Sonic Unleashed for the Wii Review




When we see a new Super Mario game, we welcome it with open arms. On the other hand, when we see a new Sonic game, we keep a good ten feet away from it. That is how I felt about Sonic Unleashed for the Wii. It starts out in space. Dr. Eggman has a fully armed fleet of ships ready to rule the world. Sadly, this dream doesn’t last long as Sonic lands on his command ship, and has basically stopped Eggman’s plans to rule the world. Or so he thought. Later in the opening cinematic, Sonic is trapped in one of Eggsman’s machines, and is used as an energy source for a laser shooting down at the earth, releasing a monstrous being known as Dark Gaia. During the whole thing, Sonic is turned into a more monstrous form and is then teleported back to earth with the chaos emeralds. It is now up to Sonic to find out what’s happening, and save the earth.

Basically, the game is split into three different game play mechanics. The first part is the running day stages, which are by far the best thing about Sonic Unleashed. The second part is a new game play mechanic known as the night stages where you play as the Werehog and it plays like a platforming beat’ ‘em up. The third part is of the rpg element where you talk to people about information and such. Now, everyone knows Sonic is known for his fast-paced running levels, and this game portrays them well, and I’m really glad that Sega did that. The werehog stages are set up like levels you would see in God of War or Devil May Cry. All you do is beat up enemies during parts of the stages and solve some very easy puzzles to go through doors and get across the level. Now these are okay, but they’re not my favorite levels in the game.

The graphics are pretty amazing for the Wii and for the other consoles. They’re not blocky and just awful like the last Sonic game for the Wii. The graphics in this game however are more attached to the last Sonic game for the PS3 and Xbox360. They’re smooth, well colored, and just pleasant to look at. Now the cinematic parts in the game are wonderful to look at because of how well done the graphics are. The controls are pretty darn good. It’s an actual Sonic game you can really play, unlike most of his recent games.

Okay, now it’s time to put on your running shoes and run to the bad parts of the game. Let’s talk about the werehog stages first. The stages where you play as a werehog are drawn out and are a total turn-off since it seems like they take forever to finish. The music for the werehog stages is pretty good for a jazz number but it’s the only battle music you hear, and it’s not different in every continent like in Kingdom Hearts. The enemies in the werehog stages are actually like the Heartless in Kingdom hearts, which kind of makes Sega non-original. The puzzles you have to solve are pretty moronic since there’s nothing special about them since you have seen them before. This whole gimmick of becoming a werehog is just awful. To be honest Sonic fans want to see the whole game filled with running stages and to fight Eggman at the end of the each of them, but Sega is trying to become like Mario and put Sonic with different gimmicks, which turn out to be stupid. This whole game seem to be ripping off different ideas like the whole werehog thing reminds me of the way Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess is based around. Another issue I have with this game is the camera control. You cannot control the camera to your liking, which bothers me since I could have saved myself a couple of lives if I could have seen when I could jump and etc. The voice acting is horrendous! The voice acting could be a lot better, or they shouldn’t have had voice actors in the first place.

All and all, it’s an okay game. It’s more of a rental then a “oh, my god, I need to buy!” game. I just can’t recommend buying this game since only a third of the game play is of an actual Sonic game. Lets hope the next Sonic game will be the end of the dumb gimmicks.

This game gets a score of 6.3 out of 10

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