So, Sonic is a franchise that for better or worse, is a franchise that exists. It rose to fame with the likes of the Genesis Trilogy, CD and the Adventure games, but recently the series has fallen off a cliff in terms of quality. With games like Shadow the Hedgehog, the Sonic storybook games and the ever infamous Sonic 2006, the Sonic franchise has seen more misses than hits in its time, gaining a bad reputation amongst the fans and a lot of players alike, including myself.
Sonic Colours, on the other hand, manages to save the Sonic franchise's reputation if for a little while with its latest entry for the Nintendo Wii and DS. I will be looking at the Wii version of the game since that is the version I played.
Sonic and Tails were invited to Eggman's Interstellar Amusement Park. Sonic think that this is another one of Eggman's schemes so he joins Tails on his trip. To nobody's surprise, Eggman is actually using the aliens called Wisps to power a massive laser, as part of his plans for the Eggman Empire. It's up to Sonic and Tails to go and put a stop to him.
Sonic Colours plays similarly to Unleashed with the returning boost gameplay along with all of Sonic's staple homing attack, stomp and now a Double Jump. The game wide feature for this title is the Wisps. Getting a certain Wisp will allow Sonic to either shuttle off like a Rocket, grant Sonic extra boost meter or slam enemies in a Blue Cube. The Wisp gameplay is some of the best parts of this game, and yeah they would go on to butcher their reputation in titles like Lost World, Forces and Generations, but this game introduces the Wisps as a great extension to the 3D Sonic gameplay. Sonic also controls well this time around unlike his previous appearances in a 3D game. The controls are tight and everything responds well.
Each world has 6 Acts each, ending with a boss at the end of the world. The bosses are honestly the more lacklustre part of the game, as they re-use the same 3 bosses for each world with a minor twist. The final boss is the only good one, having Sonic going against a machine which has all the Wisp abilities. Speaking of bosses, the DS version has a secret final boss locked behind getting all the Chaos Emeralds. Its a Super Sonic only final boss like the games before, but it's neat I guess.
On the subject of Chaos Emeralds, the Wii version allows you to unlock Super Sonic, once you get all Red Emeralds and complete the bonus stages found in the Sonic Simulator, which also has multiplayer too. It's nothing to write home about but its there if you want to.
Overall, while the game has its slight mishaps, it is easily one of the better Sonic games released in a while if not one of my favourite Sonic games in the entire franchise.