While Sega hasn't destroyed this Sonic title, they still haven't learned to not fix it, if it ain't broke.
The game opens with a beautiful CGI cut-scene that sets the plot. Sonic is up in space, totally owning one of Eggman's new shiny war-ships. He has to be up to no-good. When Sonic finally reaches Eggman himself, he is caught in a trap, brutally electrocuted, and turned into a were-wolf cross hedgehog creature. To make matters worse, Sonic is also robbed of the seven chaos emeralds. Eggman uses their energy to fire a beam that splits Sonic's planet into seven parts. Eggman drops him into space, and Sonic plummets toward his planet below. Upon landing, he meets a small, fox-like creature with wings. This hyper little guy doesn't remember his name, or anything about himself for that matter. As the sun rises, Sonic turns back into normal blue, spiky Sonic. Thus, Sonic realizes that come night, he will return to the "were-hog" version of himself again, and vice-versa. Thus begins his adventure.
The plot seems cool enough, and it might have to potential to be so. Unfortunately, Sega has butchered the game and made the plot very corny. Firstly, there's voice acting. The Sonic games have always had shaky voice acting. Sega could usually pull it off, though. I loved Adventure 2's plot and voice acting. Sadly, the same can't be said here. Everything sounds canned and fake. The voice of "Chip" in particular is extremely annoying. He seems to have the most lines in the game, and that high-pitched voice of his will send you through the roof in minutes. To make matters worse, you'll find much "hmm-ing" and "hah-ing" and grunting. If your ears don't start bleeding, you'll probably laugh. The plot is simply poorly done, and all attempts to be dark and serious are just laughable. Especially with the horrible voice acting. Throw in a new, annoying, and unnecessary character named "Professor Pickle" and you've just totally wrecked all seriousness to be had. Sega did say this was geared more toward younger kids, but man.
The gameplay, thankfully, isn't a total wreck like the plot, but it does have major flaws. There are three control schemes for this game. Wiimote and Nunchuck combo, GCN controller, and the Classic Controller. This review is done from the standpoint of the GCN controller. Gameplay is divided into three different segments. Town HUBs, day levels, night levels, and boss levels. I'll go ahead an explain them in that order.
As you travel to different planets, you'll have to explore them, and talk to the locals. Doesn't sound so bad right? Well it's not what it sounds like. Towns are actually set up like a menu screen. You select which area you want to visit, and you get to see a picture of that area. If someone is there, they will talk to you, and give you an item, or info. If no one's there, you go back. So basically, you just click an area, talk to a local (if one is even there), and repeat as much as needed. This is horribly boring, and why it's in the game is beyond me.
When you finally get into "true" gameplay, it'll be in the form of night or day levels. Day levels are the main highlight of Sonic Unleashed. You'll run at high speeds through fun courses, target attacking, rail-grinded, and ring-collecting as you go. You'll be switched between 3D and side-scrolling view-points to mix up the action. It's great fun, and just how Sonic was meant to be played. If the whole game was made up of day levels, I'd be happy. But, Sega had to go and mess with a good thing; thus, night levels were born.
Now don't get me wrong, night levels aren't a total screw-up, but there are numerous flaws. Night levels are done in a 3D plat-former / beat 'em up style. It sounds good, and it is…sometimes. The plat-former elements play well most of the time. Moving platforms, deadly pits, spikes, it's all here. There's even a new element that involves were-hog Sonic's stretchy arms, in which you can grab ledges and polls to climb. The problem is, the controls are slippery due to the "dash" function. Sonic is slow in were-hog form, so if you double-tap the control stick in a given direction, Sonic will go running on all fours. Unfortunately, it's a bit too sensitive. I can't tell you how many times I was trying to jump from platform to platform and suddenly went zooming off into a dark abyss to due Sonic dashing when I didn't want him to. The other flaw to this category is the levels themselves. There are a few that are really good, but most are long, boring and uninspired. You'll also fight enemies in "beat 'em up" style segments. These are actually pretty fun. Your combos are short and repetitive at first, but you'll gain different abilities that make fighting enemies more intuitive. However, it would seem that there's too many of these segments. All in all, night levels seem like filler, and you'll just be wanting to beat them to get to the next day level.
Occasionally, you'll fight a boss. Bosses in Unleashed are, indeed fun, and can take place in both night and day. Oddly enough, though, is that some are reused. This only says to me, "We were too lazy to make new ones," and is just plain shabby. They are fun, though, and require you to think a little bit.
The problem with theses level types in their unbalance. While the number of night and day levels are "equal," that's not really true. They're both usually divided into three or four acts, but while night acts are very long, and different every act; day levels are very short, and acts are the same level, just different goals. So as you can see, the fun night levels are overshadowed by their not-nearly-as-fun counterparts.
There's one thing that Sega usually always does right, and that is music. Unleashed is no exception. There are many catchy, well-done tunes, and the final boss music is some of the best I've ever heard. The main theme of the game, "Endless Possibility" by Jerret Reddick is excellent, and the game is worth beating just to hear. I can pretty much guarantee you'll be downloading some of these tracks.
The visuals in Unleashed are another highlight. This is a darn good-looking Wii game. Apparently they used some new-fangled "Hedge-hog Engine" to make the game, and like I said, it looks great. The backgrounds are pretty nice too, and the only thing I can bash is the human models. Humans look really weird in here, and I know it sounds weird, but I really didn't like the way they looked. Everything else looks fantastic though, 'specially those CGI cut-scenes.
An odd thing about Unleashed that I noticed was it's difficulty. Not counting technical flaws, it's pretty much a breeze. But near the end of the game, it spiked...hard. The final area is a sudden slap in the face. I suppose it's not necessarily bad, and it provides a good challenge, but I thought it worth mentioning.
There are goodies like music and art scattered through-out levels that you might possibly want to go back and find, as well as some mini-puzzle-levels, but chances are, after that final boss, you probably won't want to come back anytime soon, if ever. To sum it all up, Sonic Unleashed has some great aspects, but they're mostly just side-shows. The core gameplay itself is heavily flawed, and there's not enough of the good it does have. If you come across this at a yard-sale for cheap like I did, go ahead an pick it up for it's good qualities. But I'm warning you. Pay full price, and you'll be gravely disappointed.
-NintendoNaut