Excellent read. Keep updating. I am now playing various levels to get the red coins and s ranks. Usually I get stuck competing for high scores in each act, I want to be top 20 in every level.
It does have a few, well it's not quite cheap deaths but something in between fair and cheap when you hit the later levels. Since the levels are usually quite small and because of the checkpoints it's okay though.
There have been a couple of times where I thought that the design was broken where you get stuck without any way of making your way out. But then upon further study, there always is.
phantom_leo said:
*Ahem!*
Sonic returns to truly classical form in Sonic Colors. Never before, in such grand style, has Sonic Team been able to fuse a 3D Sonic with tried and true 16-bit game mechanics. The sense of speed is back. That magical flow of grabbing rings, running, jumping, springing and bouncing from enemy to enemy, while zipping at break-neck speeds through colorful level after colorful level is ALSO back! What's even better, the original emphasis on Secret Areas and seemingly unreachable shortcuts ALSO make a reappearance here! The discovery of these areas is facilitated by the almost-Mario-esque power-ups provided by the differently hued Wisps found in each zone that add a new twist to gameplay but never get in the way of the Sonic action you all know and love! Much like you did when you were a kid, you'll find yourself playing the levels again and again, not ONLY to uncover every last inch of each amusement-park-like zone, but to also maximize your score and ranking. After all, you can't spell "S"onic Fan without all those S's! The plot may be minimal, the voice may be a bit different, but none of that matters! Forget 4... THIS is the Sonic you've been waiting for!
^ Just dropping this in here. To be honest, I wrote it after very little experience with the game! I wasn't even out of the first world and hadn't even opened up any wisps other than Lazer!
I just wrote it to make Vader happy!
Now I am actually PLAYING it a bit more and I want to keep this from getting lost to see how much my experienced opinion differs from my initial one!
We'll see!
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Just as an aside: That Starlight Carnival (I think that's what its called) is SICK! Speed and length of the Levels... OMG!
i thought i had read that before somewhere
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
I just played a completely sucky level. You are on rails around this saturn rings type race track. Sonic moves forward no matter what. These robot ladybird motorbikes (think excitebots) flank you and you have to bash them about for 10 minutes to win. There is no platforming in this section either.
Sonic Team nicked a few things from Mario Galaxy here and there too, like the antigravity stuff, even getting missiles to follow you to crack big glass cases.
The only part of the game I don't like is on two levels they have these revolving platforms that move in a circular conveyer belt motion. And you sit on a platform and it takes ages to reach the other side whilst you do nothing. You could of course attempt to jump up and get the coins dotted about but the controls are nowhere near good enough to be able to navigate this moving platform nonsense so you just sit there till you get to the other side.
I'm just about done with the main game, and I will say that after the most recent level I played I can sympathize a little bit with some reviewer complaints about some unfair difficulty. In the first stage of the last level (right before battling Eggman) there's a nasty situation that I had to replay at least 30 times before I beat. As you're running down the satellite pole (or whatever the giant pipe is called) you're being chased by some flying robot that will either try to smash you or shoot lasers at you depending on how far away you are. It's tough, but managable until the second half of that section that happens right around the 2 minute mark. THe camera changes its angle just slightly but that change makes it hard to see the robot as Sonic runs you can't really anticipate where his lasers will go. Throw in a few random smallers bots running around on the track and you've got a perfect death trap. Add in the fact that you can't try right there and have to start at the beginning each time... well its mucho frustrating.
Robio is right. Broken game is broken. FACT
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
gamingeek said:I just played a completely sucky level. You are on rails around this saturn rings type race track. Sonic moves forward no matter what. These robot ladybird motorbikes (think excitebots) flank you and you have to bash them about for 10 minutes to win. There is no platforming in this section either.
Sonic Team nicked a few things from Mario Galaxy here and there too, like the antigravity stuff, even getting missiles to follow you to crack big glass cases.
The only part of the game I don't like is on two levels they have these revolving platforms that move in a circular conveyer belt motion. And you sit on a platform and it takes ages to reach the other side whilst you do nothing. You could of course attempt to jump up and get the coins dotted about but the controls are nowhere near good enough to be able to navigate this moving platform nonsense so you just sit there till you get to the other side.
I didn't know what to do in that saturn level for a while either. There is a switch on the floor in the final part, its so hard to see. Once you hit it you go to the end. The level only lasts a minute or so.
robio said:I'm just about done with the main game, and I will say that after the most recent level I played I can sympathize a little bit with some reviewer complaints about some unfair difficulty. In the first stage of the last level (right before battling Eggman) there's a nasty situation that I had to replay at least 30 times before I beat. As you're running down the satellite pole (or whatever the giant pipe is called) you're being chased by some flying robot that will either try to smash you or shoot lasers at you depending on how far away you are. It's tough, but managable until the second half of that section that happens right around the 2 minute mark. THe camera changes its angle just slightly but that change makes it hard to see the robot as Sonic runs you can't really anticipate where his lasers will go. Throw in a few random smallers bots running around on the track and you've got a perfect death trap. Add in the fact that you can't try right there and have to start at the beginning each time... well its mucho frustrating.
You are supposed to use your boost, you can get so far ahead of it that the lasers wont even reach you. The guys on the track dont hurt you, they are there to be hit to keep your boost going. Run into them to charge the boost.
I have to say again, Aquarium park is awesome. Maybe up there among my favourite set of levels, ever.
Love the theme, love the colours, love the music, love the japanese samurais and stuff. Love the water and the change of pace. It's just cool.
I did get through it, but I'm pretty sure the little bots on the track killed me a few times after I had my rings knocked away. Stupid Sonic. . . can't hold on to one lousy ring.... wear a fanny pack dammit!!! Sure it may look lame, but effectively it'd keep him invincible. That's just good sense. Awwww what a does a rodent know anyway?
Yeah if there is one thing that bugs me about sonic is that you can collect like a 100 rings and one little hit and you lose all of them.
Finished the game up the other day and I have 2 final observations:
1. End boss battle with Eggman was awesome. That's how you do a final boss fight. Its hard and it gets harder during the fight, but it doesn't change from one style of a fight to another. You learn a little more each time and if you try enough times you'll figure everything out. Loved it.
2. Originally I'd only give the game an 8, but it's amazing how much more fun the levels are once you have unlocked all the wisps and then go back to the levels. They are remarkably better. Really good replay value there. That boosts my final score to about an 8.5.
Colors 100%, all S ranks, all red rings and I have Super Sonic. 
Excellent Sonic game, I hope this is a sign of things to come.
Dvader said:Colors 100%, all S ranks, all red rings and I have Super Sonic.
Excellent Sonic game, I hope this is a sign of things to come.
Wow, well done.
So I booted this game back up today, turns out that I have done every level apart from the Boss on the asteroid world.
And I find out that it's the same sucky boss from before, running on rails into the screen, waiting for this asshole to go through his monotonous routine. I burned 15 minutes fighting this thing but it felt like an hour because you can't just hit him, you have to wait 5 minutes between each attack and then two hits kills you as he bounces asteroids about. 
This sucks.
gamingeek said:So I booted this game back up today, turns out that I have done every level apart from the Boss on the asteroid world.
And I find out that it's the same sucky boss from before, running on rails into the screen, waiting for this asshole to go through his monotonous routine. I burned 15 minutes fighting this thing but it felt like an hour because you can't just hit him, you have to wait 5 minutes between each attack and then two hits kills you as he bounces asteroids about.
This sucks.
Simple boss is simple. Run up to him and target the middle spot. Sometimes it will lock on to the sides, make sure you hit the center target. When you do that the boss will release items, one of them will be a rocket wisp, make sure you grab it. Run at it and hit it anywhere. Now it will go into that side view, avoid the asteroids and wait for the ship to come out. When under it use the rocket. You will take half its life.
The process will repeat, this time hit one of the sides, a rocket wisp should come out, get it and repeat. Two hits with the rocket is all you need.
I am back, I played the game for a couple of hours this morning.
Got to say, at this point I am ready to declare this a great, 9.0 platformer and who knows, by the end it might go higher.
If you only play the levels once and move on you are missing out on most of the game, kinda like playing Goldeneye without using stealth.
You get so much better at the levels, I am not a time attack guy, I do not try and make the best times in racing games or the highest scores in anything else. But in Sonic Colours, it's honestly just fun to blast through and find secrets and try different things to acheive higher ranks. And although the 3D sections aren't as good as the 2D ones, they bring the wow factor to the game in some of the visual tricks they do.
Also, like Vader said, today I learned that by simply experimenting with the wisps (power ups) you can access whole new parts of the level that were previously undiscovered.
Like I said before, the things that make Sonic, Sonic, make this game unique as a platformer. So it's not just a great platformer, it's also a unique one, true to the core tenants of the Sonic franchise.
I know nobody but Vader and Robio will read this but what the hell.