If you’re starting out with memories of the Sonic Rush games fresh in mind, Sonic Colors will be immediately disorienting. The game is built upon on the Sonic Rush engine, and though the basics of control remain somewhat familiar, nearly every aspect of how the player interacts with the world has changed. All of the leg stomps, slide kicks and wall jumps from the Wii version of Colors are present, but the biggest change from Sonic Rush is how the player charges up the the boost meter. In the Rush series, boosting not only sent Sonic tearing through levels at untold speeds, but made the player nearly invincible in the process. But in order to use the boost, you were first required to charge it up – done by executing long strings of acrobatic flips and spins via the game’s simplistic trick system. Sonic Colors retains the same basic concept of boosting and boost energy, but makes the player work a bit harder to charge it up. Boost energy is only acquired by picking up Wisp capsules that refill the meter or from destroying enemies. The net effect is that while in Sonic Rush you usually have enough energy to boost everywhere at maximum speed, Colors asks you to take things a little more slowly and conserve your energy – at least, until you figure out where all of the boost refills are located, and from there you can resume running around like a maniac to your heart’s content. This results in a far more gentle pace to ease new players in to the ultra-fast world of recent Sonic games, as the more experienced the player is, the more they discover ways to maintain high speeds for longer periods of time. 
 
Speed is all well and good, but can only take you so far. ( Keep reading...)