(Yes, 'Colours', I prefer that spelling. The 'U' is for 'uFun!')

Well, I've been waiting for this game for quite some time, and I think it's a rather fitting time as ever to post my thoughts on it. Sega makes an exciting, colorful return to a new game on the Wii, and I love it so.

I'll mark out the appropriate cutscene-related spoilers, but other than that, I only speak about the gameplay as a whole. I haven't completeed the game yet, myself, so I can't really speak about the story in its entirety anyway, although I -will- say that they've done well to return to a lighthearted storyline format. It's pretty nice!

Anywho, onward.

At a glance, Sonic Colours is pretty much Sonic Unleashed in the daytime mode, sponsoring all four of the main control types for the Wii. You have the standard 2D-3D transitions throughout the stages per Hedgehog Engine form, you have drifting, quickstepping, boosting when necessary, the works. Except, the gameplay's been tweaked and refined to an extent that it's almost an entirely new feel -- and that's for the better, honestly.

Homing attack has been fixed so that Boosting and Homing didn't share the same button, for one. Homing stays on the A button (depending on your controller), and if you do not have a lock-on, you will not home in onto nothing and accidentally throw yourself down a pitfall, but rather, you'll do a short hop of a double-jump. There's a lot more control on Sonic if you have to slow down and take it easy for a second, which, believe it or not, you'll be doing plenty of. There's still the sense that you're merely moving along a set line from Point A to Point B, but there are a lot more means of which to move about this line, making for some rather interesting twists and turns as you progress through the stage. A lot more emphasis on the initial platforming, and less of the focus on what some referred to as a controlled rollercoaster ride from Unleashed. You'll find yourself stopping to scale platforms, hit springs, and try to reach the highest point of the stage in order to see what kind of neat goodies you can find. Rings, Wisps... even neat little red ring medallions, to which there are five to a stage. Also, something that most people will be happy for, the pitfalls being the primary reason for player casualties is no more. My usual deaths-by-pitfall ratio has gone from 3/4s of my fails to about 1/4. Now it's actually stage obstacles and enemies that do just as much, if not more, to my life counter. A relief to see that the game developers addressed that part.

And now, we get into the meat of the game -- the Wisps! There are several of these little guys, and when you start the game, it's your task to go to the Acts which they are present for first-time use, to free them and unlock their abilities in the other stages. Once you do, you'll open up a handful of different paths and tasks which can only be undertaken once a specific wisp has been unlocked. The already-talked about abilities, such as the Laser Wisp, or the Drill Wisp, do so much to enhance the gameplay and send you into new directions to explore, it's quite a change of pace from new-game additions of the past that broke the fast-paced flow of the game. These abilities do nothing to detract from the game -- all it takes is a bit of easy-to-pick-up skill to use these power-ups to the fullest extent. I am quite pleased with the varied moves provided by the Wisps, and I welcome them as a -good- addition to this game.

Now, Audio... here's where we get into some bad territory. Now, first off, the music is -great-. The beats are catchy, the tunes befit their locations, per Sonic tradition the tune changes up every act or so (See about three different variations per World), and I've already caught myself humming a tune or two, and I've only had the game for one day. Sound effects are simple, but they -work-, and don't really do anything super-extravagant to try and catch your ears. As a whole, the soundtrack for the game just -works-, and I love every bit of it. Though, the music for Sweet Mountain does leave a little bit to be desired... But, that's really all I have to say about the music. Now, where this game falls the most short for me is, unfortunately, the scripting and the voice acting. Now, as most of us are already pretty aware, SonicTeam recently enlisted new VAs for their games. For this addition to the series, we have Mike Pollock reprising his role as Dr. Eggman, but we have an actor who was the voiceover for Sakura on Naruto, I believe, taking on the role of Tails, and a fellow who had such roles as Chris Redfield in RE5 and Ezio from Assassin's Creed to take on Sonic. Now, I'll be up front -- the first time I heard these two, I was a little crestfallen. Tails wasn't really any different to me from before, but Sonic... I can -not- get used to Roger Craig Smith do this voice over. Sonic sounds a bit too much 'older', I guess you could say, and the acting itself is... pretty unsavory... Now, granted, I kind of half-blame this on the scriptwriting.

Honestly, I'll get this out of the way, and say that the voicework for Dr. Eggman is really good. He does his job well, and even with some of the shakier scriptlines, he does a decent job with his acting. However, the two who suffer the most from the script is Sonic and Tails. Some of the lines were actually rather funny, but the trend commonly shifts into humor that might even be -too- childlike.

Onward, minor spoilers!

There's a running gag that they keep trying to run with where Tails and a translator for alien speak continues to spout out incorrect and correct translations of what the Wisps are trying to say, like 'The planet was brought here either by ice cream, or by a -tractor beam-", or other things like that. I didn't mind it from the first scene, although the lines were pretty iffy then, too, but the fact that they keep going with it is actually beginning to grate my nerves a bit. At some point, we also see the translator give out another name for Eggman from the aliens (Baldy NoseHair, to be precise), to which Sonic practically has a -laughing fit-, and says, "Baldy McNoseHair!! Hahahahaha!" Even for Sonic, to me, this just seems -really- over the top. Another cutscene has him -yelling- at the top of his lungs at a boss robot about how he WILL destroy him, and how he WILL save those wisps, and it was akin to that of a little kid waving his cardboard sword at a pretend monster, yelling as loud as he can, and as -dramatically- as he can, to get his point across.

These are but a few examples, and I didn't mean to go quite so extensive into this as I have, but these are really the only critical thoughts I have about the audio. I was actually expecting a lot more out of the Madworld scriptwriters than what I've seen in the game, which sounds unfair, because not every line is badly directed or read off in these manners -- Some of the lines are -genuinely funny-, and Eggman has some of the best I've heard in a while. I just can't hear half of what he says in-stage because the audio is just -twice- as loud as the voicing during that time, and there's no option to toggle the volumes between Music and SoundFX, which... I'll be honest, was a pretty poor choice on Sega's part. C'mon, guys, as I recall, you had that in every major Sonic game on the consoles; what gives this time around?

One more thing I'd like to go over is the game's visual presentation. For being on the Wii, this game looks -outstanding-. The visuals are bright and vibrant, there are hardly any dull backgrounds or uninventive stage setups. Everything just looks so gorgeous, and is practically total -eye candy-. This is one of the things that I desire in my Sonic games. The games of old were always so colorful and pretty, and the 3D games lately were never too on-par with that particular task, although Unleashed on the 360 had some of the -best- visuals for a Sonic game I had every had the pleasure to see.

As for replayability, what else can I say? There are S ranks to obtain, there are red ring medals to collect, there's even a challenge mode in which you can play from Stage 1 Act 1, and continue for as far as you are able to go. There's even a multiplayer mode, but I have yet to really toy with that as of right now. But I'll be changing that very soon.

Overall, this game looks great, this game -feels- great, this game PLAYS great. It even SOUNDS great, but there are, again, issues that I have that kind of lower the score on that one. My recommendation? If you are a Sonic fan, -get this game-. It is an absolute -sweet- buy, although I can't say anything about the DS version. This review is Wii-only. If you own a Wii console, and need something new and delightful to play, go pick this up! It's worth it, I'd say.