Sonic Unleashed

"The Werewolf Game, Occasionally Guest-starring Sonic"

If this wasn't a Sonic the Hedgehog game, I'd enjoy this game more. I'd give it 9/10. Unfortunately, it IS a Sonic the Hedgehog game, and it's seriously lacking one major thing about the franchise: Sonic the HEDGEHOG.

This game is 90% Werehog, 10% Sonic. Seriously, there are only 7 "true" Sonic stages in the entire game, and each can be finished in ten minutes. There are two secondary Sonic stages, usually gimmicky jumping crap that last about 2 minutes each and are necessary and worthless.

There are 2 Werehog stages in each country. Each one, to finish completely (meaning you get the medals you need) takes about 30 minutes, and that's without dying. This is ridiculous. It's too much work to design a Sonic game on a next gen platform? Funny, because I'm pretty sure Sonic Rush 1+2 could fit fine on an Xbox 360 with a graphical overhaul and play perfectly fine - and that's all you'd really need.

There's no point in leveling up any of Sonic's skills at all. Level his speed up too much, and he'll be uncontrollable. Unlike Secret Rings, which you could use to customize performance, it's nothing but lighting a fire under Sonic's ass.

The Sonic levels in general are longer but less interesting than Secret Ring's. Most of the variety Secret Rings is absent. The gimmicks have been replaced mostly with annoying quicktime events or stuff that just rapidly shoots you forward non-stop.

Sonic's controls are bizarre. At low enough speeds, it plays like Sonic Adventure and is fairly responsive. Go fast enough and you basically "mode change" into Secret Rings mode.

Werehog is awesome and horrible at the same time. I feel like I'm playing Kingdom Hearts in the combat. This is a GOOD thing. There's lots of fun things and powerful moves you can do. Also good. You feel powerful and agile, great. You move in an interesting way. But you look like absolute garbage. If you looked like an actual werewolf and this was a game called "Wendigo Rage" or "Path of the Werewolf" and had an actually good design, it would be cool. Everytime you get a glimpse of Sonic's face, it's revolting, though. Also, Empire City Night is one of the most frustrating levels in video game history.

OK, so final thoughts: Sega should seriously just farm out a total 2D platformer for Sonic out to Dimps. If they wanted to do the Werehog, they should have mixed up the platforming stages more. See, Sonic has always been missing transformations/ridable animals that so many other platformers have, and is the corner stone of Mario and various other games. If they wanted to do a game where Sonic had a number of transformations based on time or item pickups or something like Kameo - fine, that'd be a cool idea. All Werehog all the time is just monotonous, though. This just feels like SEGA being lazy. If they didn't want to design so many stages, why not just use the Mission System like in Secret Rings and have a variety of fun objectives for each level? They could have done more 2-D levels, more Sonic missions, or both - and it would have actually FELT like a Sonic game without significantly more work. Also, slowing Sonic down might help. He's just plain too fast 100% of the time in this game, so none of the clever platforming using stomping or breaks like in Secret Rings or the original Gensis games are there.

The Werehog was fun, but it needed it's own game and to be expanded upon by itself. I kept on thinking that this would be even better if I was Cornell and this was Castelvania Werewolf for the Xbox and I was mowing through Dracula's minions and actually looked like a proper monster.

In conclusion, this is 90% of a clever but not too inventive werewolf game occasionally guest-starring Sonic the Hedgehog - sometimes. But not often. Seriously, Sonic Advance 1-3, and Sonic Rush 1 and 2, and Secret Rings all have more Sonic in each of their games than this game. Really, come to think of it, you spend more time playing Sonic in the games where you have all his lame friends along than you do in Sonic Unleashed, where he's supposed to be the only playable character. It blows my mind. For every ten minutes of Sonic, you get an HOUR of Werehog, at LEAST.

On a side note: I just realized, that if Super Sonic is Super Saiyan, Werehog is Oozaru.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/09

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