I must say Sega, this is your best attempt at reviving the blue blur to date.

User Rating: 8.5 | Sonic Unleashed WII
Well fans let's face the facts: Sonic's more recent 3D ventures have been craptacular adventures with loose controls, horrendous cameras, glitches aplenty and overall no effort put into these once classic gems. Heck even Sonic's voice actor Jason Griffith, could've put more effort into that voce of his. It looked as though Sonic's future was bleak.

Up until this point...

Enter Sonic Unleashed, a surprisingly solid, fun and addicting game that fires on all cylinders. It's fast, insane, and overall, an improvement from past 3D Sonic titles...

Gameplay and Control 8.5/10
The gameplay is split into two parts: Daytime, where you control the speedy Sonic, and Nighttime stages in which you play as the fist-a-cuff fighting werehog. Well Sega it's ABOUT TIME. You apparently got the message that speed is what most of us fans want from a Sonic title. Not only that but you decide to implement a 2D perspective to some sections of the daytime segments, whihc brought me back to my days of sitting down and playing Sonic 3 on my genesis for hours on end. Indeed, Sonic Unleashed's daytime stages are the icing on the cake. They're highly enjoyable with tons of speed. The nighttime stages were actually...mildly enjoyable. I know there's more werehog stages than daytime stages, but thankfully you can clear them in about 5-10 minutes tops. There are three different controls hat will suit any player: The Wiimote and Nunchuck, the classic controller or the GC controller. Each one has tight controls, handling Sonic has never been so easy. Whereareas in previous ventures, I'd be slipping and sliding all over the place in games like Sonic '06 (shudders at the memory), Unleashed's controls found me handling turns and running like a dream. Though it's recommended you use a classic controller if you have one, since the boost and homing attack are initiated to two different buttons (Note that for the wiimote and nunchuck, the boost and homing attack are set to shaking the wiimote which could lead to accidentally boosting when you wanted to home in on the enemy, the GC controller just feels so unnatural, though it isn't a terrible choice, neither is the nunchuck.) Either way Unleashed is a blast to play.

Sound 8.0/10
The music in this game is amazing! I was honestly starting to get sick of the rock soundtrack that Sonic had and this was a nice departure from it. Not only was it original and catchy, but it made it feel more like I was playing a 3D megadrive game than a Wii game, really it's that good. The VA...FINALLY. It's actually bearable! Jason Griffith you finally learned from your many scoldings from fans that you need to improve your voice acting or suffer our wrath and it shows. He no longer sounds annoying, he sounds good...GOOD for pete's sake! Mike Pollock gave the performance of his career as Dr.Eggman, I loved it better than any other Sonic game he was in. Everyone improved greatly...However there's always ONE terrible voice actor in our midst...Chip. He's a likeable character, but Tony Salerno was not a good choice of voice actor for him. Overall though great job.

Graphics 7.5/10
The graphics are colorful and pretty. Sonic himself has his old school look back: The classic smile that I've been missing from his Genesis days can be seen on his face throughout daytime stages. The FMVs are GORGEOUS. It should be noted the 360 version's ingame cutscenes are considered FMVs in the Wii version (The fact these cutscenes can run so smoothly on the Wii is rather amazing). The REAL FMVs are even better, possibly rivalling a Pixar film. This is some of the best graphics for a Wii Sonic game I've seen to date.

Replay value 7.5/10
The ranking system from past Sonic games return. For daytime stages, getting an S-rank involves beating the clock in a fast-paced race to the goal, and Werehog segments involve doing three things: Collect rings, defeat enemies, AND beat the alotted time. All these will give you 1-3 Sun or Moon medals depending on the rank. If you get a C rank, no medal for you...that's where the replay value comes in. You may not do so well your first time through, but then you come back later to get a better rank. Simple enough right? There's more to it. Littered across the various stages are special items. They vary from concept art, music, movies and secret documents which reveal the location of items you may have missed...Collecting them all is a chore. There's also secret doors within the Gaia gate that reveal puzzles where you'll earn secret missions and bonus lives. In other words, SU's replay value is rather massive. However, a skilled collect-a-holic platformer can probably grab everything in a matter of days...yep, I'm dead serious, it's actually rather easy.

Overall score 8.5/10
Really SU on the Wii is a superb game. It certainly beats the other Sonic 3D ventures and is the best one since SA2 hands down. If you're looking for a good, fun Sonic game that brings you back to your heyday, look no further than Sonic Unleashed.

Good: Fun daytime segments, mildly enjoyable nighttime segments, tons of replay value, gorgeous cutscenes and good graphics

Bad: I wish there were more daytime stages, collect-a-holic platform gamers will destory this game in days, could've been a bit longer now that I think about it...