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Sonic Colors has a fucking FANTASTIC soundtrack.

Let’s just listen, okay? Here’s Tropical Resort Zone, Act 1. Great surf rock kind of stuff. Then here’s Tropical Resort Zone, Act 2, which subtly changes the song a bit, while keeping the same themes. Act 3 changes it a bit more significantly, but it’s still the same theme, and still awesome. Then, of course, in the Sonic Simulator, we get an 8-bit version of it.
The music just keeps going like that, and is really fantastic! Even the opening theme, which is horrible in that normal Sonic way, is also really catchy. The soundtrack is spectacular. I love it.

The presentation of the game is also pretty awesome. The storyline of the game is very tongue-in-cheek, and it completely works. It’s still for kids, of course, but it also is constantly recognizing how stupid Sonic plots are to a more adult audience. Sonic will go destroy a boss, and Tails won’t even notice. “Oh? That’s cool I guess. I was doing something else.” Eggman talks about how he “always says” that his plan will let him rule the world, but he really means it this time! I had heard about this before playing it, and was afraid it wouldn’t work, because they’d be “trying to hard,” but they do pull it off.

Even gameplaywise, the way the game has short 3D sections before swapping back to 2D for the more intense platforming works in ways that previous Sonic games in 3D simply haven’t. It provides a fairly good platforming challenge before sweeping you into beautiful-looking 3D sections, before going back to platforming challenge. Plus, it’s actually fun! Some of the Wisp colors are more fun than others, but most let you do some really interesting stuff. Blue Cube is probably used the best that I saw, simply because it lets you swap rings and blocks like a Mario P-Switch, which lets you get to new areas on a time limit.

Yes, this is by far the best Sonic game I’ve played in years. It’s genuinely fun. I didn’t beat it, though, because it does get a bit cheap in later stages. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I could retry forever, but the game still uses lives, like a dinosaur. After 4 tries, I have to restart the whole stage. Some stages are short, and this isn’t a big deal, but at least one or two in every zone are very long, and the idea of replaying them again and again quickly got old to me.

So I returned it. But damn, if you want a Sonic game that doesn’t suck, Sonic Colors on Wii fits the bill. It’s pretty good. I hope they learn from that and make another game that improves on this formula even more. A Sonic Colors 2 could be a genuinely great game, instead of a pretty good one with a fantastic soundtrack.