Sonic Unleashed

"Sonic Unleashed-If your opinion of Sonic games hasn't already made your choice..."

Sonic has always has always been a very controversial topic. There are those that will swear their life by his games and there are those that will just give up. If you've played any of Sonic's recent games, your decision to buy this game is probably already made. I can assure you that this game will only further enhance your feelings about Sonic. Some will go crazy over this game with things like "Greatest 3D Sonic game yet!" and others just won't play it due to better judgement.

And here's my review...

Story:

Let's face it, Sonic Team has never been very bright in this area. After the Sonic Adventure series, the storylines of their games just plain out don't carry the games anymore. You start out as Sonic in a very good looking opening Cinematic that actually makes this game look fun as sonic runs around very fast and utterly destroys an army of robots while dodging missles. Then you get to witness the terrible fall of this Sonic game, when Sonic turns into a "Werehog". Then the world is broken in seven pieces and you are sent to temples across the world to put it back together. Nothing worth drooling over as this story was really made for 7 year olds.

Gameplay:
After seeing the opening cinematic, I was highly excited to play this game. The first level of this game only further enhanced this feeling as the scenery was beautiful and running around in this new version of Sonic's highly paced levels felt like a dream. If only the rest of the game was like this. You are then sent to a completely useless city hub that was purely made to waste your time as it only leads to the level entry hubs that also want a piece of your time. THEN, levels require you have a certain amount of Day and Night tokens which means you must return to the crappy levels you thought you were finished with and all you are left with is a life thats many hours shorter. Thats just the overworld, mind you. Another flaw of the daytime levels is that they require a form of precognition if you expect to beat a level on the first try.

Once you get to the Werehog stages, you can really start eating your controller. Its a horrible attempt at taking the brilliant ideas from God of War and breaking them. Apparently this was meant to be the meat and bones of the game as theres only two stats to enhance in the day form while theres about seven in the Werehog form. Sonic Team also missed the memo about quick time events being not fun and decides to also take advantage of that bad game mechanic, not to mention they still use the horrible lives system. I'm left wondering why Sonic Team keeps trying to add these stupid knockoff gimmicks as if their games didn't already have a hard enough time getting played.

Graphics/Sound:
If Sonic Team did one thing right, it was this. The soundtrack is great and the graphics are beautiful if only the gameplay were this good. The cinematics are pretty good looking too, though rather childish.

Overall:
Like I said before, your opinion is probably already made for this series and if you're one of the people waiting for a good Sonic game that doesn't rely on gimmicky gameplay, then keep waiting. If you're a hardcore sonic fan, you probably already have this game and will swear to its success. I however, will keep waiting.

6/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/09

Game Release: Sonic Unleashed (US, 11/20/08)