Sonic Colours

A magnificent effort sadly goes to show that Sonic Team have used up all their chances

One less dimension to worry about means that Sonic's 2D journey has had a lot less bumps to smooth out over the years, and while the Advance and Rush series brought their own enjoyable flavour to the franchise, his three dimensional adventures have been patchy at best; Sonic Adventure was rushed out to prop up a fledgling Dreamcast, while the sequel was rushed out to support a dying Dreamcast. Heroes was inexcusably broken, and Sonic the Hedgehog even more so, while Unleashed got half the formula right but stumbled with the rest. Sonic 4 had things easy; with expectations for Colours riding high, it's the 3D hedgehog who is yet to impress. And like its predecessor, it's a tantalising snapshot of what Sonic could be.

Colours isn't a bad game per se, coming straight off the back of the much-loved daytime stages from Sonic Unleashed in which players blasted through the level at breakneck speed, but it still manages to carry across the flaws of previous games, from flaky controls to ridiculously unfair obstacle placement and overly busy level design, all of which transform what should have been a breezy joyride into a nerve-shredding dance on the brink of oblivion. The levels are bizarrely cluttered and often ask you to take in more than the eyeball and brain can handle, and while it's many the fine game that can keep the player on a knife-edge, there are numerous cheap deaths that have an almost smug, mocking feel to them, as though half a second is clearly ample time to spot the bottomless pit that just rushed around the corner.

So far so 3D Sonic, then. It's as well that the gimmick du jour, the Wisps that grant Sonic a variety of powers mid-level, are fairly well realised and generally quite inventive; the Cyan Wisp lets Sonic ping-pong off walls at ultra-fast speed, usually clearing hoards of enemies and firing you a small but significant distance through the level, while the Yellow Wisp gives you an all-destroying drill that takes you far below the main level. The one major criticism of the Wisps is that they rarely feel organic; you can't stockpile different kinds of Wisp energy to maximise your options, and every part of each level is clearly designed around the specific Wisp power you've just picked up, even if it's an option rather than an essential.

It's a sad reflection of the fact that Sonic Team just can't quite seem to get the various gameplay elements they concoct to mesh together properly. The drifting and side-stepping from the running sections of Unleashed are back, but are only useable during specially marked segments rather than at any time. They've made an effort to merge the various modes of control into one fluid whole, but all they've done is diced them up in the same bowl rather than actively blending them into one smooth mixture.

It isn't all bad; in fact the irony is that Colours really begins to shine when it learns to slow down, drop the sparkling bombardment of visuals that plague the 3D games and get down to some serious old-school Sonic platforming, measured and exploratory and never punishing inquisitiveness. The best can be seen in Aquarium Park, where speed relents in the face of a haunting, serene wonderland that spreads open around you and invites you to make a day of it. Better still is that the hard lessons Sega had to learn for Sonic 4's retro revamp have clearly made an impression, with Spinies and Motobugs making an appearance almost unchanged from their 16-bit counterparts, while the Special Stages, disguised as a (probably unintentionally) nightmarish arcade side-scroller are all based on the distinctive level design of Sonic 1, from the odd curves of Starlight to the treacherous platforms of Scrap Brain, and these elements feel entirely natural and organic with not a single knowing wink thrown in their direction.

Moreover, the colourful aesthetic is still paying off two years after Unleashed, and while Sonic's new English voice is diabolical, it's at least helped by a script that has thrown all of the po-faced seriousness of previous games out the window while still maintaining the eye for scope and scale that makes Sonic consistently feel epic. Detail abounds at all levels as Sonic Team somehow channels the same technical forces that power every first-party Wii game, something they are clearly aware of as a delicate touch gives depth to the visuals, from the deep blues that illuminate the first dash into Aquarium Park and the gentle tff-tff-tff that sounds as Sonic scatters petals and grass blades on the Wisp home world.

Despite this, Colours is not the salvation of the Sonic series. Not quite. It isn't ambitious enough in its mechanics, and Sonic Team plainly lack the skills required to take Sonic any further forward. Although the series clearly still has an enormous well of lifeforce yet to be tapped, it isn't Sonic Team who are going to get there; they're like an ageing thoroughbred that refuses to be put out to pasture, and the fact that they're making small improvements doesn't mean they're going to keep pace with the prime fillies any more. Colours is a defiant statement that Sonic still has life left in him, but he needs a strong team behind him, and Sonic Team isn't it. There's a strong creative force at Sonic Team that's bursting to show us what they can do, but a lengthy spell with an equally passionate third-party dev is the only way for Sonic to reach his peak.

Verdict
An aggravating first play means it isn't worth renting, but it is worth buying if you can push through to the end game; Colours is short, flawed and symptomatic of a team that simply doesn't have what it takes no matter how hard it tries, but amongst the cracks can be seen a franchise straining to become what it knows it can be.