Stare into his eyeeess

I don't know if I've mentioned this anywhere, but I am a huge fan of Sonic The Hedgehog. I've liked pretty much most of the titles, excluding a few of the console releases that were pretty garbage like Shadow's game, or that game where Sonic is pretending he wants to be a Knight. I guess Sonic 2006 is an obligatory thing to bring up here, though I think a part of me holds onto tiny portions of that game due to a feeling of 'this could have been good' which I then proceed to tell myself while I curl up and cry myself to sleep. Otherwise though the track record is not as bad as everyone would like to tell you, with the handheld releases getting their fair share of positive reviews and opinions and Unleashed more or less being a love it or hate it situation. I'd say Sonic isn't doing as bad as people like to make out.

Of course this doesn't mean I don't have problems with some of the things that SEGA has been doing to the franchise, the biggest one on how it was moving into a more realistic/darker direction since Sonic Adventure 2 and basically turning Sonic's fantasy styled world into something I could walk outside and see everyday. Basically a huge beef of mine has always been the art direction.

So why then was I upset when Sonic Colours was announced, a game that so far looks to be bright and colourful and cheery?



I mean look at it, there is colour everywhere and a sense of fantasy in terms of the setting that hasn't been seen for a while unless you want to count Sonic 4 which looks amazing by the way, or even to an extent Unleashed which had a Pixar-like quality to its characters and settings that weren't boring to look at. It basically seems to be tailor made to be a game that someone like me might be able to get into artistically with this franchise again. Each of the old games had this very out-there sort of approach to putting a spin on settings you might find in the real world and if Colours was to follow what that CG trailer lays out then that is simply fantastic.

So I then ruled out it wasn't the art style that had been bothering me about this announcement, there was something else that was doing it for me.



I admit it is a bit too early for me to be ruling out that these things are stupid, and again they sort of have this Pixar-like charm to them with a dash of Pokemon, but why do we need these? The gameplay ideas sound a little neat as well, but when I dissect it I'm not really seeing anything the franchise hasn't done before. You could simply take the cyan coloured wisps and give Sonic speed shoes and have the same effect, or if Knuckles was in the game the yellow wisps could simply be like Knuckles' ability to drill through the ground. So why do we need new alien creatures to give us gameplay elements that we've already seen done way back in previous entries?

This is what I have a problem with. Sonic Team has this big wealth of powerups and abilities in their pre-established worlds and characters that they haven't properly drawn upon in such a long time that could use some more screentime or proper development. It seems like when Sonic Team might have something going for them in terms of this series, they move onto some big new idea and when there is a core mechanic down they move on again.

Thats not to say I'm going to be entirely pessimistic on this, because there are a few points I have thought about since my initial rage over this yesterday and its that the story so far sounds incredibly simple and reminds me more of Sonic 1. Dr. Eggman is imprisoning some life forms to draw upon their power? Hm, reminds me of the time he used animals to power his robots. While I'd prefer this game to take place on Sonic's world and further make use of Zones, we were given more of a glimpse of Sonic's world in Unleashed and thats just a minor complaint.

In all I am leaning more to the side that I'm not entirely optimistic about this title, but if it turns out to be decent you can colour me surprised (;D) but for now I'll patiently wait for a retuned up Sonic 4.

Thanks for reading!

Oh, and sorry if none of this makes a lot of sense I'm actually sick right now and so I'm a little bit out of it/bored. Also I realize its probably Colors, but I'm Canadian and so I've been writing it Colours out of habit. I'll have more art things soon though :D, also it seems I can't preview my blog without getting a 'we can't find this page' error so if there are any mistakes with the code and stuff I'll try and fix that up xD.