Sonic Colors Ultimate Review Scores Thread

[Milo]

Review aggregates update.

Opencritic - 75 "Strong" (37 reviews), 51% of reviewers would recommend

Metacritic: PS4 - 76 "Generally favorable" (35 reviews), NSW - 73 "Mixed and/or average" (4 reviews), XBO - N/A (1 review), PC - N/A (no reviews)

[NoKaine]

The Switch scores are genuinely surprising. Even the ones that explicitly mention the glitches only go as low as 6/10.

How can a game be seemingly so critically strong despite being held together by gum and tape? And also never get much higher than an 8?

A very aggressive "I had a good time. It could be better but I would love to replay it." 

[Cube]

58 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

The Switch scores are genuinely surprising. Even the ones that explicitly mention the glitches only go as low as 6/10.

How can a game be seemingly so critically strong despite being held together by gum and tape? And also never get much higher than an 8?

A very aggressive "I had a good time. It could be better but I would love to replay it." 

As you have to mess about with menus to encounter the worst bugs, the reviews simply never encountered most of the bad ones when they played the game.

 

One thing about testing is that the number of hours played on launch day will massively exceed the amount of testing a company could possibly do (due to the vast amount of players), and that some players will do unexpected things, which is how things can be completely missed.

[VO.SUPER]

1 hour ago, NoKaine said:

The Switch scores are genuinely surprising. Even the ones that explicitly mention the glitches only go as low as 6/10.

How can a game be seemingly so critically strong despite being held together by gum and tape? And also never get much higher than an 8?

A very aggressive "I had a good time. It could be better but I would love to replay it." 

Well, in NintendoLife's case, their 3 reviewers just hadn't encountered them. It's a glitch you do genuinely have to go out of your way to cause happen and when you're just a reviewer, you're not guaranteed to cause something like this to happen.

[Sonicka]

Exactly that. I think I said earlier (and not to downplay the official problems discovered), but a lot of the bigger issues have to actively be hunted out, so 99% of players just wouldn’t/won’t have come across it.

The other issues sound annoying but clearly are not game breaking, and hopefully will also be looked into.

So the fact that (on switch especially) that the game is scoring an average of around 7.5 isn’t surprising because the game itself still holds up well and isn’t really all that “broken” overall.

The Sonic fanbase of course will highlight any issue and really focus on these things when they are discovered. So on here it will naturally go between “this shit is annoying” to “end of the world” problems with the game as we care a lot more about the quality of the franchise.

When you balance this to the reality of it for most players or reviewers of course they won’t notice the intricacies that we would scrutinise. 

[BadBehavior]

Its like Cyberpunk 2077. Even the PC version wasnt exactly free of bugs but reviewers raved about it for the most part.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I would disagree. Cyberpunk is exactly the game you probably could make a "biased reviewers" argument about. I don't know if CDPR was directly paying review sites or anything, but the amount of PR, promotion, and hype for a 7-year vaporware game, possibly the most hyped AAA game of the decade, was such that giving it a negative review or focusing on the horrible technical issues or toxic work culture of CDPR would actively endanger the reputation of a given review site.

That's not to excuse anything about Colors Ultimate, mind you. I think it's just more likely that the reviewers didn't happen to run into major issues. There's just nothing about the game that would incentivize game journalists to give it a different score than it deserves in their opinion. Let's remember, this topic started with a guy claiming it would get worse reviews because supposedly reviewers are biased against Sonic.

[Sonicka]

2 hours ago, BadBehavior said:

Its like Cyberpunk 2077. Even the PC version wasnt exactly free of bugs but reviewers raved about it for the most part.

Mmm, No. This is nothing like Cyberpunk 2077 - that was a broken mess across lots of platforms (and as said in the above post)

Colours has its fair share of minor niggles which will irritate the larger fanbase, and a major glitch which has to be rooted out and activated in a specific way. 

[Dreadknux]

On 9/5/2021 at 12:18 AM, NoKaine said:

SEGA doesn't have the money to pay reviewers to say nice things about a Sonic game (or no Sonic game would have bad reviews)--if they were negative, then they would make a review embargo like they did with Rise of Lyric and I think Forces.

There is no way reviewers would choose to ignore glitches in a Sonic game, especially legitimately harmful glitches that may cause seizures. 

I think this is a good point worth bringing up, because the chat online lately has become "why didn't any reviewers see the terribleness of these glitches"? For my part, regarding my TSS review, there's a simple explanation for that.

I just didn't experience anything major.

I might have been exceptionally lucky, but honestly, 99% of my time with Sonic Colours Ultimate was perfectly fine. That's not to say there weren't glitches and weirdness going on (as I mention in my review) but it wasn't anything game-breaking. And, as many reviewers were also playing on the PS4 version of the game, I expect this is true of many others who reviewed the game. There's audio glitches, a few scaffolding disappearances (I only experienced one major instance of this), and the rare instance of Sonic hilariously darting OOB, but these amount to only a couple of 'WTF' moments that don't really impact your play (unless you were going for that S Rank in which case, you'll curse a bit). But mostly, you'll just laugh and move on. I've played SCU for a solid week since my review and have encountered nothing like what people are seeing on the Nintendo Switch version, I promise you.

Now, of course there are people who are getting weird game save corruption on PS4/5 too, I've personally never experienced that and I'm not taking anything away from that issue (that is a critical issue and it really sucks) but it seems to be happening to an extremely small number of people. Definitely doesn't seem to have happened to any reviewers anyway. And I think the default conclusion to take here when reviews don't mention things like this is simply, "They didn't experience it" rather than "they were clearly lying/hiding/shilling for SEGA." What benefit would a reviewer have to do any of that, lol?

Can't speak for anyone who reviewed the Switch version though. Seems like there were some issues there beyond that epilepsy-inducing one.

[TheOcelot]

With today being the official release of the physical version more reviews have been added to Metacritic:

The Switch has 5 reviews and currently sits at 65 - ouch

Xbone has 4 reviews and sits at 75

PS4 has 46 reviews and is holding steady at 76

Meanwhile the PC Epic release hasn't had any reviews so far....

Opencritic score of 74

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

16 hours ago, BadBehavior said:

Its like Cyberpunk 2077. Even the PC version wasnt exactly free of bugs but reviewers raved about it for the most part.

It's no where close to Cyberpunk 2077. Lol.

Compared to the mass corruption, tomfoolery bug programming, non-existent quality control, and bug-ridden ventures make Ultimate look supremely patched by comparison.

Hell, meme 'em all you want, the bugs in Ultimate don't reach the infamy of Cyberpunk 2077. Hell, unlike 2077, it's clear that glitch-free experiences are relatively common in Ultimate whereas with Cyberpunk, you'd be lucky to take two steps in that game without something going wrong.

That's to say nothing of potentially bribed reviews in Cyberpunk's case.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

39 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

That's to say nothing of potentially bribed reviews in Cyberpunk's case.

To be fair - when initial reviews came out for Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR specifically only gave out review codes for the PC version - which was the most stable experience by far, and from there, immense hype from the game more or less carried it to the ridiculously overrated status it has. Several review sites - after the news broke about how broken the console ports were - then took it upon themselves to do a second review to clarify the situation and call out how shit the console ports were:

It's unlikely to be a case of bribery, more that CDPR was purposefully misleading review sites and hiding the information behind the actual state of the console ports of the game.

It's besides the point, given this is about Colours, but it's important to state that after the ridiculous tangent we had earlier in the thread regarding Sonic and Pokemon scores. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Hence why I put it down as "potentially". There was a lot to suggest that some of the glowing reviews may have been bribed, but nothing solid came of it.

30 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It's unlikely to be a case of bribery, more that CDPR was purposefully misleading review sites and hiding the information behind the actual state of the console ports of the game.

Either are scummy,  but I do see your point.

[JezMM]

On 9/5/2021 at 2:30 AM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Can I just say - screw the Big Chasers in this version of the game. They took an annoying enemy from Colours as is, somehow managed to make him more annoying (If you dash ahead in certain sections, you can have the camera outpan him so you can see his attacks any longer), and sometimes he just gets random speed boosts out of absolutely nowhere so he can still land a hit on Sonic even if boosting - this actually lost me my S-Rank on Terminal Velocity Act 1 due to him managing to hit me literally as the level faded out and I was boosting at that, making me lose my ring bonus.

Worst of the lot however is a graphical bug in Terminal Velocity Act 1 where - once you get to the section where you have to outrun Big Chaser while Motobugs flood the screen, one of the lasers will glitch out and not show any visuals, making it a complete and total guess as to where he's going to hit. This means it's practically RNG at the last section of the level, and if you die, you redo the entirety of it all over again. This sucked in the original game, and it's even worse now.

The Big Chasers seem identical to the original for me.  The trick I find is to ration your boost - keep in range of them, do a quick boost to dodge their swing attack, quick-step the lasers if you went far enough to trigger them, repeat.  On TV1, once the camera pans out and they're no longer on-screen, you can start holding down boost the entire time until the end of the stage.  As long as you are killing motobugs constantly as you go, the boost meter will stay filled.  If you're boosting the whole time, the lasers won't reach you no matter where they are (can't say I've had the glitch where either laser is invisible on PC, but if you're boosting you don't need to see them anyway - they were too short notice to dodge afer the camera changes in the original too anyway).  I got an S rank on TV1 using this method (which seems to pretty much come down to "max out the quick-step bonus as fast as possible during the safer parts of the stage by constantly flicking back and forth between legitimate dodges, and then just don't get hit until the end so your rings mean something when the score is tallied up at the end".

[Milo]

Review aggregate update.

Opencritic - 73 "Fair" (43 reviews), 49% of reviewers would recommend

Metacritic: PS4 - 74 "Mixed and/or average" (39 reviews), XBO - 72 "Mixed and/or average" (5 reviews), NSW - 65 "Mixed and/or average" (5 reviews), PC - N/A (no reviews)

The discrepancy between the “early access”/pre-release batch of reviews and the post-release reviews pouring in is becoming all the more apparent.

[NoKaine]

Nintendo World Report explicitly stated they had to delay their review because of the seizure glitches, so I would assume that other reviewers had to actively change their review to support their findings and gave it a lower score.

I would also think the very public reaction to the glitches also spurred more reviewers to mention them and rate accordingly.

I don't think there's some kind of conspiracy or willful ignorance on the positive reviewers' part, though. 

[Milo]

End-of-week review aggregate update.

Opencritic: 74 "Fair" (54 reviews), 50% of reviewers would recommend

Metacritic:

PS4 - 74 "Mixed and/or average" (39 reviews)

XBO - 75 "Generally positive" (7 reviews)

NSW - 64 "Mixed and/or average" (6 reviews)

PC - N/A (1 review)

Will probably do one final review aggregate update a week from today.

[Zoomzeta]

On 9/8/2021 at 9:10 AM, NoKaine said:

Nintendo World Report explicitly stated they had to delay their review because of the seizure glitches, so I would assume that other reviewers had to actively change their review to support their findings and gave it a lower score.

I would also think the very public reaction to the glitches also spurred more reviewers to mention them and rate accordingly.

I don't think there's some kind of conspiracy or willful ignorance on the positive reviewers' part, though. 

So I saw the CVG podcast a few days ago, and according to a reviewer who's friends with the crew, it's possible the issues were a result of a patch.

To be more specific, reviewers were given early review copies of the game which were apparently more stable when they played and reviewed the game, and when a patch was loaded, that's when the bugs and glitches reared their ugly heads.

That's what I understood.

[Milo]

Metascore update, one week after release.

Opencritic: 74 "Fair" (69 reviews), 51% of reviewers would recommend

Metacritic:

PS4 - 74 "Mixed and/or average" (45 reviews)

XBO - 74 "Mixed and/or average" (9 reviews)

NSW - 64 "Mixed and/or average" (10 reviews)

PC - N/A (1 review)

I think the metascores have stabilized by this point (any future reviews will probably be in the same nature of the ones we have now), and I'm not expecting much more reviews to be posted afterwards anyway. So unless the score changes significantly (at least by a 2 or more point difference from where they are now), these are likely the final standings.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Hyuga has improved Sonic's mouth and eye animations.

 

[Sonicka]

Sweet. Admittedly I thought it was better anyway - but this IS much better.