Well time to celebrate me having computer access again by Writing a review that I was going to release like a week and a half ago... Yeah. Let's just skip the chit chat and get on with.

So Unleashed has been one of the more controversial games in sonic the series, opinions vary a lot from horrid, to pretty meh to a bold new take on the series, after having had the game in my possession for some time but not actually finishing it I figured it was time for me to take on this beast!... Or werehog... just don't Think about that for too long...


High Production Values


Unleashed was more or less the last Sonic game to have a really big budget and while you can argue if this helped make it any better gameplay wise, it really showed in the technical department.

From the completely awesome opening cutscene of Sonic facing off against Eggman to the colourful and vibrant level enviroments during the day time stages and a bit more gloomy but still fairly good looking night time stages this had great graphics for the time.

Unfortunately that's also it. For the time. The game was released fairly early during the Life cycle of the Xbox 360 (march 2008) and while it has aged suprisingly well graphics wise compared to a lot of other games released more recently on the console, it has a tendency to slightly show it's age at times.

But like I said it still is a good looking game and judging it based on the time it was released it's definietly impressive.

There's also little to complain about in the sound department. The game spouts some great soundtracks from start to finish that really amplify the experience, as has come to be expected of sonic games even the terrible ones, well with one or two exceptions *cough sonic boom cough*. The voice acting is for the most part spot on for the characters as well.

The one exception is really a battle theme that keeps playing when encoutering enemies during werehog stages of the game. The soundtrack itself isn't that bad but after hearing it for probably a 3rd of the actual gameplay (and I'm only exaggurating slightly there) it wears and it's really my only gripe with the sound overall if any.

Well let's get onto to the story then shall we?


Oh no eggman's at it again whatever shall we do *rolls Eyes*


So the story kicks off with the completely awesome opening cutscene where Sonic is taking on Eggman's robot minions onboard eggman's spaceship, after battling his way through eggman's robot army however we have one of those moments where eggman pretends he suddenly regrets his actions which everyone except Sonic obviously know he doesn't which results in him letting his guard down and the tables being turned when he drains the power of the chaos emerald resulting into the earth being split into a sort of giant 3d jigsaw puzzle, which unleashes a beast that had been resting from within the earth called Dark Gaia and this also turns Sonic into a werehog...


Well what did you expect from the narrative? I mean THIS IS a sonic game.


For the most part this is pretty standard Sonic stuff, with Sonic trying to stop Eggman again, to the games credit it does at least more or less Nail the source material of the characters.

So on your journey you'll meet a lot of familiar faces and talk to a lot of people and honestly I found most idle dialogue like the one found in hub worlds to be skip through worthy and not interesting at all.

The only new things they add is Chip a new (flying squirrel thingy?) who accompany Sonic on his journey to restore the planet and who's more or less a comic relief character who I personally found to be more annoying than fun due to him being even more naive than Sonic and to top it off pretty stupid as well even getting both himself and Sonic into trouble at a specific point.

Of course learning about the dark gaia creature that has now been unleashed can be slightly interesting but in the end it's not really expanded much upon and the story while not extremely bad is simply just mediocre.

That doesn't really hurt the game much overall though, after all the story has never been the focus in a sonic game and it certainly doesn't try very hard to be here either. But I still feel they could've still tried to mix things up a little bit more.


15% fun 85% mediocrity


Well now we get to the part most people were likely waiting for... Gameplay.

So essentially it's split up into two main parts as you may have heard, namely daytime and nightime stages.

In daytime stages you play as regular sonic and stages consist of fast paced short levels that mix 2d and 3d elements. And these levels more or less vary from pretty good to awesome. Almost all of them capture that feel off just wanting to go really fast with lots of loops, Bounce pads and other sonic shenanigans :3 And always having multiple paths and shortcuts to take depending on your skill level which adds to the replay value and makes getting the highest rank on each level feel more rewarding.

And at the same time the levels still manage to retain a fair bit of variety both visually and gameplay wise. All in all these parts are usually the highpoints of the game and aside from one or two frustrating levels are just simply really fun. Other than the ocassional oddly placed camera there's not really much I have to complain on here.

Then we move on to the night stages. Here you play as the were...hog. And suddenly the levels go from being short fast paced platforming levels to very slow beat em up levels that feel almost kind of god of war esque where you take on several enemies and solve the ocassional puzzle and go through some simplistic platform sections.

I will start of saying this isn't as bad as most people make it seem, there's a lot of different combos to pull off and there's a lot of collectibles to be found throughout levels that does make exploring them a bit more fun (I mean it's a lot better than Boom ugh >.>)

While not completely terrible however these level more or less just end up feeling mediocre again with the slight instance of fun mixed in. There aren't a lot of enemy types and they don't really employ many different strategies either usually while there's a lot of combos spamming one or two is enough to get you through the levels without too much trouble.

The main problem however is just how excrusiatingly long these levels are. A level where you play as regular sonic could maybe take 5 minutes max but playing as the werehog completing a stage can almost take you up to 40 minutes! Even worse this more or less just increases the further in you get. And unfortunately there's not really more daytime levels than there are nighttime ones.

And you really are just doing the same thing going from area to area taking on the same enemies. There's ocasionally some platforming and puzzle solving involved but it's usually very simplistic and doesn't really challenge you much.

Because of this the levels feel more like a chore, like you're playing through these boring and mediocre parts so you can get to the daytime levels and have a Little bit of fun and that's really not a good thing for any game. It's a shame too because the day time stages are really fun and had they just had more trickier enemy types and made the stages shorter I could actually see myself having some fun with the nighttime stages.

Unfortunately this isn't my only major gripe with the game...


Artifically making the game longer.


I figured I'd talk about this separately since this also ties into the length of the game. But basically there's a sort of medal system in levels where you can collect so called sun and moon medals to unlock levels.

This is mandatory to advance in the game since levels that need to be completed to advance the story will be blocked off if you don't have enough medals, and this is where the problem lies.The required amount of medals is usually fairly high meaning unless you ace the levels from the start you'll probably be forced to play through both the day time stages and night time stages to gather enough to advance. This is a completely worthless feature of the game, since it essentially forces you to replay levels even more boring ones.

These medals aren't Always easy to obtain either. If you look carefully you can usually find most of them in the werehog stages but since you'll most likely want to blast throught them as quickly as possible to play the day stages that ends up making them even more of a drag. As for the day stages some of the medals can be o butbtained simply by being good at the stage and taking the alternate and harder paths but which so far makes sense a lot of them actually requires you to stop and pick them up which really ruins the whole point and flow of the levels. And makes it more or less impossible to get a perfect score at the same time.

What really frustrates me about this again though is that it's completely pointless, there is no other reason for the developers putting this in the game than them artificially wanting to prolong the game. And I felt like there was still enough here to where that wouldn't have been needed. Unfortunately it just completely backfires and is one of my major gripes of the game this again adds to this whole feel of the game feeling like a chore to play. It would've been okay if it was to unlock bonus levels but mandatory? Not okay.

The medals aren't the only example of this either. This pretty much goes for the hub worlds between levels as well there's no point for these other than to make the game feel bigger than it actually is and all you do is go around taking to people ocassionally clicking through boring dialogue because the game demands it. It's not fun and really turns you off from wanting to keep playing more than anything.


A chore

This really concludes my opinion on the entire game. It feels like a big chore. The game forces you to withstand lots of mediocre/boring parts so you can have a very little bit of fun. Which ends up making the actual fun parts feel less fun and you get to a Point where continuing doesn't feel worth it anymore no matter how fun the day stages might be.

There was a time where I'd probably recommend this just for the day time stages to sonic fans since there really wasn't any sonic game like it. But with games like generations and colours now available there really isn't any way to justify doing so anymore. As such I'd only really recommend it to hardcore sonic fans who were most likely going to end up getting it anyways (and have likely already done so). Pick it up if you must but outside of the occasional burst of fun from daytime stages don't expect much from it.

Summon time

Sword legion :
Gamin'Gal :
A user of this :
juuldude :
AceShock :
Laian :
sonicthehedgehog57 :
ZeroTails :
Cradily is love :
Eirinn :
Bintsy :

While at it I would like to thank gamin'gal for the new layout, it should hopefully make my posts especially Reviews easier to read

Edit: Oops underlines don't seem to be bolded even though they were before, will try to fix that now.

Well... I would have to disagree with some parts, but that's 100% opinionated, so it doesn't really matter .

What I noticed was that you gave an overall score that was very low than the average. That's not a bad thing, I just found that interesting. You did a good job defending your score though.

Overall, you did a good job. I'm probably sounding like a broken record... <.<

Good work, Zlinq.

I'm actually really glad you reviewed this game, as --aside from Boom on the 3DS-- this is about the only post-Genesis Sonic game I've thought about trying really (I thought about Shadow for a while, but decided against it). Honestly until you stated how boring it was, the Werehog stages really appealed to me. I love a good beat 'em up sometimes. However I doubt I'll try the game now, after hearing your arguments against it such as the medal issue.

Again, nice work.

 ".....unleashes a beast that had been resting from within the earth called Dark Gaia and somehow turns Sonic into a were...hog. Go figure. "

When Eggman used the Chaos Energy Cannon to awaken Dark Gaia, it used some of the energy from the creature to infect sonic. Thus giving him the ability to transform into the Werehog.

" Were..hog"  

Every time I saw this it makes me believe you hate the character haha

Anyways, you explained everything pretty well without bashing on the game too much. No one likes to read a review that has nothing but negative and biased opinion's. Unless that game was just horrible, the writer would have no choice but to write con after con. Some part's of your review may be disagreeable like the explanation of the Night Stages. Nevertheless, you did a great job on reviewing Sonic Unleashed.

" Woo ! Feelin' Good " - Sonic

Jungle JoyRide was the best day stage

ZeroTails : Broken record or not hearing feedback of any sort is still something appreciate :p

Eirinn : Glad to be of service xD Hopefully that did at give you a better perspective at the game.

cnw64 : Not the character aa much as the name. Seriously werehog? How does that make sense xD But you are right about the preset I'll get to editing that. Serves me right for wanting to get on a bit with the story aspects so I could talk about gameplay more .-.

And yeah I do think this is my most controversial review but I came ready to discuss it with whoever is up for it, because I did find the night stages to be lackluster though not as horrible as some say *cough IGN cough*

Jungle Joyride was pretty fun.

I looked at the score and then saw you weren't reviewing the god-awful wii version, and I thought "Wow our opinions are gonna clash" but to my surprise, we mostly agree'd, I just felt that you gave most of the negatives a harsh time (Aside from medal collecting, that's one thing the awful wii version got right), so good job on the review, never stop tagging me

Love the review and speaking of sonic. Sonic Boom 2 was announced. Yeah the worst selling Sonic game to date gets a sequel. Yay? I prfer the wii version to the xbox version mainly to do with eggman land as it isn't as punishing.

DylanMcKaig : One of the higher ups at sega really must bear a grudge against the Sonic franchise as a whole, I literally see no other reason for why the would voluntarily shoot themselves in the foot repeadetly otherwise by making a sequel to the quite possibly worst Sonic game to date.

Yeah eggmanland really was a ridicolous difficulty spike considering how the rest of the game is mostly pretty easy when you're just trying to pass through. I've heard some people say the 360 and PS3 versions are better but it seems like the wii and ps2 versions may be better especially with how the medal collecting may not be as awful.

Zlinqx : In the wii version I only needed to beat the levels once and the challenges afterwards. It was quite easy to find them and I didn't need to scout out to find them like in the xbox and PS3 version. It took me 20 tries to beat eggman land but once you get a hang of it it isn't so bad but what makes it annoying is that once you beat it you have to beat it again to get a moon medal which is the only downside of the Wii versions eggmanland. I have no clue why there is a sequel to this "franchise" as the only thing that was somewhat decent was the TV show and even then I don't think it is that good. A lot of episodes are hit or miss.