REVIEW: Sonic Unleashed

Now we all jumped into this game with high expectations, and admittedly, I'm no exception. Unleashed, having been hyped by the fanboys for months prior to release as yet another prospective salvation of the series, inevitably has a lot to live up to regardless of what it strived to accomplish in the first place. And while that's not what it achieves, it's much closer to it than Sonic's previous outings, and is still a pretty damn good game if you can learn to persist through its shortcomings.

The first thing worth noting is that, even in sections that directly resemble its gameplay, Unleashed doesn't play anything at all like previous Adventure-style Sonic games. To some, this is a big plus, as they all played like a piece of shit anyway. However, others will be completely thrown off by the new controls and mechanics for the majority of the game – and to make matters worse, Unleashed ditches some of the best things about previous gameplay styles and adds in a new set of problems to deal with. But first, the controls.

In Unleashed, the ever-(in)famous Homing Attack is now assigned to the X button instead of the A one. Now normally this would be an improvement, but now the homing attack clashes with the mach dash instead, which is assigned to the same button. To make matters worse, not only has Unleashed removed the ability to turn on a dime in midair, or for that matter turn at all (one of the major saving graces of Sonic '06s terrible control scheme), but later on you unlock the ability to mach dash in midair – which often leaves you completely overshooting your destination if you miss a homing attack or were just plain trying to use it as a platforming aid like you normally would. AND, if you jumped backwards to avoid an enemy attack, you can't homing attack it until you turn around, which you can't do while you're airborne. Most people won't recognize this early on, and instead do a homing attack backwards unwillingly, most likely into a pit of instant death.

I can understand re-assigning the control scheme, sure. But for christ's sake Sonic Team, do you always have to make two moves clash so badly on the same button? Why not just assign the attack to a general, you know, ATTACK button, so that I don't keep using the boost by accident? I know I could've been saved quite a few dozen cheap deaths if only the Homing Attack had been assigned to a dual function button that actually made sense.

To top it all off, daytime Sonic gameplay comes off feeling somewhat slippery on the first few playthroughs, probably as thanks to the new acceleration system. If Sonic simply moved at a static speed for the first few moments of acceleration, that could easily have been solved, and would've made the more precision based platforming not quite as frustrating as it has been at the moment. But regardless, any player can adapt to it over time.

What can't really be adapted to is specific Secret-Rings style sections in which the camera and movement is pretty much stuck forward. Some of these expect you to overcome a minefield of obstacles with the Quick Step function, which true to the name is a sidestep that reacts quicker than the control stick. The problem is, whilst the obstacles have at least three clearly defined “lanes” to define their pattern of appearance, your movement sometimes refuses to snap to these obvious lanes when you use a quick step. I've even had occurances where mines appeared in both left and right lanes, where I tried quickstepping to centre from the right lane but ended up overshooting it and hitting the mine on the left lane instead because the quick step didn't stop where it was obviously intended to. Fucking this up ends in INSTANT DEATH in some levels, which creates a whole new level of frustration when the game doesn't do something it was obviously intended to do (Adabat levels are a nightmare as far as this is concerned).

For that matter, what is Sonic Team's fetish with stupid instant deaths in a Sonic game anyway? Why punish us for falling into a hole or shallow water when it's repeatedly been proven Sonic at the very least can survive both? Hell, even if there's no other way out of a hole, they could at least not punish us by killing us instantly and give us a way back up instead. If I fall from the top of a street level building, why can't I just continue the level at street level? If I fall into a pool of water I can actually SEE THE BOTTOM OF, why can't I just run through the damn water until I get where I need to go? Just because Sonic can't swim doesn't mean he can't hold his breath until he gets back to the surface. It's simply baffling. That ST doesn't give us any early warning of some of these hazards until I've already fallen into is also maddening.

Don't let all that turn you off though – Sonic Unleashed is a game that demands utter perfection and punishes you with instant death if you can't provide as such, but if you survive well enough to reach the end of stage intact, it doesn't go unrewarded. Not only is it immensely satisfying to beat daytime levels with a high degree of success, you also get to keep the rings you earned from the level itself (and believe me, it'll always be plenty – Sonic doesn't lose all his rings on the first hit anymore. ABOUT DAMN TIME SEGA) as well as experience you get from defeating enemies from the level. “Experience”, you say? Yes, Unleashed has turned to an upgrades system again. But don't panic – unlike Secret Rings, this is very simple stuff, and you won't have to keep tweaking it before each mission – for that matter, upgrading is hardly a mandatory requirement of completing the game at all, so the player is free to improve according to their tastes and expect not to be punished for it. Which, however, brings me to my next point. The ever-controversial Werehog half of the game.

In regards to aforementioned upgrades system, the Werehog has more than twice as many fields to upgrade, but thankfully still basic and manageable according to taste. The problem is, without a decent “Combat” level (the field that dictates what kinds of combos the Werehog has), the Werehog is a complete piece of shit, to be blunt. He only starts with the most basic combos in the game (not much more than the XXXX and YYYY combos) and expects you to work your way up to additional techniques that, for all intents of purposes, should have been at least partly available to you right from the fucking start of the game. Getting new moves over the course of the game is cool, but that should NEVER come at the cost of early game playability – it should already be enjoyable the first time you play it. THIS was a mistake that Secret Rings made, and sadly, they haven't learned from it yet.

Another issue is the style of fighting that the Werehog is programmed in – instantly likable to any game in the Warriors franchise. While this is likely to please fans of the genre, the combo system comes off feeling incredibly scripted and cumbersome. Do I REALLY have to press 5 buttons just to get the ONE move I need in a particular combo? Why can't all the good moves be added as completely separate attacks, and left to the player to their imagination to string them together according to context? Okay, I'll admit that's a little fanboy bias on my part (I REALLY like Devil May Cry's fighting engine), but I feel adopting this approach could have earned the Werehog side of things an immense improvement. Flailing around waiting for the cool moves to show up feels nothing short of awkward, and probably should have been done away with. Not to mention it ruins the pacing of fight scenes and can sometimes reduce Werehog gameplay down to a “stop-go-stop-go” pace in terms of combat.

To add onto this is the “critical” attack, which is Unleashed's version of the finishing move. When an enemy is below half-health, you can grab them and, apon completing a QTE command or two, royally kick the shit out of them for an instant kill. The problem is, whilst some of these are actually cool to look at, most are underwhelming, and all have only one finisher assigned to the same enemy, which furthermore makes them unnecessarily repetitive. Not only that, but they completely destroy the pace of a fight whenever they're used. Quite frankly, I believe that this shouldn't have even been in the game at all, save for boss fights.

Then there's the platforming. A welcome addition to many, as it gives a break from the combat scenes which were bound to get immensely repetitive if carried out too long. The game never tells you you have to HOLD the B button down in order to grab a ledge with proper success, and this often leads to frustration in the early game, especially if the game yet again punishes you with instant death for fucking it up. But in general, once you get the hang of the platforming, it gives off its own unique pleasant feel. If you screw up a jump or accidentally fall off a ledge, you may find that four times out of five, you can simply stretch-grab the ledge you just came from and try again. And given that most of the platforming is hovering above instant death, normally you'd think the game is being unfair on you, but if anything it gives this aspect of the game its own tense, nervous feel. Sure, you'll fall in a few times and get angry at it, but once you learn to avoid it, it's a great feeling.

Now that I have the main gameplay out of the way, let's talk about the hubs. Now, I've never particularly liked hub levels, and Unleashed didn't change that much, but for what it's worth, it's an improvement. There's a lot to interact with this time around, and sometimes doing so can actually lead to interesting results sometimes, even giving you a side mission if you look hard enough. This however ditches a very useful function that Sonic '06 introduced with its version – it actually TELLS you what NPCs do without talking to them, so you could find important pointers and side missions without having to talk to every single fucking one of them. Why Unleashed didn't use this function, I have no idea. It certainly would've saved a lot of people a lot of time right off the bat if they had any idea of who was worth chatting to and who just gave you utterly useless banter.

Then there's the medals. Medals? Yeah, those shiny red and blue things you see lying around in stages and hub levels if you look hard enough for them. They've been in Sonic '06 before, and fans complained that they were completely fucking useless, rightfully so. Now, they've made the medals a mandatory requirement of unlocking new levels. Way to go fanboys, you've done it again. I really wish Sonic Team would just stop listening to you guys, because nothing good ever comes out of it.

But I digress. What's worth noting is that the medals come in two varieties – Sun medals and Moon medals. Sun medals unlock daytime stages, whereas Moon medals unlock nighttime stages. Was there really any need to have this ridiculous two-tier unlocking system for the levels? Why not just one type of medal that can unlock both levels? For that matter, you'd think the Sun medals would be most prevalent in daytime stages... but paradoxically, it's exactly the opposite. Don't get me wrong, both stages have both kinds of medals, but they always have far more of one kind than the other. It's simply baffling. Why do I have to play daytime levels to unlock more nighttime ones? Simple answer. It's Sega's excuse for forcing you to play as more than one side of the gameplay.

While I like both playtypes pretty much equally, this should NOT happen. An alternate gameplay type should be an option – NOT a requirement. What makes matters worse is, whilst daytime Sonic gives you barely anything in terms of experience and medals unless you stop and look for them (something the gametype STRONGLY discourages), the Werehog is a resource gathering machine, giving you easily 5 times as much experience (sometimes in excess of 10) without even trying, and naturally, the medals are much easier and less cumbersome to find, given that his type of gameplay is perfectly suited to exploration in the first place. That's just plain harsh on people who came to play simply for a speed fix, even if it was incredibly obvious you were going to have to play some Werehog eventually either way.

In short:

Defining points
- Normally, being more of a gameplay critic than anything else, I would never even comment on the graphics... but these? Fucking gorgeous, without any question whatsoever. The Hedgehog Engine is a work of genius, and I can't wait to see more games use it (Condemned 3 anyone? Those light effects would be incredible in such a dark game). All they really need to fix is the pop-up and occasional laggy moment and Sega's pretty much set.
- More to the point, the sense of speed you get from Unleashed is without any equal, achieving exactly what most people have been expecting out of a Sonic game as of late. Some might argue that Sonic Team's usage of raw speed has pretty much turned most of the game into an interactive cutscene in terms of linearity, but if this is the most enjoyable interactive cutscene ever made, then by all means sign everybody up.
- The replay value here is IMMENSE. Not only is there a lot of unlockable content to search for (including three particularly amusing shorts not featured as a main part of the game), but the levels themselves are enjoyable enough to warrant at least a second playthrough each. The decent usage of alternate paths and hub side quests helps this.
- The Werehog, whilst far from perfect, is still better than any of Sonic Team's previous efforts at alternate gameplay concepts, and has more than enough on him to make for a refreshing change of pace to Sonic's daytime stages as long as you're not a fucking fanboy about it. The puzzle sections, whilst somewhat basic out of context, will actually make you think about it the first time around.

What could've been done better
- Instant-death-centric level design. For ONCE, I'd like to see a Sonic game without levels that have death hazards with no warning or even any chance of seeing it before you've already fallen into it. If Sega aims to keep Sonic games this fast, they're going to have to take these out completely over time if the games are to be even remotely fair. Preferably replacing them with less than ideal alternate routes instead. All they really serve to do is to punish the incentive of going fast, which I might remind some of you is the MAIN GIMMICK OF THE GAME.
- The mandatory medal collecting, whilst even in concept an unwelcome aspect of the game, still could've been done much better than this. Having to play one gametype to unlock levels for the exact opposite gametype is incredibly stupid, and it doesn't help that one of them totally sucks for gathering resources of any kind. For that matter, there shouldn't have been two different medals to begin with. Make us use the werehog to get the nighttime key for the boss, sure, but don't make us use him or even the hegehog form simply to access each other's levels. That's just plain retarded.
- Some functions on the control scheme still clash with each other, namely the boost and homing attack but also the werehog's grab and finisher moves clash to a lesser extent. If the situation even occurs ONCE that I press a button expecting one function and instead getting another, it should be incredibly obvious that one of those functions don't belong on that button, especially if it gets you killed. While I've mentioned that finisher move, it probably shouldn't have even been in the game, or at the very least provided more than one finisher per enemy.
- Daytime Sonic, at least compared with the Werehog, feels unusually clumsy when it comes to slower-paced platforming. Quite frankly, if the acceleration aspect of the game didn't apply so much to the slower speeds of the game, this probably wouldn't be so much of a problem.
- At the risk of giving away spoilers... way to totally FUCK UP the ending, Sega. I didn't think it was possible to do any worse than Solaris.

Overall...

7/10. Whilst it isn't quite a franchise revival, Unleashed is a great game for those who can persist through to the end, and will keep those people playing well beyond the 10-odd-hour storyline. Whilst it certainly isn't for impatient gamers, it won't fail to reward people for dedicating time and effort to it, and overall has more polish than any Sonic game since its reinvention in three dimensions.