Might I ask who pointed a gun to Mr. McShea's head and told him to give this a bad review?
"The werehog levels are extremely tedious. The levels are evenly divided between platforming and fighting, but both elements offer more frustration than excitement. Even though you can unlock more combos as you progress through the journey, your combat strategy never evolves beyond mindlessly tapping two attack buttons with an occasional jump thrown in for good measure. You're given a shield for when things get too hectic, but it's hardly ever necessary. The enemies are stupid, blithely standing around until you take the fight to them, and their lack of variety becomes oppressively obvious after just a few hours. You'll be given a few checkpoints in each level, but these are awkwardly placed, so you'll have to repeatedly mash through the same battalion of enemies if you can't properly navigate the woeful platforming sections."
I've played this game from start to finish, and I was not frustrated by the night stages' combination of platforming and fighting or the rather lengthy levels.
While I can say it's true that you won't need a shield or more than a couple of combos and a jump, I cannot say the same for the remark about enemy AI. In reality, only Eggman's robots are actually stupid, and given that Eggman's not the best programmer ever in terms of the series, the fact that they aren't as good at noticing Sonic as Dark Gaia's henchmen -- you know, servants of what is basically the Sonic the Hedgehog take on the devil himself -- this makes sense, and is basically a way of making the player think about who or what to attack first; where Dark Gaia's henchmen are good at defending themselves, Eggman's robots were built for the purpose of attacking, so they're much better at simple, yet effective, attacks than the Dark Gaia creatures, who prefer to swarm.
Enemies are, indeed, variety-lacking, but the point of the night stages is to beat up swarms of enemies in long battles and be left satisfied with what you've done, and in in the end, Sega pulled this attempt off beautifully. As far as the checkpoints go, they're definitely not awkwardly placed. Checkpoints are placed either after major battles, to ensure that you won't have to beat up the same group of enemies time after time, or before major battles, to ensure that if you mess up -- and you will on several occasions -- you can come back with the same amount of experience points that you had to begin with and get more. This system was likely devised as a way to ensure that if you were having difficulty with the game, the experience system would make it easier for you depending on how much difficulty you were having.
Finally, as far as platforming in night stages, the obstacles are placed to make you spend more time in the level. The Werehog is not an animal built for speed, and Sega took this into account. Thus, the levels are devised to make you spend time thinking or attempting to carefully walk across gaps.
"As a werehog you're equipped with stretchable arms and the ability to grab onto ledges. This should come in handy when venturing around these stages, but a few arbitrary restrictions have been tossed in to make even simple navigation annoying. First of all, you can only grab onto certain surfaces. If you mistime a jump, you often won't be able to grab a nearby ledge to save yourself, resulting in a quick death. Second, your arms' stretchiness varies at random, so while it may be possible to grab a ledge from a certain distance at one point, from that same distance later on in the level, you'll find your reach stunted. The camera also hinders your progress. You are given free control over your view when standing in the middle of a large plot of land. But when placed on a precarious walkway where a perfect line of sight is necessary, your camera control will be severely restricted, allowing only slight shifts to either side of your character. Because the punishment system is so immediate and severe (falling in water results in instant death), these miscues will quickly steal away your precious lives, leaving only frustration in their wake."
First off..."You can only grab onto certain surfaces"? No duh; you aren't supposed to access, say, a spot above a bunch of houses in Apotos. Do you know why? Because platforming in this game is generally linear, just like it was during older games. They don't want you getting to places that don't have enemies or objects in them because they didn't program anything into those places, so they only allow you to grab onto only some of the ledges, not all of them.
If you mistime a jump, you mistimed a jump. You can always play the game the safe way -- that is, doing a double-jump, turning to the platform you were just on, and heading back -- but why do that? After all, the platform that's now moving away from you is obviously going to teleport back under you, so it's impossible to die. AHAHAHA--no. In fact, they programmed the game so that you would have to time your jumps properly, and if you mistime one, is it really the fault of the level designers?
Not once do the Werehog's arms ever change in elasticity. They retain the same elasticity throughout the game, and the only things that change in the platforming portion of the night stages are the platforms themselves, which may occasionally move. Surely you can't expect to be able to grab onto any part of the level at any point in the level, can you?
The camera occasionally goes from focusing on wherever you tell it to focus on to focusing on your character. Why? To add difficulty. If you could simply focus on any part of the area, it'd be too difficult. The game utilizes perspective to cause you to make mistakes, essentially telling you to outwit it. That's how games -- especially single-player games -- have been made ever since Pong.
Falling in water, as they stated, results in instant death, but the funny part is that it's been that way since Sonic Heroes, and I don't recall them giving that game the same reaction as this one.
"The Sonic levels don't fare any better than the lousy werehog parts. Your goal is to run as quickly as possible to the finish line, but the camera is rarely able to give you an optimal view and the controls are far too loose to provide the pinpoint accuracy you'll need. These technical problems mean you'll have to memorize stages before you can breeze through them. The game is not responsive enough to allow you to consistently avoid obstacles the first time you encounter them, so you'll find yourself repeatedly plowing headfirst into spikes and falling down countless bottomless pits before you finally know where each obstacle lays ahead of time. Extra lives--something you're usually happy to see in a game--actually serve as a warning in Sonic Unleashed. Particularly cheap sections are often adorned by these markers, ensuring you can play them repeatedly to memorize their cruel layout and hope luck is on your side."
The camera provides flawless views of Sonic and the obstacles ahead of him, and while it's obviously difficult to look ahead of your character when he's moving at top speed, the boost gauge was created to allow Sonic to blast through heaps of enemies without much difficulty. In fact, enemies were put on the track to add to your boost gauge, so it's actually advised that you put it to use when you can.
Game controls are only loose if you don't know some of the better moves, such as powersliding, and that's how they should be. You're running at the speed of sound; you don't want flawless control. It wouldn't make sense, and while the Sonic series doesn't make much -- if any -- to begin with, the people at Sega at least tried to give this game a good physics engine. I'd like to note that they did just that, as crashing into things such as chairs, tables, and stools will make them react accurately.
As an aside, if you think the controls are unresponsive, your controller must not be working properly -- I had no control issues with the game, even when I first tried it out and had no idea what to do. In addition, luck has almost nothing to do with the game, as a lot of the obstacles revolve around the concept of proper timing.
"Even after you commit these stages to memory, though, you'll still die over and over again because of the unresponsive controls. A few levels take place on the water, making you sprint at top speeds to keep from sinking below the surface. Moving laterally while blazing through waves is sluggish, but you'll still have to swerve to and fro to complete the missions. In other stages, you'll have to perform wall jumps to succeed. This ability only works on certain surfaces, but even when you find an ideal place to ricochet from, the finicky timing means you'll try and fail until you do it perfectly. Certain sections require you to slow down and perform precise jumps across tiny platforms. The controls are built for speed, though, so a slight push on the analog stick will send Sonic sprinting to his death. The game also tosses in quicktime events at random moments. Some of these will catapult you to different parts of the level, but other times you'll be hit with an instant death if you can't meet their strict deadlines."
Again, you insist that the controls are unresponsive. What controller were you using? You might want to try the Xbox 360 wireless controller that came with your Xbox 360, not a toaster. Moving at top speed is something that's been emphasized in every Sonic game worth its salt, I.E. Sonic 3, Sonic CD, and Sonic CD, and it's no different here.
Walljumping isn't exactly tricky, so long as you're actually jumping between two walls. It's kind of pointless to try to get to higher ground by jumping off one wall and hoping the air will throw you higher into the level. There is no "finicky timing" involved in walljumping -- it's mostly changing direction and hitting a button.
Of less note, however, are the quicktime events. In early levels such as Apotos, these are almost nonexistent, and when one does rear its proverbial head, it's fairly easy to get right. In later levels, however, there are much more punishing quicktime events that will send you falling to your deaths, but you should be able to work those out without much difficulty as long as you know how to button-mash with a 360 controller and are capable of reading quickly enough. Even though I mentioned "later levels" generically, however, the best button-mashing segment is, in my opinion, actually in the last main story level. I won't reveal what happens, but I will say that I sincerely hope the "X" button on your controller is working properly.
"Even the between-stage hub is a total drag. Though the professor is supposed to guide you to the next goal, he does little more than point you in a general direction and send you on your way. You'll have to talk to specific citizens to open some levels, and trying to track down the one person with pertinent information is an out-of-place burden. The level entrances are often hidden in random locations and hunting them down can be maddening. Worse, when you finally find one of these entrances, you'll often be kept from entering it until you collect a certain number of moon and sun pieces from previous levels. Collecting items in platformers is expected, but the loose controls and obstinate camera make searching for missing pieces grueling."
While I will say that hub worlds leave a lot to be desired, they are simple and they're actually quite entertaining. You may occasionally find a secret in a hub world, and one in particular is a great little reward for those who remember the teaser trailer. Professor Pickle, a character you meet later on, doesn't serve as a very helpful character, meaning you have to solve puzzles or go to various locations and complete -- or even re-complete -- levels to improve or unlock areas. It is a bit of a burden to find one character among many, but it's much more rewarding when you DO find said character. I have yet to find level entrances that are "maddening" to track down -- every entrance is conveniently placed in a smaller hub WITHIN the first one, and it's easy to find the path to said level entrance.
The only thing I can completely agree with is that moon and sun medals weren't required. They act like stars from the newer Super Mario games, but where the stars are easy to find, sun and moon medals are easy to miss the locations of. Nonetheless, there are MANY of them, and you won't need all of them to unlock every level. They mostly unlock bonus mini-videos that you can just go on YouTube to watch.
"The boss fights follow the theme of the other elements in Sonic Unleashed. These battles are long and tedious, forcing you to play the waiting game for minutes on end until the giant beasts open themselves up for attack. The sheer length of these ordeals makes the fights far more aggravating than they would otherwise be. The attack patterns are easy to learn, so you'll spend more time standing around waiting for them to let their guard down than actually attacking them. Even worse, their attack patterns don't drastically change through the fight, so you'll be repeating the same basic dodge maneuvers until you can finally vanquish these oversized annoyances."
Boss fights are just as entertaining as the levels they're centered around. While night boss battles tend to drag on a bit more, daytime boss battles -- which always pit Sonic against Eggman, as in days of old -- are fast-paced, smoothly animated, and a heaping helping of FUN to work through. They're some of my favorite parts to the game simply because they're some of the best parts of the game to try and blaze through.
...In fact, I've just realized that Gamespot might not have been speaking about daytime boss battles at all. Nighttime bosses don't really change their strategies, save for tacking on more of attack "A" or defense "B", but Eggman actually takes the time to make things increasingly difficult for Sonic. The only tedious bosses are midair ones, and you'll only have to face two of those. Even so, they play out something like rhythm games, so they're still entertaining enough to play through at least one more time.
To sum up my review, Sonic Unleashed is a great way of reviving the series after its tragic crash in Sonic '06. It's a must-have Sonic game, and it's one of the best games I've seen on the Xbox 360. So long as Sega keeps taking steps in this direction, Sonic will finally be back to what it once was.