Sonic Unleashes His Amazing Speed, and Other Surprises That are Interesting, but are Also a Let Down.
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It's time for the Sonic Unleashed review! For the Wii!
Oh, finally, FINALLY, I've been waiting for Sonic Team to create a decent 3D Sonic game for the last 7 years!!! Eh…ok, maybe 4 years because of Sonic Heroes, but Sonic Adventure 2 was way better.
The story starts out with a bang! Dr. Robotnik is hovering above the Earth's atmosphere with a MASSIVE FLEET of doom ships! Where has he been hiding these things!? Oh well. Anyway, in the middle of his diabolical laugh, Sonic somehow lands on top of one of his ships, and makes his way towards Eggman. I just have to pause and say, the cinematics are spectacular! I've said it once, I'll say it again! Sega really knows how to create the visuals!
As the video plays through, Sonic transforms into Super Sonic and flies after Eggman. Just when it looks like Sonic has the upper hand, Eggman traps him in a force field type thing, and drains Sonic of his powers. Eggman then points a huge gun at the Earth, and fires, which splits the planet into separate pieces, and a huge monster, called Dark Gaia, comes out of the core. Makes perfect sense.
Sonic has now turned into a Werehog. Eggman blows a hole in his ship which sucks Sonic out and falls towards the Earth. SOMEHOW he SURVIVES, and meets a…uh…a thing with wings. The thing's name is Chip, and he has amnesia, so he decides to tag along with Sonic.
Sonic and Chip meet up with Tails who tells them they need to go see Professor Pickle. Pickle!? What's up with all these food names!?!? EGGman, CHIP, Cream, Cheese, PICKLE!?!?!? Uh…anyway, he tells Sonic that the planet has broken up into sections and that only the power of the chaos emeralds will restore them.
So now Sonic starts out on his journey. As usual, the graphics are amazing! And get this! Sonic Team actually made the controls decent!!! Now what I've heard and read about the 360's and PS3 controls, they weren't decent. In fact, they were bad. But I can't say anything since I've never tried them.
But with the Wii, they worked pretty well! The Wii supports the classic controller, along with the Gamecube controller. It also plays with the Wiimote and Nunchuck combo, but I found the Gamecube controller, like Brawl, to be the most efficient.
The game is split up into day time and night time levels. The day time levels were by far, the better of the two. Excellent sense of speed, good controls, fun, interesting levels, and of course, the Sonic Boost! The Sonic Boost is a great feature in the game, it was sort of featured in The Secret Rings, but the Unleashed version is way better. Sonic has a gauge bar, and he needs just one full bar to pull off his super speed! Just collect enough rings to fill up the gauge. Oh! And I almost forgot! The game does NOT play on rails!!! This was one of my favorite things about the game! If it had been, I would've had to write a very nasty letter to Sega. But fortunately, I get to save the ink in my pen!
The day stages play great. Along with the third person, 3D look, the game will often split into Sonic's classic 2D side-scroller, but still keep that 3D feel. And hey, it works wonderfully!
And now, onto the night levels. After all of the nice things I just said about the game, there are still some problems with it as well. And actually, about half of the game is a problem! The night levels just don't do Sonic any justice. I don't know why Sega feels like they have to promote Sonic with new unique ways of playing him, cause they just don't work! The night stages are a perfect example of this. The number 1 thing wrong with the night stages? THERE'S NO SPEED!!! I thought Sonic games were about speed! Wasn't that the main reason he was so popular back on the Genesis? How could Sega have forgotten so fast, their basic, basic principle for Sonic games? The day levels are awesome because of the sense of SPEED!!!
In the night levels, Sonic turns into a Werehog. As I just said, he loses his signature speed, but gains strength. He also gains the ability to stretch his arms really far. It sounds cool, but it's really not. The night levels get boring really fast. The fighting gets dull after a while, and the joystick was ultra sensitive! Sometimes I would BARELY push up on the joystick, and Sonic would start running full blast…well, as fast as he could…but it was enough to make me die frequently! There were also more night time levels than day time. I wish Sonic Team had reversed this, since the day time stages were just SO much better!
You can gain experience, just like in Secret Rings, which will gain you new attacks, more health, and more bars for Unleashed Mode, where Sonic becomes much stronger for a limited amount of time.
One new thing that caught my ear was the Music Score. In usual 3D Sonic games, Crush 40 does the soundtrack. Not in Unleashed though. The music is more like Super Mario Galaxy. I'm on the fence with this one, since the new, different style of music is great, I'm just not sure if it fits Sonics' theme. The only levels where the music sounded like Crush 40, were the ice levels in the day time.
I don't know why, but with the Wii's version of Unleashed, there is one piece of the planet, Mazuri, that you really don't get to play. You just get to fight the boss, and that's it. BOGUS!!! That was the one level I REALLY wanted to play when I first saw it from the trailer! It's available on the 360 and PS3 versions, but I don't own either one so I'm outta luck!
Sonic Unleashed is a great game! The night time levels aren't the best, but the day time levels make up for them…barely…I bought this game for $50, and now that it's down to $30 for the Wii and PS2 versions, I kinda really wish I had waited. This game is definitely worth $30, but $50, hmm, that's a stretch. This game has potential for future Sonic games, so let's hope Sonic Team can deliver the goods.
This game gets a 3.75/5 with the title of, Awesome!
-Frequenxy
Ratings:
0-1.5=Total Crap!
1.75-2.5=Bad
2.75-3.5=Good
3.75-4.25=Awesome!
4.5-5=Epic!!!