Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Instant classic"

Let me tell you right now, Sonic Unleashed is not perfect...only the speed portions of the game are great.

The speed is addictive, fun, old school, and faster than before, and probably ever will be.

Sonic Unleashed surpasses the quality of Sonic Adventure 1 (rated 9.2 on Gamespot) and then some.

It has more speedy Sonic levels than ever before, and really gets the franchise right.

The good:
You only play as Sonic, no one else.
The levels are fast, and everything that was wrong with Sonic Adventure has been fixed.
You play the levels - they don't play themselves.
Homing attack actually works.
Speed is balanced by using restrictive controls, to force you to use your abilities like drift, slam (B in the air,) and sidestep - adding depth to the game play.
The cheesy rock music is finally gone, replaced with old school sounding orchestral music - even though the music is old school, it doesn't mean the instruments have to be.
The story is captivating, interesting, and done extremely well. It could have easily been "Sonic Unleashed The Movie" and sold just fine.

The bad:
The Werehog
The hub worlds
Some may be turned off by the fast reflexes needed in the speed levels

I'm sure you've heard enough praise of the day levels by now...so let's focus on the tedious night levels with the Werehog.

First off, you should know that you can skip most enemy encounters, and get straight to the platforming.
Only fight enemies if there's actually a barrier preventing progress...even then, often the barrier can simply be removed by throwing a switch, allowing you to skip even more enemies.

The platforming is Ristar style platforming.
You're allowed to grab onto poles, ledges, and pegs by double jumping into the air, holding the B button down (yes, holding, so there's no timing excuses) and then your arms reach out and grab for you once you're in range.
If you don't hold the B button, and try to time your ledge grab, you will probably fall to your death.

Most stages give the Werehog a shadow to help you navigate your jumps, but one or two don't. Unfortunately, one of those two is the final level of the game...but it's not as bad as it sounds, the final level focuses more on...FIGHTING!

The fighting is God of War style, love it or hate it, and there is a combo system featured.
Unfortunately, you'll only have very crappy ground combos at the beginning of the game, and you unlock better air combos earlier than better ground combos.

Throughout most of the game, the best ground combo you'll have is simply going to be "Y, Y, X, X, X" (the very first combo you learn from leveling up)
Easily surpassed by the ground to air combo that you start with, "X, X, A, Y, Y, B"

You'll soon unlock a new air combo, and then you'll have "X, X, A, Y, Y, Y, A-or-B (select for desired effect)"

Once you really level yourself up - but have not finished leveling yourself up completely, you'll get the awesome ground to air combo...
"X, X, X, X, A, Y, Y, X, wait...X, wait...A or B (A is probably better at this point, but B is cooler)"

And then finally once you're completely leveled up, you'll get the two best ground combos (finally!)
"X, X, Y, Y, X, X, Y, Y"
"Y, Y, X, X, Y, Y, X, X"

You're also given an Unleashed gauge in the night levels.
When activated, you become invincible, stronger, faster...and most importantly, once you unlock the two final ground combos, you get to combo infinitely.
How?
Once you do one of the two final ground combos, you can press "X, Y" over and over and over again, and Werehog will repeat the last two hits of the combo - these are the most devastating hits, so the reward is great. You can combo indefinitely until your Unleashed gauge runs out.

These combos add some depth to the fighting, but by and large...God of War plus Ristar is not a game winning combination.




Sound effects in this game are mostly nice, however they are marred by the fad of using voice effects-as-sound effects.
Hearing "Whoo!" and "GO!" over and over again is very annoying, and cool sound effects would have worked wonders here instead.



Final review scores...

Controls - 9.0
Graphics - 9.0
Day stages - 10.0
Night stages - 7.3
Music - 9.4
Sound effects - 7.8

Overall - 10.0