I don’t play Sonic games often, but I wanted to get my hands on Sonic Colors Ultimate for a number of reasons. For starters, the game as a whole looked pretty fun and I heard about all the issues going on with all the graphical glitches and bugs, so I wanted to test it out for myself. Plus, I was able to get the digital deluxe version of the game for under $27 so it was a no brainer for me to get it.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

I personally didn’t experience any of the weird glitches that everyone else was reporting but that could be for a number of reasons. Just as the game was releasing, lots of people started pointing out that many of the glitches were from people who were using emulators and not playing on the actual Switch hardware. This means that there were far fewer glitches than were actually being talked about.

Secondly, there’s already been a patch released so it’s entirely possible that many of the big visual issues were already taken care of before I even started playing the game. Other than that little side note, the game does look really good here and there. Colors is in the name and the game is full of it.

Each world is full of vivid and at times and there’s a decent amount of detail in the course and environment. There was one area where I stopped running and noticed that there was a door to a building that was next to the course and it had a decent amount of detail. That was a lot of detail for something that you were going to dash past and only see for half a second.

However, with so much going on at once on screen and with so many colors and lights all over the place, it can get distracting at times and it can sometimes get a bit hard to look at. Every now and then there might be too much going on or the contrast in colors will be a bit hard to look at. But other than that, there’s some really good visuals.

SOUND: 9/10

Forget the gameplay, forget the graphics, even forget the Sonic name attached to the game. My favorite aspect of the game was easily the sound aspect. There was one issue that I had with the sound, but the rest was amazing in my opinion. The issue that I had was with the combo of sound, voice acting, and music. There were times where I could barely hear the voice acting and had to raise my TV’s overall volume. But then when I started a stage, the sound effects would be way too loud and drive me crazy, so in between each stage I had to keep changing the overall volume.

There was no way to make just the voice acting louder because it was already at max and there was no way to lower the effects volume without also lowering the music volume. Everything else with this category I loved. The voice acting was pretty good and there was a large amount of dialogue to listen to, and the soundtrack was pretty epic as well.

In the main menu, there’s an option to view the media player and listen to all the songs from the game and there were more than 90 in total to choose from. The only thing is that you had to unlock them in the game in order to play them in the media player. There’s a bunch of short tracks like the stage clear one but there’s a bunch of full length ones and many of them are really good.

ADDICTVENESS: 7/10

Personally, I wouldn’t say that the game is super addicting. Each stage is really well made and lots of fun to complete but once you beat a stage for the first time, there isn’t that much enjoyment in going back and doing the same stage over unless you’re really good at the game and want to get the highest score possible. If you want to collect all the collectibles and coins, you might also want to retry some levels but that’s really the only reason for you to retry levels.

If you just want the story and the enjoyment of each level, you’re going to complete each level once and then move on to the next one. Fortunately, there’s enough levels to get a decent amount of gameplay and enjoyment out of the game.

STORY: 7/10

The game revolves around Doctor Eggman opening up this massive theme park in space and it starts with Sonic and Tails sneaking in because they think he’s up to no good. Well, that turns out to be true because you eventually learn that the entire reason for opening the theme park is to harness the energy of the planets for something nefarious. Overall, I think the story was decent. I thought it was a bit on the short end but I can look past that since the game is definitely way more gameplay oriented.

The only aspect that I didn’t personally like was that there were so many moments that felt tailored towards people who are already big fans of the Sonic franchise. I saw lots of moments and jokes that sort of tied into the rest of the franchise that newcomers might not understand. I didn’t really care for this too much because while these moments were very short, they seemed to focus on getting a reaction from the fandom than progressing the story forward.

DEPTH: 9/10

The game does have a lot going on. Many of the stages are very short, with some of the longest ones only lasting a couple of minutes but there are sure a ton of stages for you to get through. Across the game’s multiple worlds there’s a total of 45 stages to clear and nearly 200 red rings to collect. Beating all the levels is one thing but if you’re a completitionist and need to collect all the red rings, you may have to go back and complete each stage a couple times. That’s not even counting the Super Sonic mode which you unlock after collecting the coins.

In addition to the large number of levels, there’s also a ton of customization options. There’s an assortment of gloves, shoes, and other cosmetic options for you to unlock by spending coins. You also have the media player that I mentioned earlier. But not only can you listen to all the music that you unlocked, you can also watch all the cutscenes that you unlocked too and there’s more than two dozen.

Lastly, there’s nearly 50 achievements, and unless you are the kind of person who just wants to play casually, you’re going to end up wasting hours trying to get all of them. All in all, there’s a lot going on in Sonic Colors Ultimate.

DIFFICULTYY: 7

I might just be really bad at Sonic games, but the game was incredibly difficult at times for me. There were plenty of times where the game was just way too fast for me and I couldn’t keep up so I’d end up hitting a wall or enemy. There were also so many times that I missed coins, rings, and other things that I was supposed to get because I would just zoom past them without even noticing and apparently that really hurt my score.

If you have some incredible eyes and some really good coordination, then you won’t really have any trouble, but then if you’re like me, getting a really high score might be somewhat of a problem.

OVERALL: 8/10

Overall, Sonic Colors Ultimate is a lot better than I thought it was. Again, it could be because the game has already been patched and I didn’t run into all those graphical issues. There are also a few minor annoyances with sound and replayability but other than those, it’s a solid game, especially during your first playthrough.

Let’s say it takes you six to ten hours to beat the game the first time, it’s going to be a pretty enjoyable experience. If you need to get all the achievements and every single red ring and high score, then you might be able to push 20 hours or more and have an even better time. Hopefully the future patches that Sega promised can make the game even better, but for now it gets a solid 8 out of 10 from me.