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 pure hatred, manifested in video game form. That's right, folks, SEGA hates you, and Sonic Unleashed is proof.

Sonic Unleashed is a difficult game to review, as many of its problems have little to do with the quality of the product. At the very least, it is not a bad game. In fact, parts of it - such as nearly every daytime Sonic level - are rather good, and a definite step forward for this ailing franchise. Come nighttime, however, and Sonic transforms into the Werehog. And it's... boring. Not bad, just relentlessly dull. It masquerades as a deep brawler, but the combat is too shallow for any of the elaborate combos to matter. The platforming here is generally solid, but the levels are entirely linear and frankly, it's just too slow, especially when sandwhiched between the exhilarating speeds of the daytime stages.

Sonic Unleashed contributes to the evolution of the franchise by giving Sonic some new toys to play with. 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 really feels like a move that should have been in 3D Sonics from the start. The Sonic Drift is another new move that allows Sonic to drift around tight turns without reducing his pace, and again it makes traversing the stages a lot more fun than it has been in the past.

Despite improvements to the controls, and a noticeable increase in the quality of stage design, the daytime stages frequently stumble over problems from the past. The 3D sections may be fun and visually appealing, but grow shallow quickly; They are a test of twitch reflexes and stage memorization more so than they are tests of platforming skill. The 2D sections are far too brief and are similarly as simple. Gone are the days when momentum was the cornerstone of the Sonic experience, instead replaced by a Boost move so overpowered it almost feels like cheating. Boost power is so easy to accumulate, and using it makes Sonic so hard to kill, that almost all the game's obstacles - bar the ever present bottomless pits - become trivial.

That isn't to say the daytime stages are bad, by any means. They are the highlight of this product and the best Sonic has been since his Genesis days. But the flaws SEGA have been grappling with for a decade are still there, and causing problems where there really is no excuse. A more concentrated effort on ironing out these niggling problems would improve the game tenfold.

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. This is the kind of level design that punishes you for not being psychic enough to know that there was an insta-death pit right around that corner that you couldn't see, or an enemy that pops up in a certain place and drowns you without any chance of escape.
The game takes route-memorization and trial-and-error gameplay to its absolute extreme, making half the levels absolutely impossible to beat without prior knowledge of where all of the obstacles are. I'm all for more difficult games, but I much prefer real difficulty, where deaths are my own fault, not just the result of Sonic Team being dicks.

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. When you do finally see the ending, the wave of relief - "It's finally over!" - is indescribable. The game 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 of this generation. 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. However, if you don't have the time to waste playing a poor imitation of God of War, nor the healthy heart required to survive the game's more punishing segments, 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 price of admission.