After a replay, Sonic Colors is definitely a moderately engaging game and is one of Sonic's most polished games. Problems that stop it from being great however comes down to two things that are prominent through-out the playthrough:
- Terrible controls for a platformer/button layout (You'll want to double jump and you'll perform a homing attack instead, an issue still seen in Sonic games since S3&K, Sonic's jump momentum will never feel consistent and his acceleration is extreme at the slight tilt of the stick. Play any 2D or 3D platformer then return to this and you'll see the issue)
- Wasted resources on Story (Simplicity isn't the issue but rather the pointless dialogue was and it made every cutscene more worth skipping than watching. While it would be a rather ballsy move for the expectations of games at the time, this would've greatly benefited from not having separated cutscenes and have the story be told in gameplay instead e.g. Sonic 3&K and with the easy to understand plot of Sonic Colors it would've been more than possible)
In terms of praise, Sonic Colors has an unbelievable amount of replayability with a ranking system that highly encourages engagement of all the mechanics of the game and finding Red Rings within each act. I'd recommend this game to only casual but experienced players. (The ones that would look past and/or learn to get used to the prominent issues the game has)
- Terrible controls for a platformer/button layout (You'll want to double jump and you'll perform a homing attack instead, an issue still seen in Sonic games since S3&K, Sonic's jump momentum will never feel consistent and his acceleration is extreme at the slight tilt of the stick. Play any 2D or 3D platformer then return to this and you'll see the issue)
- Wasted resources on Story (Simplicity isn't the issue but rather the pointless dialogue was and it made every cutscene more worth skipping than watching. While it would be a rather ballsy move for the expectations of games at the time, this would've greatly benefited from not having separated cutscenes and have the story be told in gameplay instead e.g. Sonic 3&K and with the easy to understand plot of Sonic Colors it would've been more than possible)
In terms of praise, Sonic Colors has an unbelievable amount of replayability with a ranking system that highly encourages engagement of all the mechanics of the game and finding Red Rings within each act. I'd recommend this game to only casual but experienced players. (The ones that would look past and/or learn to get used to the prominent issues the game has)