Am I falling for the 'Sonic Cycle' or is Sonic Colors actually looking like Sega has figured out how to do a '3D' Sonic. It seems a good mix of side on platformer portions with some high speed 'sonic on rails' stuff to give you the feeling that little guy can run at lightspeed...



I think I will wait for the reviews once it is released but it seems to be gaining some praise out there.

I don't know about this one. I did spot a few things from older games that give it a little more retro feel, but it still looks like they're trying too hard to force certain things. Rails for example, looked nice at first but when it comes down to it, they don't do much of anything but to take you from point A to B without the player having to touch anything (at most you just hold a single button). A few games got it right, like Sonic Adventure 2 where you could choose different routes depending on which rails you chose, and there was some risk involved. The Sonic Advance games also got them right. 3 different rails going in the same direction, with the only difference being positioning of rings, is not exciting at all.

They also seem bent on forcing 360º movement with sidescrolling movement. While I'm not totally against that, it seems like the 360º sections are mostly just running forward, grinding, and not doing much of interest. It winds up accomplishing little except making you anxious for the next sidescrolling/platforming section. At least, that's how I felt playing previous games.

I think the Sonic Advance games (especially 2 and 3) really hit the nail on how to inject that sense of speed (that the old games lacked) without detracting from the original formula of the series. When you think about it, simply running really fast isn't a good concept for a game because it's boring after a while. The older games are popular because they had a great mix of platforming and other details to enhance the experience on top of the running.

Hmm apparently the rail grinding does have a choice of destination or multiple paths to them interspliced with other elements like timed jumps and enemies flying at you... so I hear.

I thought it looked interesting, keeping Sonic moving fast at a hundred miles an hour in some portions and introducing him to side-scrolling in other parts. Sort of like mixing a race game with a platformer.

I never really played a sonic game after Sonic 3 came out, thought it went downhill from there pretty much but, this one has interested me. Surprised myself cause I always felt sonic in '3D' always equalled failure but... well we'll see.

I dunno about an on rails 3d Sonic, but Sonic 4 is definitely on my list to play.

yeah... the 3D segments are more Riders than actual Sonic action. The sidescroll... the digging mechanic looks cool, but... dear lord, are they trying to control a Sonic platformer with Wiimote action?

seanstar wrote:


Could be worse. They could try controlling Soul Calibur's fighting games via Wiimote.

I haven't bought a Sonic game in forever. I might actually have to get this one.

jack59splat59 wrote:

Haven't missed much. I was underwhelmed by Adventure 2, Advance, and Rush. Riders was kinda cool if you could get over the difficulty... "curve" doesn't do it as much justice as "wall"... but that doesn't really count. Didn't see any rave reviews of heroes, and were-sonic is just... conceptually, why?!
But yeah, if they dust off anything that actually remotely feels like the Sonic 2 or S3&K engine, I'd be up for it. Sonic 4 doesn't look too unpromising, but I swear if they can only release it on current- or next-gen hardware, someone somewhere is doing something wrong

seanstar wrote:



Good points. I think the last one I had was Sonic Heroes for PS2. Haha. What did you think about that one?

The only good thing I can say about Sonic Heroes is that it gave me $5 bucks off of Psychonauts, a good (excellent) game.

The fact is that without cartridges, I'll never be able to anything as awesome as this ever again:



Words cannot express how awesome it was when I was told I could put my favourite game INTO my new game. Nothing since in gaming has been as mind blowing as this.

Suikoden II's "you can load your Suikoden I game and pull some of your past progress," and a similar mechanic in Ratchet & Clank, comes close-ish, but yeah. S2&K/S3&K were pretty awesome

dickmedd wrote:


Anyone else remember your first time too? Oh wait, you said 'game', haha.. *ahem

Nice! While we are remotely on the subject (of games cartridges that is) I have a poll suggestion on format/media: carts, discs, cassettes, dlc/hdd etc. Which do you prefer?

I kept my old Genesis so that I could play the original Sonic. Haha I remember that being the first game I ever bought myself.