Every new Sonic release carries a hope that Sega’s blue hedgehog will be able to regain the form that made him a star in the early ’90s. And most every venture into the third dimension has resulted in various degrees of failure. Sonic Unleashed is able to buck the trend started by previous Sonic adventures and continued by the high-definition versions of this very same game. The Wii version uses the same concepts as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 renditions, pairing Sonic’s trademark speed through loops and over collapsing bridges with slow-paced werehog levels that focus on precise platforming and hand-to-hand combat. However, with entirely new levels and much more responsive controls, the Wii version is a vastly superior experience. The combat is repetitive, and there aren’t enough levels that focus entirely on speed, but Unleashed is an ultimately fun adventure that brings back fond memories of Sonic’s heyday.

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Rings let you pull off a super burst for even more speed.

The story begins with Dr. Eggman shooting the world with a giant ray gun. Predictably, the planet breaks apart, but there is an unexpected side effect as well. Innocuous Sonic gets transformed into a giant, mean-looking creature called a werehog. This abomination emerges only when the sun goes down, and the game lets you play stages during the day and at night to make full use of your dual personalities. Even though there are an equal number of hedgehog and werehog stages, most of your time in Sonic Unleashed will be spent at night, given that the shallow combat takes far longer than the sprint-to-the-finish-line hedgehog races.

The traditional Sonic levels are a blast. You’ll sprint across the land at top speeds, just like Sonic is supposed to do, and tight controls make the whole thing very enjoyable. It’s incredibly easy to snatch precious rings as you sprint by, target enemies to leap to higher platforms, and wall-jump up tight passageways, all without slowing down for even a second. The responsive controls are the backbone of this adventure, making it fun and rewarding to sprint through these levels as fast as possible, but the level design also deserves praise. Everything is intelligently laid out, letting you see obstacles well in advance. You’ll never find yourself running into an unseen wall of spikes or falling down a pit because you couldn’t see a platform located beneath you. Punishment is also kept to a minimum. Often, if you miss an important jump, you’ll merely fall to another part of the level and continue on your way. When you do die, you are placed near where you fell off, which encourages you to experiment with more-difficult paths through levels.

The biggest problem with the hedgehog levels is that there are not enough of them. Each of the eight unique environments has only one hedgehog stage to run through. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, considering that the same levels can be replayed with different tasks, but it is disappointing to have only a handful of different worlds to sprint through. Your main goal is always to get to the finish line in whichever manner you choose, but the other goals add restrictions that offer some variety. For instance, you’ll be asked to collect a certain amount of rings or plow through a level without being hit by an enemy. Each instance adds a few tweaks to the basic layout, but the dearth of new worlds is grating after a while. Nevertheless, seeing as how the levels are so fun to play, you’ll still find yourself going back to set new records or search for branching paths that you missed the first time.

Combat may be flashy, but it’s also really boring.

The werehog levels are a drastic change of pace from those of the hedgehog. These levels are split between mindless combat and deliberate platforming, though you’ll thankfully spend longer navigating the environment than destroying forgettable enemies. You have a few standard platforming tricks up your sleeve, such as double-jumping across treacherous pits and climbing up poles, but you also have stretchable arms that let you reach distant platforms. This twist doesn’t add a whole lot to the experience, merely giving you more leeway when you’re trying to leap across gaps. Camera control is taken out of your hands, but the game almost always gives you an optimal view to traverse these environments. The slower pace is pretty jarring after playing the superspeedy Sonic levels, but it can still be satisfying to play as the werehog.

Jumping and grabbing is an enjoyable, if uninspired, experience, but the combat you’ll have to endure is anything but. It is mindless to a fault, forcing you to repeat the same attacks throughout the entire game. Each arm is controlled independently, but there isn’t a difference between your right-hand and left-hand attacks. There is no strategy or skill needed; you simply rush headfirst into battle and let your werehog limbs fly. You’ll unlock more combos as you progress through the game, but you won’t have to worry about pulling off any specific moves in the heat of battle. Mashing without thought is all you need to succeed, which makes these combat encounters awfully boring. There are only a handful of battles in each level, and you can dispatch the enemies fairly quickly, but these brawls make the werehog levels more tedious than they should be.

Sonic is just running away from his problems again.

The visuals are cheery and inviting in Sonic Unleashed. The camera adjusts during loop runs and rail grinds to show a cinematic angle, letting you enjoy the scenic vistas as Sonic speeds by. The frame rate stays high, even when you’re battling giant robots while sprinting along twisted paths. Sonic is at its best when you’re flying through the levels at top speeds, and Unleashed is able to capture that enjoyment quite well. The responsive controls are easily adaptable depending on your preferences. You can use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, Classic, or GameCube controllers. Regardless of which controller you use, the hedgehog sections rely on the analog stick and buttons to get by–only sprinting requires a sharp whack from your Wii Remote. In the werehog stages, you’ll have to swing your arms to punch, which gets exhausting after a while. Regardless, no matter which option you choose, the controls are responsive.

The Seamstress

Sonic Unleashed for the Wii is completely different from its high-definition counterparts, and is all the stronger for it. The hedgehog’s speed is captured quite well here, letting you fly through levels with ease. The werehog sections are a bit too plodding, but the platforming sections are still quite enjoyable. It’s just a shame that you’ll spend more of your time controlling the lumbering werehog than the speedy hedgehog. Even if you have to endure a few too many boring werehog fights, it’s still worth playing through this adventure just to see Sonic sprint again.

Source [ GameSpot ]

Every new Sonic release carries a hope that Sega’s blue hedgehog will be able to regain the form that made him a star in the early ’90s. And most every venture into the third dimension has resulted in various degrees of failure. Sonic Unleashed was supposed to provide the unrelenting speed fans have been clamoring for, and it does finally offer a healthy dose of turbo-charged levels to burn through. Unfortunately, even with Sonic’s trademark speed finally on full display, Unleashed lacks one very important element: fun. The imprecise platforming, absentminded camera, and poor level design make Sonic’s levels an unplayable mess, while his baffling transformation into lumbering werehog comes with a whole new slew of problems. Put simply, there is no reason to play Sonic Unleashed.

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Flaming punches and stretchy arms aren’t as cool as they sound.

The story begins with Dr. Eggman shooting the world with a giant ray gun. Predictably, the planet breaks apart, but there is an unexpected side effect as well. Innocuous Sonic gets transformed into a giant, mean-looking creature called a werehog. This abomination emerges only when the sun goes down, and the game allows you to play stages during the day and at night to make full use of your dual personalities. Even though there are an equal number of hedgehog and werehog stages, most of your time in Sonic Unleashed will be spent at night, since the arduous combat levels take far longer to complete than the sprint-to-the-finish-line hedgehog races.

The werehog levels are extremely tedious. The levels are evenly divided between platforming and fighting, but both elements offer more frustration than excitement. Even though you can unlock more combos as you progress through the journey, your combat strategy never evolves beyond mindlessly tapping two attack buttons with an occasional jump thrown in for good measure. You’re given a shield for when things get too hectic, but it’s hardly ever necessary. The enemies are stupid, blithely standing around until you take the fight to them, and their lack of variety becomes oppressively obvious after just a few hours. You’ll be given a few checkpoints in each level, but these are awkwardly placed, so you’ll have to repeatedly mash through the same battalion of enemies if you can’t properly navigate the woeful platforming sections.

As a werehog you’re equipped with stretchable arms and the ability to grab onto ledges. This should come in handy when venturing around these stages, but a few arbitrary restrictions have been tossed in to make even simple navigation annoying. First of all, you can only grab onto certain surfaces. If you mistime a jump, you often won’t be able to grab a nearby ledge to save yourself, resulting in a quick death. Second, your arms’ stretchiness varies at random, so while it may be possible to grab a ledge from a certain distance at one point, from that same distance later on in the level, you’ll find your reach stunted. The camera also hinders your progress. You are given free control over your view when standing in the middle of a large plot of land. But when placed on a precarious walkway where a perfect line of sight is necessary, your camera control will be severely restricted, allowing only slight shifts to either side of your character. Because the punishment system is so immediate and severe (falling in water results in instant death), these miscues will quickly steal away your precious lives, leaving only frustration in their wake.

You’ll learn plenty of useless information talking to townsfolk.

The Sonic levels don’t fare any better than the lousy werehog parts. Your goal is to run as quickly as possible to the finish line, but the camera is rarely able to give you an optimal view and the controls are far too loose to provide the pinpoint accuracy you’ll need. These technical problems mean you’ll have to memorize stages before you can breeze through them. The game is not responsive enough to allow you to consistently avoid obstacles the first time you encounter them, so you’ll find yourself repeatedly plowing headfirst into spikes and falling down countless bottomless pits before you finally know where each obstacle lays ahead of time. Extra lives–something you’re usually happy to see in a game–actually serve as a warning in Sonic Unleashed. Particularly cheap sections are often adorned by these markers, ensuring you can play them repeatedly to memorize their cruel layout and hope luck is on your side.

Even after you commit these stages to memory, though, you’ll still die over and over again because of the unresponsive controls. A few levels take place on the water, making you sprint at top speeds to keep from sinking below the surface. Moving laterally while blazing through waves is sluggish, but you’ll still have to swerve to and fro to complete the missions. In other stages, you’ll have to perform wall jumps to succeed. This ability only works on certain surfaces, but even when you find an ideal place to ricochet from, the finicky timing means you’ll try and fail until you do it perfectly. Certain sections require you to slow down and perform precise jumps across tiny platforms. The controls are built for speed, though, so a slight push on the analog stick will send Sonic sprinting to his death. The game also tosses in quicktime events at random moments. Some of these will catapult you to different parts of the level, but other times you’ll be hit with an instant death if you can’t meet their strict deadlines.

Even the between-stage hub is a total drag. Though the professor is supposed to guide you to the next goal, he does little more than point you in a general direction and send you on your way. You’ll have to talk to specific citizens to open some levels, and trying to track down the one person with pertinent information is an out-of-place burden. The level entrances are often hidden in random locations and hunting them down can be maddening. Worse, when you finally find one of these entrances, you’ll often be kept from entering it until you collect a certain number of moon and sun pieces from previous levels. Collecting items in platformers is expected, but the loose controls and obstinate camera make searching for missing pieces grueling.

Unleashed is at its best when you’re barely interacting with Sonic.

The boss fights follow the theme of the other elements in Sonic Unleashed. These battles are long and tedious, forcing you to play the waiting game for minutes on end until the giant beasts open themselves up for attack. The sheer length of these ordeals makes the fights far more aggravating than they would otherwise be. The attack patterns are easy to learn, so you’ll spend more time standing around waiting for them to let their guard down than actually attacking them. Even worse, their attack patterns don’t drastically change through the fight, so you’ll be repeating the same basic dodge maneuvers until you can finally vanquish these oversized annoyances.

The lone bright spot in this otherwise painful mess are some cheery, bright visuals. The graphics are far from cutting-edge, but the frame rate stays high even when you’re sprinting at top speeds, and the levels are pleasantly colorful. The game is at its best when your interaction with it is minimal and you’re able to simply admire the view. The camera adjusts for cinematic impact while you tear through loops and grind rails as Sonic, and though you’re doing little more than pushing right on the analog stick during these sections, it is entertaining to watch Sonic swoop by. It’s sad that Sonic Unleashed is only enjoyable during the moments when you’re hardly in control of it.

Pretty pictures aren’t enough to make up for the miserable gameplay. Almost nothing else in this game even reaches the level of mediocrity. The Sonic levels are poorly laid out and have unresponsive controls, the werehog portions have monotonous combat and a wonky camera, and even the hub world is so difficult to navigate, you’ll spend way too much time searching for the next level. There just isn’t any fun to be had in Sonic Unleashed.

Source [ GameSpot ]