Sonic Colors Ultimate: The SoaH Review
During the 2021 “Sonic Central” 30th Anniversary live stream, SEGA did tease a new game that would be remastered for modern consoles, but it wasn’t a remaster of Sonic Unleashed as some were hoping for. Instead, it was a remaster of Sonic Colors. The new remaster was announced as “Sonic Colors Ultimate”. Sonic Colors released to critical acclaim in 2010 and makes sense to remaster, as it was a Wii exclusive up until now.
Sonic Colors introduced many new elements to the series. It was one of the most well received Sonic games to be released in a while. It was released during the short 2008 – 2011 resurgence of critically acclaimed Sonic titles. It was also the first game to introduce the modern voice cast who replaced the previous voice cast from 2005-2010. I enjoy hearing Roger’s voice in shows such as Regular Show. Overall, Roger does an excellent job voicing Sonic.
Sonic Colors is a 3D platformer, but frustratingly, often changes to puzzle solving 2D sections. The 2D sections are not short either. They take up the majority of the stages. Sometimes, all of the stage which is incredibly disappointing. The 2D sections are overused and often slow the game down to a crawl compared to Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations. Sonic Colors‘ constant 3D/2D changing during gameplay can become quite infuriating and ruin the experience of what is supposed to be a 3D game. The 3D sections are mostly automated hallways and have little to do in them.
I purchased the digital deluxe edition and have been playing the game since September 3rd, and so far haven’t encountered any glitches outside of a few sound issues. I purchased the Xbox One version. It does feel unusual playing it without a Wii remote. I used to like shaking the Wii remote to control the Wisps. Now you just press a button. I’m sure this will be easy enough to adjust to overtime.
There’s a new mode for this game called Rival Rush where you race against Metal Sonic for whatever reason. It feels pointless, but actually does provide a nice little extra feature, and does provide a challenge which is much needed in most modern Sonic games today that feel too short and easy. Rival Rush mode is unlockable once you gather enough Red Rings, making Red Rings a bit more worth collecting this time round, aside from unlocking Super Sonic.
There’s another new feature where you can customize Sonic’s aura, boost, gloves, and shoes. In order to unlock more customization options you’ll need to gather “Park Tokens” throughout the game and purchase them in the options menu. For some reason, they make the 1-Up sound every time you collect them, which seems like they ran out of sound effects to use. I keep thinking I’m gathering extra lives. This new customization overall feels useless and like a missed opportunity to add some callbacks to previous games in the series, such as adding the Soap Shoes or Chip’s bracelet to the customization options. A few ques from Super Mario Odyssey‘s customization feature would’ve gone a long way here. It’s very limited and does make me wonder why they bothered spending time on this when the remaster clearly needed more effort in other areas instead.
Something I actually do like about the new additions is the “Tails Save” feature, which makes the game less frustrating every time you fall into one of Sonic Colors’ many bottomless pits. Now, Tails will fly in at certain points and help you back into the stage where you last left off. This is a great way to encourage new players to keep playing and overall improves accessibility. The only issue is that this new easy mode is mandatory. There is no option to disable this for more skilled players which is another baffling choice.
The 4K visuals during the stages mostly look great. There is an issue with frequent pop-in and there are a number of graphical glitches. The game also uses far too much bloom seemingly in attempt to hide the original’s lower quality assets which wasn’t necessary. Sonic’s model here is also unusually bright. I think the developers did mostly a good job with the overall presentation despite some issues and the cutscenes looking quite rough. It has been proven the original files for the cutscenes were in the developer’s possession, yet they decided to upscale the Wii’s original low resolution cutscenes instead which look terrible on more modern displays.
The text on the user interface and subtitles in the game this time are very oversized and distracting. It’s a shame you can not turn off the subtitles this time round (in the original game you could), so the subtitles are bright and bulgy, which makes the text distracting over the visuals. Even the “press start” button and the auto save warning at the beginning is huge for no reason. Yet when you go to the options the text is tiny. The difference is unusual.
Sonic Colors soundtrack is composed by veteran Sonic composer Tomoya Ohtani. I really enjoyed the soundtrack for the original game, but I’m not a fan of the new remixes included in Sonic Colors Ultimate. A lot of them feel underwhelming, toned down, and boring. Some are outright bad and ruin what were originally some of the best tracks in the series. There is too much out of place and off-key overdubbed piano in the new remixes that once included exciting guitar tracks. Many remixes sound much worse than the original track. These aren’t Sonic Generations or Team Sonic Racing quality remixes, that’s for sure. It just seems they are different for the sake of being different with a lack of understanding of the original tracks. The only exception would be the “Reach For The Stars” remix which is a huge improvement over the original. It’s just a shame the rest of the in-game remixes don’t feature this same heavy rock style that the Sonic games were once famous for. A soundtrack CD, Sonic Colors Ultimate – Recolors releases on CD and digital on September 29th, 2021. We were originally promised there would be an option where you could change the in-game soundtrack from the remixes back to the original tracks, but upon release, this option is unavailable. There is no option to disable these remixes and revert back to the original tracks which is very unusual for a remaster in 2021.
Despite the heavy criticism in this review, I don’t think Sonic Colors Ultimate is an outright bad remaster. It’s still a fun experience to relive. It does remind me how much I enjoyed the original Sonic Colors back in the day. Despite the new additions which mostly feel pointless, it doesn’t feel too different from the original Wii release, although it’s not without some issues which will hopefully be patched soon. I’m glad that SEGA decided to remaster an older title and hope we see more remasters in the future. I just hope they have more effort put into them than this. I want to see the series succeed and remastering Sonic Colors for modern platforms should’ve been a slam dunk. Instead, what we’re left with is a clearly unfinished game released far too early with many changes needing revising. Sonic game releases are becoming far too infrequent and the quality doesn’t seem to be improving at all.
Sonic Colors Ultimate is out now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Sonic Colors Ultimate: Pros & Cons
Pros
- It’s fun replaying Sonic Colors again.
- Sonic Colors’ excellent art direction still holds up.
- The Tails Save system makes gameplay more encouraging, especially for new players.
- Percentage completion rate in each world makes it easier for you to track your progress.
Cons
- Remixed music is terrible outside of Jun Senoue’s remixes.
- Cosmetic unlockables feel pointless.
- Rushed remaster with many glitches.
- The cutscenes looks awful on modern displays.
