Indigo Rush

No Sonic at the Olympic Games? Smfh

Mean Bean Machine being top tier is unironically correct though

All this kerfuffle about the remixes being worse feels like the Sonic community is gaslighting itself, tbh. On one hand there is absolutely no shortage of complainers asking what the point is and saying it's worse, yet we have people losing their mind over Jun Senoue remixing something and going bananas over that Aquarium Park remix they showed off earlier. 

Meanwhile with game mechanics, I wonder if the fans who say the life system is archaic and believe Colors to be too easy for lives to matter are the same that are upset over them rehauling the life system. Y'know, the game where lives don't matter. 

Honestly for me I think the easiest thing to do is just not care what others think. All the decisions being made for Colors Ultimate makes perfect sense and already goes above and beyond the bare minimum they needed to do (I'll admit they scared me a bit with the ugly lighting from the earlier footage, but it looks way better now) and I think that'll make this the definitive version of Colors for me, personally.

The community isn't a mess of contradictions. People just had differences in opinions on Colors and these changes from the start.

It kind of feels like it, though? I've been around long enough to know Sonic fans aren't a hivemind, but I'm just trying to figure out the general consensus. 

Besides which, among the complaints, how many are from fans who hated Sonic Colors to begin with?

There are just a lot of different opinions out there, and without noting which individuals/groups are saying specific things, it's not going to be very easy to get much of a consensus. Different voices come out at different volumes for different issues.

Regarding the soundtrack, I think that what we've heard so far is mostly fine, but unnecessary and inferior to the originals. But it's also REALLY hard to think that anything other than the originals could sound "right" when that's what I've been hearing for 11 years now. I'm very hard to sway on customisable or updated soundtracks and other such things. The originals are always correct and therefore better to me.

Yeah, that is true. My own personal perspective at the moment is just that seeing completely opposite opinions no matter what platform I'm looking at this from is getting to be its own fresh hell as someone who likes to write and journal about these sorts of things.

I suppose that in and of itself could be the leading narrative. 

The OST can be toggled. I believe it was Tomoya Ohtani himself that tweeted that after some backlash.

That should at least fix the soundtrack problem people have, then. 

"modern" lighting, the overhauled life system and the customization all feel like stuff targeted squarely at new players.There's not much here for returning players to get excited about. I'd go as far as to say some of these changes make for an inferior experience if you have the original as a point of comparison, but I get that I'm not their intended audience for this.

They've said over and over again that this remaster was intended to capitalize on the success of the film and give all those new fans an in. Sonic Colors makes perfect sense to hold that position, but if they're flat out admitting established Sonic fans aren't the priority here you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of established sonic fans aren't so hot on it.

I sorta get what you mean. Lives system aside (which I feel ought not to matter as Sonic fans wouldn't be seeing the game over screen anyway) what exactly is it about the presence of optional content like an alternate OST or costumes that makes the game worse? 

I definitely understand the lighting issue, and the lack of a higher frame rate for Switch. Those can be considered objective flaws and your mileage will vary with the former while the latter is an unfortunate but absolutely dockable offense. Again, reflecting on what I've observed since I made this status is the presence of optional content that I'm struggling to sympathize with, at least in regards to the more vitriolic backlash. Am I making sense?

(as a quick footnote, I like that lives are effectively replaced with currency for the costumes. I believe it's a more useful purpose for collecting 100 rings, especially if we want to distance ourselves from an archaic life-centric model for platformers in general, not just for Sonic. I can take or leave the Tails Assist feature, but its innocent enough, it isn't hurting anything, probably helping moreso)

I'm not going to harp on the live system too much since it's ultimately not a big deal but I don't like it when a developer's approach to accessibility is gutting systems that are fun to manipulate in your favor, like the lives counter, and not replace them with anything. It's not actually very fun to do that in Colors but that might have been worth exploring instead of chopping it out. I do wish that they would consider adding features for more experienced players with the same eagerness that they simplify things for less experienced players. I would have been excited about a rerelease that added challenge levels or something like that.

The alternate OST has been getting heat for making the game worse because a lot of people aren't actually aware that it's optional. It might be worth putting the word out about that. I don't mind most of the new tracks and I've known that it's optional for months anyway so I don't really care but yeah.

Vitrolic backlash is a thing but Sonic fans have always been hyperbolic. I feel like focusing on that is kind of a waste of time because it's never going to stop. I prefer to weed out the good, reasonable criticism so that someone important might actually catch it through all the noise.

They did run the risk of making it look worse with the whole early build's lighting fiasco, but its turning out a lot better with the most recent screenshots we're seeing. Kind of hyped now.

"perfectly servicible" is putting that OST mildly but you have a point 

Writing for a Sonic fansite has conditioned me to be as neutral as possible, or else 

I'm moderately hesitant to believe that when they don't bother remixing Sweet Mountain's theme with an actual orchestral band

It's the third or fourth best OST of the franchise, hands down. First is SA1 obviously.

Right. They're putting in effort and it shows.

To be fair, the music team almost always goes about ten times harder than the rest of the product does in most Sonic games.  When Colours was already a well-recieved game with a great soundtrack, of course the music team are gonna feel the need to bump that great soundtrack up to 11.

I'm liking the effort they're putting into Ultimate and hope remasters/remakes of other Sonic games in future also get the same treatment.

is this post right here, officer

Umm...

Yes

Five years. 

Five. fucking years.

A topic title like that, I should've seen it coming

Basically sonic 1.

Bruh if that story structure is the same you can keep it lol 

Cel-shaded Sonic looking like any games 2d key was a thing I wanted since before the dawn of time. Too bad whatever cel shades textures they do Sega would just lazily paste them onto the same decade outdated models with practical no stylization, completely ruin the look from the start

For instance, what ever the hell they were going for here-