Sonic Unleashed

"When the sun goes down, things turn around..."

Sonic unleashed- Great game, but only during the day.

Story: Sonic is in battle with Eggman in space. Eggman captures sonic and zaps out the chaos energy, thus making him mutated. Sonic falls to earth, to find a flying dog thing that he eventually names chip. The planet is broken up, so sonic and chip must go around the continents and restore power to the chaos emeralds, thus restoring the planet.

Gameplay-Daytime: BRILLIANT. ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. You watch trailers for this game and think, "Thats so fast it's gonna be hard to control" Well, its not. The controls run very smoothly. One thing I didn't like about the controls is how they did homing attack. Instead of using the A button, they assigned it to the X button, along with boost, which can be annoying sometimes. The levels switch from 3d to the classic 2d seamlessly, which is a nice touch. Sonic's new abilities are: Sonic drift, which allows you to... Well.... Drift. Stomp, which destroys anything below you. Sonic also has a move Called foot sweep that destroys any near-by crates or enemies. Another move sonic has is quick step, which allows sonic to avoid obsticles easily. If you hold down B, sonic crouches. If you hold B while running, sonic can slide under walls. Sonic can do a wall jump also, Mario-style. Sonic can't spin dash in this version, however. When sonic is near rings, he can do a light-speed dash.

Gameplay-Nighttime: Not as good as daytime. Sonic goes a LOT slower at night, and werehog's sections involve puzzles and combat.The basic design: Solve a puzzle. Brawl. Jump off a cliff. Brawl a even bigger group. It keeps going on.

Graphics: The most beautiful game on 360. Better than rise of a ninja, even. Almost everything has a animation for it. For Example: There is a glitch in the second daytime stage where a 2d area is in 3d. The grass below you has a sound and a animation, And yet you are not supposed to be there.

Music: Excellent. In most sonic games, the better the music, the worse the game. Not in this case.

Voice acting: A lot better than in recent games. Sonic sounds better, and puts more emotion in his voice. Tails, however, still sounds like a girl.

Overall: 8/10. It's a buy, unless you don't like to spend 5 min. Brawling. Its a step forward for the franchise.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/09

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