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.

Sonic 4: Episode 1

After years of experimenting, Sega return to what they know best

Let's start with some context: I have roughly a dozen beta versions of Sonic 3, including the 3c beta that represented Sega's last-ditch effort to fit the game on to one cartridge before splitting the second half into Sonic & Knuckles. I have a screencap of the old Sonic 1 title screen where Sonic had a human girlfriend called Madonna. I know that in the first teaser trailer for Sonic 4, they used Sonic's beta sprite from Sonic 2 instead of the one that made it into the finished game. Sonic Crackers, Sonic-16 and Sonic Eraser - every one an obscurity, and still I hunted them down.

Now that we have my fanboy credentials in order, I have to say that as much as I still enjoy the original games, they're not so perfect that a reinvigorating update isn't in order. The physics are far too weighty, there's not much in the way of collectables, and later titles like the Advance series showed that there's more to be wrung out the classic Sonic template with newer tech. And Sonic 4 does exactly that.

Following directly on from Sonic 3 and its follow-up Sonic & Knuckles, this is Sega's take on New Super Mario Bros - a fusion of classic gameplay with more modern series elements, and for once the intrusions into the Sonic formula blend together well. Get stuck on a slope in 1991 and you were due a tedious traipse back down the hill so you could get some speed up. In 2010, Sonic feels far lighter and nimbler, practically skipping from one platform to another, yet his top speed is still limited to accommodate the multi-path exploration that made his classic titles feel so adventurous. Homing attacks and speed boosters are present from his Adventure days, but they're complementary rather than essential, letting Sonic hit springs instantly and jump to full speed without his trajectory or lack of inertia breaking flow where once it would have.

This fusion pervades Sonic 4, from gameplay to visuals; netting a continue gives you the same miniature Sonic sprite and celebratory jingle from Sonic & Knuckles, as pixellated and imperfect as ever, and it feels genuinely charming when it could have been glaringly out of place. The music comes as a slight disappointment then, given that it occasionally falls into the territory of imperfect imitation that the rest of the game so skilfully avoids, but there are a few jingles that rank among the franchise's best, and fans are sure to notice the tap-tappy drum beats of the Megadrive sound bank. It's a niggle that is noticeable purely for the quality around it, and that's something we haven't been able to say of Sonic in years.

Which isn't to say that the design is airtight and seamless, mind you; the balance between obvious imitation and fitting homage is definitely skewed the wrong way at first, but manages to right itself as the game goes on. The physics are reasonably well judged but wildly inconsistent, with Sonic happily strolling up vertical surfaces, and while segmenting the bosses into two slightly different forms has been a staple of the 2D games since Sonic Advance, it at least came with some amount of subtlety back then rather than drawing as much attention to it as possible; Sonic 4 occasionally lays on its new-and-old veneer a bit thick, but with fans baying for the old days, this is probably the closest Sega can come to recreating the feel of the original games while keeping things slick enough for newcomers and those who are slightly less anal about the hedgehog's past.

2010 seems to be the year that Sonic fans have been waiting for - consistently positive coverage of what could be the first genuinely excellent 3D game, Sonic Colours, and a strong retro revamp in the second dimension. I never felt that the 2D games needed fixing, and would still love to see more from the Advance and Rush series, but not only is Sonic 4 a tidy and fun title, it also demonstrates a keen awareness from Sega of every age their flagship franchise has gone through. That alone may be the key difference that has so suddenly changed Sonic's fortunes, and long may this new state of play continue.

Verdict
Sonic 4 isn't ground-breaking or innovative, but it is great fun and so very, very Sonic. A fitting start to the successor of the Megadrive classics, if a little pricy for its length.

Gaming PR 101

Grit your teeth and let those irritating adverts pass - they may be the key to attracting new gamers and keeping the games we love

Three days moving flat and five days gluing a rubber snout to your face and claiming to be a lizardman takes a lot from you, so it isn't surprising that I haven't watched a lot of television lately. The fact that a building company dropped half a mile of flats in a direct line from my aerial to the transmitter didn't help much either, so it's fair to say that I've missed out on a lot of television this past year. Now that I'm blessed with an aerial socket that actually works (and a fridge that doesn't stink of rancid milk, and flatmates who don't leave entire baguettes floating in dish water, which largely sums up why I moved in the first place) I've finally been able to discover that Nintendo's horrifying trend in advertising continues unabated.

No other form of media has to put up with this condescending bullshit. Where normally you'd be thrown a half-minute handful of reasons to hit the cinema, in the world of Nintendo, a movie trailer would consist of a group of asinine cretins guffawing and ribbing like the extras in a second-rate musical, followed by a mother and child enthusing about the whizz-bang effects for the kids to coo at, and how it was gentle enough for Gran to enjoy, and how the protagonist taught her the importance of staying true to yourself. And then Professor Layton stops the film halfway through so they can solve a puzzle.

It's this need for justification that really irritates me, because what it boils down to is that video games aren't allowed to be fun for the sake of fun. If they aren't exercising your brain, pumping your arms or keeping your social life afloat then there has to be an ulterior motive for playing, like deciding who does the washing up, which for the benefit of any non-UK gamers is literally the reason why two people are playing New Super Mario Bros Wii in a current advert. I wish I was kidding, but this is the state of play for less-than-hardcore gamers who don't want to be labelled as such.

Worse still is the UK advert for Bowser's Inside Story, a game that mashes Rampage into an RPG with two plumbers manning the valves for maximum Godzilla-sized fun. There's adventuring to do, we're told by today's motherly shut-in, but also some puzzling. Sorry, what? 'But' there's some puzzling? What the hell does 'but' mean? Is she so ashamed of enjoying a whimsical adventure that she has to justify it with puzzles? Nobody minds that Transformers or Avatar are essentially brainless with no real need to switch on your noggin, because no-one expects them to be anything more than a few hours' worth of mindless distraction. For the Wii generation, this apparently isn't enough to justify their new hobby.

But the sad truth is that all of this condescension is completely necessary, and may be one of the most incisive decisions Nintendo has made for the gaming industry. Mario has emerged from the Wii generation as hardcore as he has ever been, a fact that will become apparent to anyone who plays his games, regardless of how they are marketed. People can claim all they like that they're trying to be social or training their brain, but they're still popping fireflowers at Koopas and calculating the entry point of a turn to drop a banana peel at, and Mario is still the Godfather of gaming - fatherly and friendly, but ready to throw you to the lava pit if you press so much as one button out of turn.

What I despise isn't the way that gaming is denigrated, but the fact that this approach is necessary in the first place to (hopefully) drag gaming out of its ghetto. This is a necessary step on the road to mainstream acceptance, a way of normalising traditional video games by changing perceptions and weaning new gamers off of content-lite casual fluff. Like comic books - which in the case of Marvel and DC are as tangled as ten years' worth of Christmas lights - gaming is still insular enough that we tend to forget how mystifyingly scary a 16-button controller can be, and that dying instantly in Modern Warfare can be jarringly unpleasant instead of an expected part of the game. Having witnessed someone throw their Wii remote into the air in a blind panic during a session of WarioWare, it's easy to see why Cooking Mama got its foot in the door, despite being essentially the same as WarioWare but fifty times slower and painfully drawn out in every possible way. Swapping lightning reactions for sluggish hand-holding is a poor trade-off, but when you don't know Mudkips from Master Chief it's the only way to remove the stress of the angry swarm of sounds and images coming from your TV.

And there's the key word: stress. Video games are like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket; they beat you and harass you, they punish you for not following their rules, pace or skilfulness, and generally favour those with a faintly masochistic streak. Most video games are a pleasant challenge in the same way that Everest is; invigorating for the seasoned pro, yet so insurmountable to novices that they're barely going to consider more than a brisk walk around the foothills. It isn't just non-interest that keeps people from gaming, it's seeing the same thing from a completely different perspective. It's no wonder that games are being marketed like the Andrex puppy when they're more like the Rottweiler that savaged next door's cat.

And that's why we need these adverts. They're simpering and condescending, but if we can get just one octogenarian to upload a speedrun of New Super Mario Bros, then they've done their job. And it'll be a better world for gamers everywhere.

Sonic shows his Colours

True to form, the blue blur refuses to slow down as a second game is added to the Fall 2010 release window alongside Sonic 4, oddly named Sonic Colours. Gameplay is a mixture of 2D and 3D, which immediately screams Unleashed; with no werehog in sight, it's probably going to be better recieved than that particular outing.

Throughout the game Sonic can collect Wisps, a group of day-glo aliens captured by Dr Eggman. By combining different coloured Wisps, Sonic can unlock new routes and secret areas. The trailer is brief, but after four main console games that were either depressingly grey or overly serious, it is genuinely refreshing to see a Rush Adventure-esque title that cuts loose with a bright palette and a bouncy soundtrack.

Sonic Colours will be out later this year for Wii and DS. No word yet on how the two will differ beyond a few excusive Wisps, but as the first Sonic crossover for the two platforms it will surely use pointing and touch in no small amounts. Keep an eye on the Sega blog for news as it comes.

Sonic Unleashed

A tidy engine helps transform another flawed outing into something promising

It's a fairly pointless exercise by this point to list Sonic's many ailments, but I will anyway because I share Sonic Team's love of kicking a dying animal when he's down. Lower back pains have crippled his once sprightly acrobatics, cranial damage ensures his only social interaction is with other mental degenerates, and the radiation of all those gems he insists on hoarding like a rapid magpie have at last taken their toll and transformed him into Cousin It. It's a bewildering relief, therefore, to find that Unleashed shows a few signs of competence beneath the usual aggrevations.

Unleashed shows potential for Sonic's future, bearing in mind that 'potential' doesn't always have 'realised' glued in front of it. Sega appear to have listened to the baying public for once and the menagerie of squeaky Saturday-morning side characters has been through a brutal culling, with a grand total of four regulars making an appearance and the rest presumably toiling in the salt mines of Nightopia. But apparently Sega weren't listening hard enough, because what people have been crying for more than anything else is for that never-ending roster to stop growing, and Sonic Team are nothing if not set in their ways. Irritating twat-du-jour is Chip, a small, purple and entirely superfluous midget who dispenses barely-useful advice and spends most of the game distracting you with his antics (and I use that term loosely) during cutscenes. He's even more pea-brained than Big, a character who spent the entirety of Sonic Heroes picking his nose and asking his bogeys if they were his lost frog.

It's a curious situation where so many aspects of the game have been tightened up, and yet so many others continue to breed and fester. Needless gimmick this time around is Sonic's ability to transform into a werewolf when the sun goes down, a feature that meshes together with the standard run-and-jump mechanics like a pair of stickle-bricks being handled by a baby. The daytime sections are beautifully crafted epics, with sprawling cities and vast landscapes blurring past you at cheek-flapping speeds, while the night-time sections are slow, crammed solid with enemies and far, far too long. Annoyingly, this trade-off of good and bad pretty well sums up the entire game. Ultra-sonic speed has been balanced by unwieldy hubs and aggrevating item collection, and the loss of characters has been compensated for by some of the worst dialogue committed to paper. But despair not, devoted fans and slavering fan-fic writers, because this is the first Sonic game to step into 3D that actually feels whole and complete.

Unleashed marks the first time that everything has come together on a technical level for the series; the graphics are smooth, the animations superb and glitches rare enough to qualify for the endangered species list. Moreover, after numerous games that wavered drunkenly from the ultra-arcadey to the super-realistic, Sonic Team have finally found a tone that works for the series, nestling firmly at the Pixar end of the spectrum with enough pace and cool to satisfy everyone else. The charmingly cartoonish design makes for pleasing eye-candy amongst the broken glass of the gameplay's sweet jar, and embues the series with a much-needed vitality that sits comfortably alongside the slick presentation. There are moments such as the excellent Egg Beetle boss where you'll blur through the trees, deftly side-stepping rockets and kicking a robot three miles down the road in a somersaulting mess, where at last it all comes together. The speed, the movement, the music, the atmosphere... For the first time you get a genuine feel for being Sonic, even if you're struggling to keep pace at times. And while some of the old tat you wish they'd given up on somehow continues to amble through life with a clean bill of health, so much has taken a turn for the better that if Sonic Team could just learn to drop the moments of instant death and irritating side characters then they could have a pretty competent game on their hands. The chance for a Super Mario 64 moment is dead and buried, but Sonic's 3D epiphany may yet have its moment. Unleashed shows, if nothing else, that Sonic Team finally have the technical competence and the correct grasp of tone to carry their flagship series in the direction it needs. If only they could hire an actual script writer, I might even be tempted to care about the story as well; probably best not to get too hopeful.

Verdict
Aggrevating as always but finally starting to find its feet, Unleashed requires as much patience as ever to slog through, with the rewards for doing so greater than before. Much better than their last effort, which admittedly isn't saying much.