Sonic Colors: Ultimate
Lighting a fire under your shoes
Originally locked to Nintendo Wii, it’s great to see a remaster that takes standarddefinition graphics and converts them into HD. And what a game to pick. Wild colours and vibrant vistas abound, as the villainous Dr Eggman has created an intergalactic theme park by chaining together planets and kidnapping their inhabitants. Worlds unlock simultaneously, meaning you can decide for yourself when to zoom through a neon space armada or take in the greenery of Planet Wisp.
Those wisps form the gimmick of the game. Once unlocked in a stage, they populate as a powerup throughout all of them, allowing Sonic to temporarily transform his movement beyond running and jumping. Spikes for instance, allows you to stick to walls, whereas Drill has you blow right through them (soft ones, at least).1 It means replaying levels can be genuinely transformative.
It’s a mix of almost on-rails boost-based 3D sections with more classic-feeling 2D fare. The physics in the latter are still rough, with a particularly sticky-feeling jump. But Colors isn’t afraid to slow down for the occasional platform challenge. Each of the six stages in the five worlds is super-quick too, focussed on one core idea through each one.2 More often than not, Colors is a blast (though the meandering ending is awful).
FOOTNOTES 1 They’ve returned in the occasional game since, but are most inventively used here. They slow things down, but as they’re all based around alternate movement, fit the pace. 2 Each level is accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack. Each world has its own musical motif, spiralling out into a separate rendition for each level.