Game: Sonic Unleashed
Console: Sony Playstation 3
Developer: Sonic Team
Release Date: 19th December 2008
As the successor to Sonic 06, Sonic Unleashed had a lot of work to do amongst critics and gamers in general to repair Sonic The Hedgehog's image as a game series. Gameplay was split into two main modes; Day and Night, with Day stages featuring classic Sonic platforming with both 2D and 3D levels and Night stages playing more like a Brawler or Beat 'em up, with Sonic in Werehog form smashing his way through groups of enemies as well as solving basic puzzles to get to the next area.
Other gameplay features include some Tornado flying levels, varied boss fights as both night and day Sonic, missions from villagers in the 9 locations that you visit in the game, and challenges to be completed upon replaying levels. Scattered throughout levels and hub worlds are sun and moon medals, which will need to be collected to gain access to later levels, as well as art book and soundtrack unlockables which can be looked at/heard in the Laboratory.
The basic plot of the game involves Sonic being turned into a "Werehog" by Dr. Robotnik, draining the power of the 7 Chaos Emeralds. The nefarious scheme your tasked with stopping this time is the awakening of Dark Gaia, a creature deep within the Earth which threatens to cause havok and destruction by literally splitting the Earth apart. Sonic must collect Gaia keys to defeat the guardians of 7 temples which can restore power to the Chaos Emeralds and put the pieces of the Earth back together.
While the plot is fairly well explained at the beginning of the game, a lot of the time you're left on your own as to where you need to go (save for a hint on the world map), however some stages require a certain number of Sun or Moon medals to be collected before they're unlocked, or for you to have talked to Professor Pickle. It can be frustrating to get stuck, only to realise that you needed to go and see the Professor to unlock a stage.
The 3D sections of gameplay feel incredibly fast when compared to other games in the Sonic series and sometimes seem to be too fast, with Sonic stopping suddenly because of obstacles, falling down pits, and running along the edge of walls. This isn't to say that some sections aren't fun; riding along rails and Indiana Jones style getaway chases add something to the action, but a lot of the time it feels like given an extra run or two, you'd do much better at memorising the positions of obstacles.
2D sections can go one of two ways; either they're basically automated and all you'll need to do is push forwards and watch Sonic go, or there's a lot of things to react to and most of them want to kill you. Oddly these sections can be more enjoyable than the 3D ones, when done right but it's not something Sonic Team really mastered until Sonic Colours.
Night stages predominantly feature battles with groups of Dark Gaia Creatures and Eggman's Robots which lock you into a battle arena and require you to perform combos which are achieved via pressing the Square and Triangle buttons in a set order. I found myself alternating randomly between the two buttons to attack with whatever combo I'd managed to punch in, which worked just fine for the entirety of the game. This didn't make for particularly enjoyable combat, and I'm not sure intentionally using the combos provided would have been any better. There's an option to "unleash" which briefly powers up Sonic's attacks and makes him immune to some types of damage also.
There are a few types of enemies to encounter in these stages, and they're mostly well designed including Magician Dark Gaia creatures which heal others and should be taken out first, Gaia Insects and Robots with the ability to shoot. Battles can however get a little long, with new enemies often spawning mid battle to elongate proceedings.
Other Night stage challenges include puzzle type sections with switches, keys and platforms, which must be used to progress through the stage. While these were fairly well executed, it does end up making the Night stages drag on rather, in comparison to the day stages. Where the longest day stage is around 7 minutes, the longest night stages can take 30 or more. Also included in a lot of the night stages are balance sections which can be incredibly frustrating and slow the game play down significantly. One wrong move or slight inaccuracy can mean the loss of a life.
The bosses in the game are varied with Guardians to fight at night, and Eggman's various robotic craft to fight during the day. There are some good ideas implemented with most of the bosses featured, especially a few of Eggman's battles, the ideas of which were reused in Sonic Colours. One of the guardian bosses did strike me as rather badly designed though; it involved pushing three blocks toward an altar whilst fighting off the attacks of gaia creatures as well as the boss itself. There were also obstacles which the blocks had to be pushed around to get to the altar. While completing the battle was fairly easy, every time you'd try to fight off the Gaia creatures, the boss would move the block you'd been transporting back to the other end of the area.
The final boss of the game is by far the least enjoyable; instead of feeling like an epic battle, it's almost a drag. The player controls an amalgamation of the temples that they've visited and travels towards Dark Gaia, dodging attacks for quite a while before performing a few QTE's to get to a very short Sonic stage which is timed. Once this has been completed 3 times (the last Sonic part is almost impossible), there's a second stage of the battle which culminates in a final QTE.
Once levels have been completed in Sonic Unleashed, you're given an RPG style experience/level up screen, where you may choose how to spend your points. Although Werehog Sonic has plenty of options, like getting more health, a longer unleash phase and learning new combos, normal Sonic can only choose to level up his Speed or Ring Energy, neither of which really seem to do much.
I had a fair amount of issues with "moves" that Sonic is supposedly able to pull off in the game: Running on water proved a problem several times, as you need to be precise whilst boosting to stand any chance of survival, and several parts have places where players can easily lose lives. The wall jump is equally difficult to pull off, as initiating one can take several attempts, with the game failing to tell the difference between a standard jump and one that needs to continue.
Another issue I faced was with the in-game camera in many stages; a lot of the time you're able to rotate the camera 360 degrees around you, which is great, but in certain places it will only budge slightly to the left or right. As I would have been trying to move the camera around in these instances, it was annoying to not have full control over what I wanted to see at the time.
As you may have gathered from earlier parts of this review; QTE's are a huge part of gameplay, both in night time sections and day time jumps/boss battles. I found them to work better in the daytime, where a correctly pressed sequence could mean that the player gained a life or ran across a higher ledge than in the night time where a mistake means that the enemy regains most of its health and gets a free hit on you. This was why I mostly used the combos for fighting in the night stages.
Another problem I faced with controls came in the Werehog stages with grabbing onto ledges; around 5% of the time, the game just didn't seem to recognise my button press and let Sonic fall to his death instead of grabbing onto a ledge. This would have been fine once or twice, but the amount of times that it happened in the game did cause it to be an issue.
The level design in Sonic Unleashed is varied with some enjoyable Day stages, and others which seem to be merely concepts (one clocks in at 30-40 seconds worth of gameplay). The night time levels are rarely exciting in terms of level design, tending to be more of a slog through an almost endless corridor until you reach the goal. Some of the levels in the game are able to kill you mere moments after you start, requiring quick reactions from the player to avoid certain death.
This leads me to think that whether intentionally or not, Sonic Unleashed's day stages play much like NES era games, with faulty controls and a harsh difficulty curve which rewards players for memorising the levels. This is further supported by the fact the challenges are offered to players by the hotdog seller outside each world hub which require rerunning levels to achieve an extra goal. There's also a sizeable speedrunning community for the day stages, with world record times and shortcuts posted to websites.
Graphically, Sonic Unleashed is stunning with beautiful representations of its real world locations and HD levels and enemies. The day levels feature an excellent sunshine feel which contrasts with the glow of the night levels. Sonic also looks very nice, although his running animations for both times of the day look a little jerky in hub worlds. The music of the game is also very impressive and is possibly my favourite feature; the only complaint being that there is a single battle theme for the night time, leading me to despise the music which announces a new battle as it plays every 45 seconds or so each night level. The PS3 version of the game seems to experience fairly long load times when switching from night to day and some slowdown issues with the framerate when anything exciting is going on.
Overall Sonic Unleashed suffers from some poor controls and ideas throughout the game and seems to reward players for memorising its levels rather than being a "pick up and play" experience as previous 3D Sonic games seem to have been. While I've complained about most aspects of the game, I wouldn't say it's unplayable. For me, there's definitely better Sonic titles in terms of plot, levels and overall feel. I'm not sure what Sonic Team were going for with this game, but it feels like they tried to include a bit of everything with the day and night levels, RPG level up feature, missions, challenges and collectables. Some of these aspects work and some don't, but they definitely don't form a seamless experience.
Rating: 61/100
Grade: D
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