Sonic Unleashed

Sonic Unleashed is the Console follow up to Sonic 06. First off this game is much better than Sonic 06. The game works like its suppose to, The game doesn't look horrendous(It actually looks quite good) except for the human character models(but thats on purpose this time), You can actually move your characters pretty easily and you don't have to worry about Sonic glitching out of the stage if you go any faster than ten mile per hour. All this being said Sonic Unleashed is still not a game I'd recommend to a casual or hardcore gamer unless their a Sonic fan. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. In this case that would be the werehog. "Facepalm" Sega what were you thinking. The Werehog is basically taking sonic and turning him into a beat em up character. These Werehog sections are mostly slow and clunky and if you don't distribute your characters exp across the differrent areas correctly your in for a world of hurt. That's right I said exp in a Sonic Game. Basically after each stage you have exp that you've gained from defeating enemies and can distribute this exp out over different areas. Like health, combat moves, strength, and a few more. Now I being an absolute idiot dumped all of my exp into getting new combat moves and put hardly any in health or strength. Thinking that since this is a Sonic game health and strength wouldn't matter. I was wrong and because of this the last few levels became a very painfull ordeal as i went up against stronger enemies. The werehog stages are slow and boring but they do work so this a marked improvement over the last game. The actual Sonic stages are an awesome mix of high speed 2d and 3d areas. All of the normal sonic gameplay is here and it works beautifully. Now in each stage their are sun and moon medals that you have to find in order to unlock more stages and progress with the story. This would be okay if you didn't have to collect so many medals in order to just finish the story. In order to unlock the final few stages you have to have at least 120 sun medals and I think about 80- 100 moon medals. So if you avoided getting these medals as you went along you have a lot of bactraking and collectathon hunting to do. Most of the bosses in the games are just recycled versions of previous bosses with a gimmick. This is the same for most bosses except for the final two bosses. Egg dragoon is an absolutly brilliant boss and one of the few reasons to get this game. While dark Gaia is a fun boss except for the parts where do a boxing sequence with quick time events. Now I come to one of the most annoying parts of the game and that is the character Chip. Chip is a character that you discover at the begining of the game who has lost his memory. So naturally he tags along with you everywhere you go and he is one of the most annoying sidekicks. Complete with cartoon sound effects and a incredibly annoying voice. Finally this is the first Sonic game in a long time to not have a single soundtrack on it from Crush 40 which was really dissapointing. Even though Jared Reddick of bowling for soup did a pretty good job with Endless possibilities. All in all only about half of Sonic Unleashed is really good and any parts that are good are tainted by Chip. This is a very mediocre game with some stand out moments that really do stand out like the egg dragoon boss fight but is marred by the werehog stages ang very annoying side characters. Play only if you are a hardcore fan or if you have a friend who owns the game so you can play only the stand out moments.