Sonic Unleashed (360) Review

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There are three parts to Sonic Unleashed. The first is the daytime gameplay, in which Sonic blasts madly around beautiful locales at frightening speeds. That part is good. The second is the nighttime gameplay, in which Sonic inexplicably turns into a large, lumbering "Werehog" that plays like God of War but without any of the fun. The third is the manifestation of Sega's unbridled hatred for their fans. That's right, folks: Sega fucking hates you.

Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. In fact, it's rather good. In particular, the daytime Sonic levels are remarkably fun. Designed like narrow racetracks winding in and around the game's varied locales, Sonic will barrel down alleyways and bounce across rooftops in some of the most solid platforming this series has seen in years. Gone are the days of dodgy camera angles and twitchy controls. In Sonic Unleashed, the camera is either directly behind Sonic or facing him from the side in one of the game's many 2D segments. Should you find yourself wanting to backtrack across a 3D path, the right stick allows you to spin the camera around on a whim. Sonic himself controls with less precision than he once did, but the lack of responsiveness allows you greater control at high speed, with it now possible to maneuver Sonic with some degree of finesse.

There are some curious changes to the button-mapping of certain abilities, but nothing that will set any player back too far. Most notably, Sonic's signature Homing Attack is no longer mapped to the jump button (A), but rather the X button. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense, given that anyone who has played any of the previous 3D titles is going to have to relearn this basic maneuver. Even more curious is Sonic's new air dash move also being mapped to X, meaning a failed homing attack now sends you barrelling off course and (usually) to your death. Considering the old input isn't even used for anything, the change in control strikes me as completely unnecessary.

Sonic has some new toys to play with, of course. The Quick Step, activated by pressing LB or RB, lets Sonic sidestep to the left or right without losing any forward momentum. Sidestepping around enemies and obstacles while scampering down a straightaway is highly satisfying, and this really feels like a move that should have been in 3D Sonics from the start. The Sonic Drift is fairly self-explanatory, allowing Sonic to drift around tight turns without reducing his pace.

The daytime stages aren't perfect, however. The 3D sections are fun and visually appealing, but grow shallow fairly quickly. The 2D sections are far too brief and rarely feature more than a couple of moving platforms to jump across. I've noted in the past what importance Sonic's momentum used to play in the series and how little it plays in the Sonic games of today, and so I'm thankful that Sonic Unleashed takes some baby steps in the right direction. Alternate routes become available if Sonic takes jumps at a high enough speed, and loops are no longer automated, transforming them once again into legitimate obstacles. Yet, the game still features an unnecessary Boost move, which cheapens the whole experience somewhat. You'll rarely miss an alternate route if you just boost the whole time, and loops will never impede you unless you intentionally slow down. Removing the boost from the game entirely would improve it tenfold.

As noted earlier, the 3D segments are flashy but generally hold little in the way of deep gameplay. The game would benefit from being more 2D-oriented, with the 3D segments only used intermittently to add flavor to the game, rather than serving as the main attraction.

Come nighttime, Sonic transforms into the Werehog. And it's... boring. Not bad, just relentlessly dull. It masquerades as a deep brawler - with flashy multi-button combos and whatnot - but is ultimately far too shallow for it's own good. You'll never need any combos other than the standard "X,X,X" or "Y,Y,Y" moves, which do everything you could possibly want. Enemies are generally slow and timid in their attack, and only become dangerous in the later levels where you'll be facing an unholy number of them at once. The platforming here is generally solid, but the levels are entirely linear and frankly, it's just too slow. I don't advocate the idea that Sonic needs to go fastfastfast, but this is too far towards the other end of the scale. I mean, there's a button to make the werehog run - he doesn't run by default - but it is little more than a jog compared to the exhilarating platforming of the daytime stages. Not to mention these levels generally drag on for 10-20 minutes depending on how good you are, resulting in most of your playtime taken up by these boring exercises in mediocrity. You probably won't hate it, but you won't have any fun here either.

And that, sadly, is where my generally positive attitude ends. There's a dark side to Sonic Unleashed, and it comes in the form of devious level design. When I say it's "devious", I really mean it was crafted by Satan himself. From about the mid-point of the game onwards, each level is the pure embodiment of evil, causing me mass frustration and a dangerous amount of burst blood vessels. There's enough money in my swear jar to single-handedly rescue the entire African nation from poverty. Fuck this game.

The game takes the route-memorization aspect of the Sonic Rush series - a mild annoyance there - and magnifies it, making half the levels literally impossible to beat the first time through. Now, I'm all for more difficult games, and if I was breezing through the final levels then I'd no doubt be complaining that the game is too easy. But I like real difficulty, where I die only if I make a mistake, not just because Sonic Team are dicks. Take the ice level, Holoska, for example. You do a lot of running on water in this level, and in order to maintain that high speed, you're required to boost. This becomes a problem when the camera switches to the 2D perspective, and you can no longer see what's approaching. And so, Sonic Team threw in a few floating spike traps which not only hurt you and knock you out of your boost, but also cause you to drown instantly. Let me reiterate: You do not - you cannot - know these traps are there until you have already been hit by them.

Repeat the above scenario but with other neatly-placed traps: The "Eggman Spring", which Sonic's homing attack locks onto automatically and which usually bounces you in the opposite direction you want to go, often to your death. The sudden pit in the middle of an otherwise solid platform that you've already fallen in to before you could even see it coming. The grind rails that abruptly drop off and send you falling into an abyss. The game is jam-packed with "oh fuck off" moments that make me absolutely certain that this is the sort of game you make for your enemies, not your fans. "You little faggots didn't like Sonic '06, huh?"

Furthermore, the final level - which alternates between hedgehog/werehog gameplay - takes at least 40 minutes to complete if you're good. That's 40 minutes of bullshit. Now imagine losing all your lives after playing half an hour of it. Does it hurt? It will do, when it happens to you. It happens to everybody.

I suppose it's somewhat testament to the quality of the daytime stages that I kept coming back for more despite the game giving my testicles a kick at every given opportunity. Consider this review your one warning: The game gets unfairly and intolerably unforgiving in the final hour and a half, which is comprised of the final level and no less than three "final" boss fights. When you finally see the ending, you will hate this game with a burning passion. It will have repeatedly wronged and mistreated you. It will have forced you to sit through more than an hour of the least enjoyable gaming moments in recent memory. It will have sacrificed your firstborn child to appease its pagan God. But at the end of the day, at least half of the game is still undeniably fun, and it is unlikely that these horrible experiences will keep you away for long.

Whether or not you should buy Sonic Unleashed depends entirely on what sort of person you are. If you're patient enough to sit through the uninspired and dull werehog stages and to put up with the unfair design of the last few levels, then you'll find that there's a lot to like about the rest of the experience. If you don't have the time to waste playing a shittier God of War, then there's little reason to bother with this at all; The daytime stages take up too little of your total playing time to be worth the $50 price of admission.

Also, don't buy this game if you don't like getting fucked by bullshit.