Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

Sonic Unleashed is a surprisingly underrated Sonic game. It's actually pretty fun. While the werehog stages are no way near as good as the Sonic levels, they can still prove to be quite satisfying. Notably the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game are quite different from the Wii and PS2 version. I have played both and can honestly say that this Xbox 360 and PS3 version is the better one. Though the Wii and PS2 version is pretty cool also.

The story begins with a battle between Eggman and Super Sonic in space. Sonic goes to foil Eggman's plans only to be lead into a trap. Eggman then fires a laser through Sonic, robbing him of his Chaos power and draining all of the energy from the Chaos Emeralds. The laser is also fired into the planet causing all the continents to split apart. Sonic is then sent plummeting to Earth where he learns that the only way to restore the planet is to bring the Chaos Emeralds to the temples to restore their power and bring the planet back together. Unfortunatly for him at night he turns into a hedgehog werewolf hybrid known as the werehog. The story is overall quite well executed, it has an overall comical tone, but is serious when it needs to be making this one of the better sets of Sonic scenes in the franchise.

Game play is split into three types. Hedgehog day stages, Werehog night stages and town exploration. Sonic is your only playable character throughout the game. The day stages are fast and fun. Sonic's abilities include his staple homing attack, drifting, grinding and boosting. Picking up rings will fill up your ring energy meter which will allow Sonic to boost at ultra high speeds. The extreme speed of these stages makes them almost as fun to watch as they are to play. In-fact Sonic is boarder line out of control at certain points. However it is not all boost boost boost. There are certain segments in the levels where you will have to slow down and do a bit of platforming. The camera switches in the level from a 3D to a 2D perspective. As a result of extreme boosting and speed combined with the odd platform section the best game to compare to this is Sonic Rush.

Now the night time Werehog stages are often what make people say the game is bad. Granted they are no way near as fun as the sonic stages and the game would have still received an 8 from me if they were absent, but they are a nice way to break up the game, which would be over way too quickly if it only consisted of day levels. So these stages are a platform beat 'em up hybrid. As a werehog Sonic's speed is sacrificed for stretchy arms which enable him to grab on ledges and swing from poles as well as deliver some deadly combos. Mashing either the X or Y button will throw several attacks towards your enemies. Though there are many combos and moves, you'll probably only stick to a select few which are easy to execute and deliver decent damage. In these levels there will be a few puzzles which normally amount to finding coloured rocks and placing them in the right place or pushing blocks around to help you get to higher ledges. These stages do get repetetive and every level feels more or less the same as a lot of the time you will just be mashing the X and Y buttons to kill monsters.

The adventure fields are your access to the levels. Unlike Sonic 06, these are small and very hard to get lost in. Like Sonic Adventure you will have to go to certain areas to trigger certain scenes before you can move on with the game's story. Also in these adventure fields you can do some side quests or find hidden items. Sonic can also find level up items here to grant him new abilities which are necessary for completing the game. These include the light speed shoes for the Light Speed Dash and spring shoes for wall jumping. Many optional levels (both day and night) can be found in these places too.

Another notable thing about this game is levelling up your abilities. For defeating enemies you will pick up chaos orbs (?) which are like experience points. At the end of a level you can level up Sonic's abilities. For his hedgehog form you can increase his speed and the size of his ring energy meter. In his werehog form you can learn new combos, increase strength, HP, unleash meter (pushing the trigger buttons will cause Sonic to go into unleash mode where he is faster and stronger) and the shield which can be pulled up to help defend you.

One bad point of the game is that it forces you to collect sun and moon medals to enter new levels. Often you will need to go out of your way to previous levels to find them. They can also be found in the adventure fields. Going out of the way to collect these medals is time consuming and tedious.

Overall the game is quite a lot of fun to play. The day levels are extremely fun and thoroughly addicting. The werehog levels help break up the fast paced game.

Graphically it is by far the best looking Sonic game to date. The lighting effects during the in game graphics are just amazing. Sonic himself looks pretty cool and has some nice amimation. There is some slow down when a lot is happening on screen and in Adabat Jungle Joyride the slow down and skippy graphics are quite bad. The CG cutscenes are some of the best I have ever seen in any game ever. Overall Sonic Unleashed is pure eye-candy.

The music is a double edged sword for me. The day stages have some very nice and fats beats which never fail to be good to listen to. (Fun Fact. Savanah Citedel's theme was actually originally from the Master System and Game Gear versions of Sonic 1 - it was the credits theme) However the hub world and night tracks are quite boring (except for Arid Sands Night - I love that one) As for the themes Endless Possibility is quite a good theme, World Adventure is okay and the Theme Dear My Friend is absolutely beautiful.

Now for differances between this version and the Wii/PS2 version. Well that version has less of a focus on platforming in the day time levels, overall they are a blast to play, but not as fun as in this one. After a day level you will be made to do a mission of some sort like collect 100 rings or don't break certain obstacles. The night levels were a lot better in that version. Though they came in groups of three (sometimes four) back to back. They have a much bigger focus on platforming and there is not as much fighting or puzzles involved. Instead of an adventure field you get a menu screen type thing where you just click around until you can enter a level.

All in all, this version of Sonic Unleashed is very good. The game play is very addictive, like every game it has it's flaws, but the game's good points do render them forgiveable. Definitely give this a try if you can, it's a lot better than many people make it out to be. Fast, fun and fantastic.

Milesprower2K9 original reviews.