Sonic Colors: Ultimate (PC) Reviewed

Here’s a weird bit of trivia for you. Sonic Colors was one of two (the other being Sonic Forces) modern Sonic games that I never had the time to play. Hell, I’ve still not played Sonic Forces, despite having it on consoles…at least I can say I can check Sonic Colors: Ultimate off the list.

Originally released in 2010 for the Nintendo Wii and DS, Sonic Colors was ported to modern consoles late 2021. I have no idea why it’s taken this long for it to hit the PC, but somebody obviously thought it was a good idea.

Thankfully, despite the multiple releases (and releases), I never had the chance to play the game. You know what that means! Yup, I’m reviewing this for the first time!

What is Sonic Colors: Ultimate?

Sonic Colors: Ultimate is a 2D/ 3D platformer developed by Sonic Team, and published by SEGA. As mentioned, I’m reviewing the recently released PC version. The game’s also available right now on the Playstation and Xbox consoles, as well as the Nintendo Switch.

Our copy, was graciously provided to us by the awesome folks at SEGA!

For review of the game, we were running a rig off these specs:
– MSI B550M Mortar
– AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with NZXT Kraken X73 RGB Liquid Cooler
– MSI GeForce RTX 3080Ti Suprim X 12GB
– 64GB DDR4 RAM (Teamgroup T-Force Dark Z 16GB x 4 @ 3600MHz)
– Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD

Settings were all set to the maximum, running at 4K resolution.

A side mention; both our motherboard and GPU were awesomely sponsored by the great folks at MSI. I can honestly say the MSI GeForce RTX 3080Ti Suprim X 12GB is a hell of a GPU and more than worth its asking price. Great performance in games, looks damn cool with its RGB stylings too!

Thanks to MSI and their kind generosity, we’ll be reviewing more PC games now since we have the hardware to deliver a quality review experience.

In Sonic Colors: Ultimate, Eggman’s created a new theme park, utilizing aliens (known as Wisps) in another bid for world domination. As always, Sonic’s out to thwart him, by visiting each park location to free the enslaved Wisps and shutting them down.

Each stage is a mixture of 3D and 2D sections, with the camera shifting around seamlessly for each. It looks cool but it is extremely jarring as you could be running around in 3D one moment and then shift to a 2D section with very little warning. It gets better when you’re replaying stages as you’ll know when a change is coming but it’s still worth noting.

3D sections play like the action stages from Sonic Frontiers (or Sonic Adventure), while 2D sections are pretty much classic Sonic gameplay. Both incorporate stage gimmicks, like ramps, loops and the like, with alternate paths (which gives you incentives to try out new stuff) for pretty much every stage and section.

Sonic can double jump (though it’s a bit too floaty for my tastes), boost his speed and do a homing attack on enemies but that’s pretty much it for his movelist.

The stages also contain Wisp powerups, which gives Sonic different powers (such as being able to travel as a laser beam, or pass through solid walls) temporarily.

The powers are cool and I really wished they come into play more, not just at specific sections.

Now don’t go thinking that Sonic Colors: Ultimate is an open world title like Sonic Frontiers. It might sound like it, but Sonic Colors: Ultimate is a linear experience, with stages you visit in a set order. You can revisit the stages once you have unlocked new wisp powers and to get the red coins hidden in them, but that’s the extent of it.

Exploring the stages, you can also find tokens.

With these, you can unlock customization options for Sonic or unlock extra stuff. I love the idea behind them, but I wish they were more readily available. They’re quite rare in-game and require you to replay stages to farm them.

I didn’t really care for the customization though, because it’s honestly weird for Sonic to not look like he usually does. I do like the Sonic movie equips though since they don’t really change Sonic’s looks drastically, just enhance them.

Since this is a Sonic game, it’s pretty much catered for speed freaks.

The stages are meant to be blazed through and finding the optimal way to run through them is part of the fun. You’ll be dying a lot along the way, but since there’s no penalty (there are no lives to keep track of), death isn’t an issue at all.

With our hardware, everything moves at a smooth fps without a hint of slowdown. Then again, the game’s Recommended requirements are for years old hardware, so that’s not really surprising. There aren’t a ton of visual options to tweak too owing to the game’s Wii origins.

Music’s similarly basic.

I don’t mean the score’s bad per se, it’s just…generic and forgettable I guess. None of the tunes in the game stuck with me after I stopped. Hell, I don’t even remember what they sound like without the game. The voice acting’s decent though, so that’s a plus in the game’s favor at least.

The Bottom Line.

Sonic Colors: Ultimate is a pretty decent Sonic game. It’s fast, looks decent and doesn’t need high end hardware to deliver a fun experience.

There are some issues (more Wisp powers and more flexibility on using them) that really should’ve been ironed out considering this is the definitive edition of the game, but nothing’s that’s really game breaking.

At the end of the day, the game is a decent Sonic game. Not the best, but certainly far from the worst.

TLDR:

Decent Sonic game that doesn’t really add substantial content to the remaster.