks, or move along a line of rings to get somewhere. The last wisp I had issues with in one stage, since it required perfect timing to be able to move along the rings and then recharge your wisps, and keep going. Now, even with lives-system padding and annoying wisp-mechanics, the game is still good. Cash-Cash did a good job on the music and although the boss-fights are repeated, (They should have had six unique bosses instead of setting the circumstances up differently and ramping up the difficulty, but in the end it's still entertaining) it's still a good game. The graphics are beautifully done and it never ceases to be fun. Now, to address the big issue, voice-acting.
I grew up watching Sonic X, to me there can be no other, no better Sonic The Hedgehog than Jason Griffith, so for numerous reasons I wasn't happy with Roger Craig Smith being the new voice of The Blue Blur. Were my opinions obscured by nostalgia like they were with my opinions of The Amazing Spider-Man before it came out? In a word: No. Long answer: No, they were completely right, Roger Craig Smith couldn't voice-act Sonic in any decent manner if he had a village of Spanish peasants after him and he'd run out of pistol-ammo and green herbs, so Capcom made the right choice for the new voice of Chris Redfield if they were going for a more "Root" approach to Resident Evil, as long as those roots are buried in Resident Evil for the PSX.
Okay, I'm being too harsh, RE4 didn't have too much overacting, and they pretty much managed to up the quality of voice-acting with every subsequent sequel to Resident Evil 1. Back on the subject of other voice-actors, the only holdover from the 4Kids cast was Mike Pollock, the voice of Doctor Robotnik. The new Tails voicer is the best there's been, although they should have just dumped the Tails voicer from 4Kids and kept everyone else since there really wasn't any reason for recasting anyone BUT Tails.
All in all, I liked the game, but it could have been a whole lot longer, and could have not had Roger Craig Smith in it.
I'm gonna give it a
9.5* rating, it's good all around and has decent replay value, as well as the arcade where you can play actual multiplayer, grated only LOCAL multiplayer, but still.
Image credit Wikipedia.
By the way, Sunday's are the day I shall be sticking to for postings from now until whenever I need to reschedule it.
