When the developers of Sonic Unleashed created their first Sonic level and realized it was the first 3D Sonic to ever recreate the sense of exhilarating speed seen in the old school 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games, after years of failed attempts, someone should have said, “wow, we’ve done it, let’s make a ton of really cool, fast-paced levels that move at the speed of light and leave players breathless.” Instead, it appears someone said, “hey, let’s mix some fast Sonic levels with a lot of really slow, tedious levels and then drag the game down even further with a painfully dull story.”
What Went so Very, Very Right
The original side-scrolling Sonic the Hedgehog represents one of the great early game series. As Sonic rolled through tubes and bounced off giant buttons and sped along giant loop-de-loops, the game created had the quality of a vast, multi-pathed rollercoaster.
Alas, when Sonic made the move to three dimensions he lost his way. Developer Sonic Team has been pumping out lackluster Sonic games for years without ever recapturing the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of the early years.
And then, with Sonic Unleashed, they finally got it. The game beautifully recaptures the brilliance of the early games as Sonic blazes through ice caves and quaint towns. Unleashed does a wonderful job of making a 3D Sonic work. The game will also sometimes shifts into so-called 2.5D, in which the game looks 3D but is viewed from a side-scrolling perspective, allowing Unleashed to offer perfect recreations of old-school Sonic gameplay.
So far, this sounds like a can’t-miss game, but Sonic Team managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by alternating these zippy Sonic levels with slow-paced that have little to recommend them.
What Went Very, Very Wrong
In Unleashed, the player shoots through two or three exhilarating levels, rushing pell-mell through the streets, and then is be forced to play several tedious action-adventure levels that have none of Sonic’s breakneck speed. Instead, these other levels offer a generic mix of platforming, in which you climb walls and jump chasms, and battle, in which you wave the Wii remote around until you’ve obliterated the enemy horde.
The game’s premise is that some disaster has shattered Sonic’s planet into pieces, and he must go to a series of Temples collecting items to somehow put the planet back together. I’m a little vague on the plot of Unleashed, because I did my best to ignore it. Told through a seemingly endless series of uninteresting and unskippable cut scenes, the story is tedious and serves no purpose other than to annoy players who just want to play the game already.
Somehow the shattering of the planet has affected Sonic so that moonlight turns him into a “werehog,” a big, hairy, savage-looking hedgehog. In Sonic’s normal form, he races down streets like the proverbial bat out of hell, but at night he lumbers about laboriously while the player wonders if someone stole that really cool Sonic game out of his or her Wii and replaced it with some weird budget title.
With the first werehog level, all the momentum built up in the Sonic levels drained away. Werehog Sonic moves slowly, even if you use an awkward method of making him run. These night levels feel very generic; gamers have seen this same gameplay done exactly this way over and over again.
A Game That Continual Sabotages Itself
After playing a few hours of Unleashed I didn’t play it for a couple of days, and when I started again I considered the possibility that I was being unfair regarding the werehog levels. As I played one I thought, well, they’re competent at least. But then I played the next Sonic level, and I felt an almost electric thrill. That is the problem; the Sonic levels are so exciting and contrast so strongly with the rest of the game that every time the moon rises you feel sad. More than sad, I often felt angry to be forced to play through the mediocre platforming action to get to the good stuff.
Even if the night levels were as well done as those in the brilliant PS3/Xbox 360 game Prince of Persia, which has similar mechanics, the alternating styles strike me as inherently incompatible. What is less debatable is: it makes no sense to alternate great gameplay with mediocre gameplay.
Compounding the aggravation of the werehog levels and the dull cut scenes are pointless interactions between levels. The player is constantly required to go to villages where and click on locations to talk to people who will either tell you to talk to someone else or will have nothing useful to say at all. Eventually you will find someone who will give you a key to the next level. As with much of Unleashed, I cannot think of any possible reason the designers would consider this a good idea.
In Conclusion: Wait for the Sequel
After creating exhilarating Sonic mechanics to make players giddy, Team Sonic weighted the game down with elements seemingly designed to grind the action to a halt. Since every review I have seen of the game repeats my complaints, it is hard to believe that there were no play testers or others who warned the developers that they were on the wrong track. It is as though once they came up with the werehog concept they couldn’t admit it was a mistake and just toss it out. The result is a very unsatisfying game.
Amidst all the dross, perhaps a third or so of Sonic Unleashed is amazing. It’s not that there is nothing to complain about in the Sonic levels, which can be frustrating and which, like the werehog levels, sometimes have control responsiveness issues, but overall these levels are tremendous fun.
One can only hope that someone at Team Sonic, after reading the reviews, said, “wow, everyone loved the Sonic levels and no one liked the werehog levels; this time, in the sequel, why don’t we make a ton of really cool, fast-paced levels that move at the speed of light and leave players breathless?”
But if someone over there is tempted to say, “If we just tweak the werehog levels a little, this format could still work,” please: just be quiet.
