I think this game is doing largely what it needs to do - shutting up the "Sonic should be 2D and simple and the way I remember it when I played ANY SONIC GAME LAST, which was 20ish years ago and nothing will ever actually measure up to the googly eyed wonder of a 7 year old" crowd, at least momentarily - and I'm looking forward to it as a fun aside. But frankly, daytime portions of Unleashed were *awesome* and Colours is the one that *really* has me excited about Sonic again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5myak7EvRU

I love grading systems, in fact I love every opportunity of gauging how good I get at games where you're meant to get better at levels. Finding the best route, doing things without a hitch at mental speeds I always find super fun and it used to be something Sega consistently played off of in the past, likely since they used to have an arcade approach to all of their games. NiGHTS link attacks, Crazy Taxi's "license" system, the tate stuff in Shinobi, shoot down/damage ratio in Panzer Dragoon, and so on.

As for the music, I guess it's an acquired taste. I find them cheesy, charming and awesome, personally. I think Crush 40's stuff especially is great (with Sonic music legend Jun Senoue penning the music and Johnny Gioeli on vocals you can't go wrong), and "Live and Learn" is to me one of the most memorable theme songs in games. It bears mentioning that I grew up with 80s cartoons so cheesy/awesome theme songs with vocals is kinda in my blood. Robots in disguise! He's a radical rat! Hemlig mystisk kommer han, i sin mask och haaa-aatt!

This is just modern day--that stuff.

And dude, it's about a blue hedgehog. It *IS* pokemon.

Well don't confuse the themes with the tunes that play on levels in the games.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7j1MbefXcw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMBXCvtMy7U
For instance.

Oh man, Windy and Ripply is etched into me in a bordering on obscene way. Speedran that level into the ground, too. :D

Speaking of speedruns and s-ranks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eba4C7YJV9s&feature...

One of my fave levels in Unleashed. And no, you can't just hold forward. :P

For me it was the complete opposite. Sonic Adventure was a nigh on religious experience for me, having previously only really dabbled in Sonic related things on my friend's sister's Megadrive. That's how far removed Sega was around these.. well THOSE parts, because I've moved to other parts since then.

I'd played Sonic 2 quite a lot on her Megadrive as a youngster, but only got into Sega things proper with the Saturn + VF2 + Sega Rally. NiGHTS was pretty much the stronger Sega mascot experience for me (and is still better than any Sonic game in my humble ((yet pretty sassy)) opinion), but playing Sonic Adventure on the launch day of the Dreamcast was still something hugely special.

I went on to max that game out in every way imaginable, I even played around with the Chao on my VMU. The game has some issues for sure, but nothing too out of the then-sucky-3D-cam-in-gaming ordinary. I mastered it then, and picking it up today I pretty much effortlessly master it now.. though the camera flaws and collision detection issues are far more glaring in comparison with other current polygonal games. And other current Sonic games for that matter.

Sonic Adventure 2 though, that gets little to no love from me. I think it's easily one of the better stories, and I like a lot of the imagery associated with it, but as a game it's what I consider the real start of the downward spiral for those games. Where Sonic Adventure was pretty slow paced and maintained a pretty platform gamey groove - leviating most of the control issues when you learnt the levels - Sonic Adventure 2 tries to keep Sonic and Shadow moving at speeds that the fidelity - the too HIGH fidelity - of the controls never felt comfortable at. It was a twitchy mess, frankly, with only a select few truly playable levels.

That hasn't prevented me from playing every single Sonic game, though, and I've pretty adamant opinions of what's a misstep and what's a step in the right direction. The mental speed is only a problem as long as the controls are calibrated for a typical platformer, but when the controls complement the speedy gameplay, a new type of game emerges that may not be the methodical jump/run thing Megadrive die hards look for, but it's a supremely satisfying experience regardless.

Secret Rings put Sonic on the right track, and Sonic Unleashed followed up its almost racing game like approach with something less rigid and more freeform. Unleashed's biggest vice was that the werewolf bits were forced on you - not even that they were all that horrible if you can stomach some Marvel Ultimate Alliance or whatever - and now Colours shoots for the Sonic bits of Unleashed only.

When you've learnt how do do a flawless run on one of Unleashed's daytime stages and you can keep the boost meter charged, you can push that game to insanely satisfying extremes that kinda evoke memories of F-Zero GX. Finally, at least for me, I don't think Sega could fuck Colours up if they tried.

Apparently Unleashed was called Sonic Adventure 3 on project stage, and there are a few indicators in it like Chao and a Tornado level transistion/mini game. What I miss the most from SA at this point is sort of the "mood" of it though. It had a nice blend of familiar Sonic elements and themes, but also a fleshed out - yet cartoony - supporting "world" around it. I think Unleashed was pretty good about striking a nice stylistic balance, but basing the levels off of real world continents felt strangely detached to me. You could swap Sonic out for any video game mascot and it'd be anyone's "world adventure".

Colours looks like it redeems my gripes with that stuff though. The setup for it is that Robotnik has built all these theme parks, essentially, so I expect them to have plenty of familiar looking elements in them, bringing some decidedly Sonicy Sonicness back.

I'm fairly alone in thinking a hub world is a good idea, but I actually like how it puts things in tangible context. I liked the castle in Mario 64, I liked Station Square/Mystic Ruins in Sonic Adventure, and I like being able to move around freely in a physical space between levels in Ratchet & Clank.

I think you can overdo that stuff (see Sonic 06) and I think you can do it just enough (see Sonic Adventure, Sonic Unleashed 360), but I honestly do like when they have that in there instead of just throwing you into levels haphazardly like SA2 did.