Hog of War: Sonic Unleashed (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3, 2008) Review
NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective
Just to get this out of the way - before anyone comments saying ‘Expi you dumb fuck, Unleashed was also on Wii and PlayStation 2 andJava-based mobile phones!’ since I left those platforms out in the title, I didn’t include them since they are essentially different games with the same level themes and story. I will get to reviewing the Wii/PS2 version of the game and maybe the Java version if I feel like it, but I figured I’d at least start with the 360/PS3 version since that’s what I feel most Sonic fans think of when Unleashed is mentioned. So, anyway, here goes.
Background and History
Sonic Unleashed’s development can be traced back to 2005, when Sonic Team began development of the new “Hedgehog Engine,” an next-gen engine that would be used commonly in later Sonic games (at least the ones released for HD consoles). Unleashed’s development started a year later, with the goal of…
*sigh*
...taking Sonic back to his roots.
y’know i’m really starting to find myself not taking that phrase seriously.
Anyway, early plans for this next Sonic game started out as a third installment of the ‘Adventure’ series - straight up being called ‘Sonic Adventure 3’ at the start, and later ‘Sonic World Adventure’ as a working title, which would also be the game’s title in Japan. But ultimately, with gameplay going in somewhat of a different direction as development progressed, the game’s title elsewhere would turn into ‘Sonic Unleashed.’
One notable difference between this and the Adventure games and last 360/PS3 Sonic game was that the cast of characters was reduced to Sonic (and, well, his werehog form) alone. Some have speculated that this had been a result of 06’s reception, but it turns out, according to a member of the r/Sonic Discord server, that this doesn’t really have any evidence and from what else I could research, something Sonic Team largely did to get the most of fewer playstyles.
In fact, in a now-archived blog post dating back to March 2007, where a former Sega employee rants about Sega’s working conditions and development processes (likely just coming off of 06), they actually predicted a “Sonic game with a transforming Evil ‘Night’ Sonic who looks like a werewolf and can stretch his arms out Dhalsim-style”. And while these days this might have been taken as some guy spreading false rumors, this did turn out to be true - thus, Sonic Unleashed.
Anyway, the game was announced in April 2008 and released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later the same year, while a separate version was developed and released for the Wii and PlayStation 2 around that same time (...plus another by Gameloft for mobile phones in 2009). The game originally got mixed reviews from critics, in large part due to the whole concept of the Werehog and beat-em-up styled night stages, with more praise being made towards the ‘Boost’ or Daytime stages - which would, of course, serve as the formula or template for Colors Wii, Generations HD, and Forces.
However, the game has since become a cult classic among Sonic fans, potentially becoming one of the fan favorites among the series as a whole, with a lot of praise being made towards the Day stages and their level design, the story, visuals, and even the ‘Night’ stages among some.
Personal Experiences
I remember finding out about this game around 2012 - around the time I started to become more invested in the franchise and fanbase. And while the game definitely it’s share of naysayers, I actually found that a lot of people generally considered it to be ‘underrated’ and just being better than a lot of the game’s critical reviews made it out to be. But at the same time, I never really found myself having much desire to play it, especially compared to Colors and Generations which had come out more recently, until around 2016. This was about the time I started to grow more appreciation for the Boost formula after finally getting to play Generations at a good framerate on my PC and beating that, plus beating Colors Wii, and so I was definitely becoming more interested in trying Unleashed.
Unfortunately, my brother’s Xbox 360 was basically dead at that point, and I didn’t have a way to play it. I was slightly interested in at least trying the Wii version, but I always remembered that being considered to be the worse game. I do remember trying out the Unleashed Day stages via the ‘Unleashed Project’ for Sonic Generations, and while I did enjoy that, it didn’t quite feel like I was getting the full, true experience.
In late 2018, I ended up buying the Wii version, which I initially liked overall, but in Spring of the following year, I decided to buy a PlayStation 3 and that game along with a few others. Unleashed wasn’t my primary drive to get a PlayStation 3 - I had always been interested in the console and it’s exclusives despite never owning one myself, but it was definitely one of the factors in my decision to buy the system.
And I was really excited to play it. I loved Generations, I loved Colors Wii, and I even thought Forces was alright after playing that, and Unleashed seemed like more of the Boost formula, but from what I could tell, with more content, more original level themes (compared to Generations and Forces, anyway) and a greater atmosphere and story. There was even a few days I passed it off as my favorite Sonic game.
But after actually beating it… I mean, I still liked the game, but I started finding things about it that led to me backing off of calling it ‘my favorite Sonic game’ or even just ‘one’ of my favorites. I have gone back to the game since then, albeit mostly with the Day stages, and I haven’t really found myself replaying in it’s entirety, or playing most of the Night stages for that matter, until I played it for this review.
Story
The story begins with Sonic confronting Eggman while aboard his ships… in space. Sonic transforms into Super Sonic as he’s captured by Eggman, but falls into one of his traps, leading to Eggman draining the emeralds’ energy to shoot a laser towards Earth, splitting the planet and awakening Dark Gaia (while also turning Sonic into a werewolf). After Sonic is thrown back down to Earth, he meets up with a creature named ‘Chip’, who appears to be suffering from amnesia and not understanding who he is. Sonic runs into Tails, who brings them to rescue someone named ‘Professor Pickle’, and it is revealed that Sonic needs to search for the Gaia Temples and restore the Chaos Emeralds to their places. That’s pretty much the basic premise, and of course the story evolves from there.
I will say that I do consider this to be one of the better stories in Sonic games. It’s one that I really feel like mixes both lighthearted and serious elements and provides that ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon’ feeling while also having elements of character development and worldbuilding. It doesn’t really feel like it’s taking itself too seriously to the point where it feels laughable like Shadow or 06, but still keeps a level of sincerity and has a lot of good moments - particularly the intro cutscene which is really well-animated and does a good job introducing the characters and setting up the main plot.
On that note, the story presentation here is a massive step up over previous games, both in terms of the FMV and *especially* in-game cutscenes. The intro cutscene, as I talked about, looks something like I would see out of a present-day animated CGI Sonic movie, and the way characters are animated definitely feel a lot fluid, more lively and full of emotion. The characters are actually lip-synced to the dialogue this time - I noticed one scene where Tails’ mouth seemed kind of off but for the most part it actually feels like they went out of their way to sync the mouths to the English dialogue.
However, I don’t feel like the story’s perfect by any means. The core plot itself feels sort of derivative of Sonic Adventure - Eggman finds out about a powerful, ancient entity, awakens it to use for his own power, only for the entity to betray him and almost cause destruction to the entire world. And this was already kind of an issue with 06’s plot, and here it really just feels like Sonic Team retreading similar ground.
But of course, the structure aside, there’s still what actually happens within the plot to talk about. And while it can be entertaining, there were a few times where I felt like the game introduced plot or character elements that it… really didn’t seem to build off of.
The biggest example was with Amy’s place in the game - where in her first cutscene, she approaches Sonic but then mistakes him for someone else, making Sonic feel embarrassed and alienated by his Werehog form. A good plot element for sure, but one I feel doesn’t really go elsewhere after that first cutscene and with Amy realizing that it was Sonic in the next one. I guess there is that one cutscene towards the end with the heart to heart between Sonic and Chip after realizing he’s Light Gaia (which is honestly a really good scene no doubt) where Chip brings up Sonic’s confidence when it comes to being himself, even as he’s the Werewolf which I guess could be tied to that concept, but even then, it’s not until much later and outside of that it really isn’t build up towards.
That sort of thing is especially apparent considering that I feel like not a lot happens in this game’s plot. There are good moments with the characters - Sonic and Chip, especially - but a good chunk of the plot just feels like not much more than Sonic and Chip going around the world and heading to the Gaia Temples to restore the emeralds.
Also, this might be somewhat of a controversial take but… I don’t really enjoy Sonic’s characterization in what is considered the ‘Dark Age’ games, and that does apply to this game as well. This is something I didn’t talk about in my 06 and Secret Rings review despite it being an issue in those games as well (mostly 06), but for as much as I see people shitting on Colors onward Sonic for the ‘Baldy Nosehair’ jokes or just being too cocky or whatever, and while I can understand that in some cases, I feel like in the games released between 2006 and 2009 has the opposite problem where his ‘hero’ persona is kind of just too overplayed.
In this case, he has his one-liners in the intro and after boss fights, but I feel like a lot of the time he just kind of comes off to me as a generic ‘hero’ without any real personality outside of that. I mean, from the start Sonic’s had that cocky side of him that was even present in the Adventure games, but here, I feel his personality is a bit too flat, and that’s also added to when this game does from time to time add in plot elements that it just… doesn’t really do much with.
Okay, but despite all my complaining, I still could enjoy this story overall - the presentation alone gives it a step up over some of the previous games, and despite there being parts of the plot that I do find a bit too empty, there are definitely those good moments that still manage to stick out from time to time. I just don’t necessarily think it’s one of the pinnacles of game writing/stories that some people think it is. It’s good and entertaining as far as Sonic games go, but nothing that really blows me away.
Presentation
I talked about how the story presentation was a step up over previous Sonic games, and to continue off of that, I’d say this game’s visuals are overall a step up when comparing it to the last 360/PS3 Sonic game. I definitely feel like between the Hedgehog Engine and Sonic Team becoming generally more experienced with the hardware, Sonic Unleashed really feels a lot nicer to look at and the art style overall feels more defined altogether.
The models of Sonic and his friends really feel like what I would expect as a translation of them into 3D, and the environments, while I do feel are a bit dull color-palette wise, still feel like proper replications of real world countries as this game was going for - Chun-Nan being inspired by China, Apotos being inspired by Greece, so on and so forth. There are many who still argue that this is still the best looking Sonic game, and while I do feel like the base for this art style would built upon and improved in later games (particularly Generations and Forces), this definitely feels like a step in the right direction in terms of art direction and graphical fidelity. I mean, for the love of god, they actually made the human NPCs mesh in with the Sonic characters, I gotta give props for that.
One very big problem though… the framerate. For as poor as I found 06’s art style to be, at least it did aim for 60 FPS even with a lot of slowdowns here and there. The Xbox 360 version targets 30 FPS, which remains even when playing it on the Xbox One or Series X (in which I played on the One X for this review), while the PlayStation 3 is capable of going up to 60.
That may sound fine, but Sonic Unleashed has a major issue with having an incredibly unstable, inconsistent framerate. Admittedly while playing it on the One X, it didn’t really seem to be much of an issue - the One X and especially Series X’s overall power does seem to make the framerate a lot more stable, albeit I did notice slowdown and framerate drops in places (especially Jungle Joyride), and in general I have heard the 360 version is a bit more stable when it comes to framerate drops but still pretty bad about it. The PS3 version is even more unstable though, and while it does look smooth when it does hit 60FPS, those moments are very few and far in between, with the only level that was consistently hitting 60FPS being Cool Edge Day.
I get that, especially in retrospect now, the 360 and PS3 aren’t exactly the most powerful consoles out there, but this game really ends up feeling poorly optimized all around, and I feel like, especially in a game like this that emphasizes speed and fast-paced platforming, the framerate issues are really noticeable. I mean, I would be okay if it was a stable 30FPS, but the game doesn’t even have that going for it unless you’re playing on a Series X or are okay with a fewer amount of frame drops on the One X. Even then, those are consoles released less than 1 year and 4 years ago respectively, whereas this game is almost 13 years old designed for hardware released almost 15-16 years ago at this point.
Hell, it’s probably worth mentioning that despite this being referred to as the ‘HD’ version (as opposed to the Wii/PS2 versions being referred to as the ‘SD’ versions), this game doesn’t even run at a resolution that would be considered HD. The industry standard considers ‘HD’ to be at a resolution of 1280x720, whereas this game runs at anamorphic 880x720, a resolution that… frankly I never even heard of prior to playing this game.
As such, this is definitely one game I really feel would benefit from a remaster or modern port. And while I’m glad Colors is being remastered and ported to newer consoles and as such becoming more accessible, I would like to see a modern Unleashed port that at least fixes the framerate and resolution.
Anyway, onto the soundtrack. In a series known for almost always having really good game soundtracks, it is hard for me to pick a ‘favorite’, but Unleashed… is definitely among my personal top favorites from the series. There’s a really good mix of orchestral and jazzy themes that is topped off with having music that fits the different parts of the world you’re traveling, using different instrumentation to adapt to the different styles, as well as having more fast-paced themes for the day stages and more relaxing themes for the night stages. I really like the game’s ending theme, ‘Endless Possibility’, which I actually found was by the same band who did the Phineas and Ferb intro of all things, and I mean… Phineas and Ferb was part of my childhood so, cool!
Outside of that, I really like a lot of the level themes, with my favorites being Rooftop Run Day, Dragon Road Day, the Night Boss themes and the Empire City Night Hub theme. Admittedly, I don’t really remember the night stage themes quite as much as the Day stage themes, but I mostly blame that due to how overplayed the ‘Battle’ theme is. I mean, the track itself is nice, but it plays every time you get near an enemy, and honestly, I really feel like there was missed potential to have it change based off of what part of the world you’re in, or at least have it be a Super Mario World-style leitmotif that changes instrumentation or pace.
Gameplay
To get this out of the way, Sonic Unleashed is the first game in the series to utilize the ‘Boost’ formula. Well, kind of. Elements of the boost formula can be traced back to the Rush games - which had more of a focus on fast-paced platforming and implementation of the ‘Boost’ gauge - but Sonic Unleashed is ultimately the first game with the Boost formula in it’s current, most common form. A mix of 3D and 2D sections, an expanded moveset, and in general just being all around having more of a focus on Sonic’s signature element, speed.
I’ll be honest here - the Boost gameplay is personally my favorite of the major Sonic ‘formulas’, which is somewhat of a controversial take within the current state of the Sonic fandom, especially after Forces ended up being a disappointment for many. But I believe I’ve mentioned in the past that my favorite Sonic games tend to be ones that in my eyes have a good balance of both speed and platforming while incorporating level design with alternate pathways and elements of flow to incentivize replayability.
And while both the classic and Adventure formulas have their share of this, I really feel like the Boost formula, especially at it’s best, has the best balance I’m looking for. And while I do understand the appeal and desire for a return of the Adventure formula, I really feel the Boost gameplay tends to match what I particularly like from the series - fast-paced platforming, an expanded moveset with abilities like the stomp, quick step and drift, and level design that incentivizes replayability.
Like I said, this was the biggest draw to Unleashed for me after playing Colors Wii and Generations. So, how well does Unleashed pull that off compared to it’s later counterparts?
Well, I will say that I do like the Day stages overall. In a lot of ways, it really feels like an evolution of what Adventure 2’s speed stages were going for. In that case, SA2’s speed stages more or less utilized more straightforward pathways and linear level design, but emphasized mastery of flow to the levels and maintaining high speed, plus of course utilizing those level design elements to maintain a high score and letter ranking, which was ultimately where replayability comes in. It was a different method to that of Sonic Adventure 1, where that game’s stages were more open and the environment allowed for more shortcuts and incentivized exploration on top of utilizing Sonic’s movement with the environments to find different ways to get to the goal. And then Heroes, on the other hand, combined elements of the two, making levels feel closer to the classic games with alternate pathways and whatnot while maintaining the element of fast-paced platforming.
But as mentioned, Unleashed goes for more of the Adventure 2 style - which makes sense, considering Adventure 2 did sell well and was generally considered one of if not the best 3D Sonic game up to that point. Adventure 2’s style wasn’t necessarily always my cup of tea, but it did have an appeal, and Unleashed builds on top of that. Levels are more straightforward and linear, but also more speed-focused, fast-paced and built around mastery of flow. This especially goes in hand with what the ‘Boost’ gameplay where Sonic’s moveset is expanded upon while the player maintains a ‘Boost’ gauge which gives Sonic a burst of speed when used and allows him to easily plow through enemies, but of course, you’re still limited to how much energy is actually in the gauge.
Now, I will say that overall I did enjoy playing through Unleashed’s Day stages, especially as the first (3D) Boost formula game and the implementation of Sonic’s expanded moveset to go along with that. The mix of speed and platforming just feels really fun here - like Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure, but in 3D. There’s a lot going on - there’s occasional alternate pathways, quick time events, and you’re given plenty of opportunities to utilize Sonic’s moveset to move faster through the level, especially when replaying. It can definitely be exhilarating and replicates just what the series is about - speed.
Course, I do still prefer some of the later Boost games, and there is a reason for that. While the level design is still definitely fun to me, I can’t really deny that it does feel a bit *too* linear for me, and even with the occasional alternate pathways, I don’t really feel like they add much to the stage design overall.
Let’s take Generations in comparison. When it came to alternate pathways in that game, it at least felt like, for the most part, they had their advantages and disadvantages - in general, actually feeling like completely new ways to explore the level, in some cases feeling faster or slower, but also incorporating new design elements that make each path feel more interesting and making replays of the levels feel more unique.
With Unleashed, I tend to find that for most of the game you’re being confined to a single path, with most of the alternate pathways just feeling like a slightly faster version of the ‘main’ pathway, which even then can only be achieved by memorizing the stage and being fast enough on your reflexes. I know there are people who prefer this approach, and I understand that, plus Unleashed generally does ‘feel’ faster than… well, just about any Sonic game really, but at the same time, I also feel like the design here just makes everything feel too confined, and doesn’t really have the more open, branching level design that I like about Generations or even Heroes and Adventure 1.
Plus, Sonic’s control in this game feel a bit… weird to me. In moments where you do slow down and have to platform within the day stages, Sonic’s sensitivity just feels a bit too high for me. What I mean by this is that Sonic feels like he takes off at a high speed whenever you’re pushing the analog stick, making him just feel slippery in moments where you do have to platform. I have seen this as a complaint with the Boost gameplay in general, but at the same time, platforming in Colors Wii and Generations definitely didn’t feel nearly as slippery as it does here Unleashed.
Just to get this out of the way - before anyone comments saying ‘Expi you dumb fuck, Unleashed was also on Wii and PlayStation 2 and
Background and History
Sonic Unleashed’s development can be traced back to 2005, when Sonic Team began development of the new “Hedgehog Engine,” an next-gen engine that would be used commonly in later Sonic games (at least the ones released for HD consoles). Unleashed’s development started a year later, with the goal of…
*sigh*
...taking Sonic back to his roots.
y’know i’m really starting to find myself not taking that phrase seriously.
Anyway, early plans for this next Sonic game started out as a third installment of the ‘Adventure’ series - straight up being called ‘Sonic Adventure 3’ at the start, and later ‘Sonic World Adventure’ as a working title, which would also be the game’s title in Japan. But ultimately, with gameplay going in somewhat of a different direction as development progressed, the game’s title elsewhere would turn into ‘Sonic Unleashed.’
One notable difference between this and the Adventure games and last 360/PS3 Sonic game was that the cast of characters was reduced to Sonic (and, well, his werehog form) alone. Some have speculated that this had been a result of 06’s reception, but it turns out, according to a member of the r/Sonic Discord server, that this doesn’t really have any evidence and from what else I could research, something Sonic Team largely did to get the most of fewer playstyles.
In fact, in a now-archived blog post dating back to March 2007, where a former Sega employee rants about Sega’s working conditions and development processes (likely just coming off of 06), they actually predicted a “Sonic game with a transforming Evil ‘Night’ Sonic who looks like a werewolf and can stretch his arms out Dhalsim-style”. And while these days this might have been taken as some guy spreading false rumors, this did turn out to be true - thus, Sonic Unleashed.
Anyway, the game was announced in April 2008 and released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later the same year, while a separate version was developed and released for the Wii and PlayStation 2 around that same time (...plus another by Gameloft for mobile phones in 2009). The game originally got mixed reviews from critics, in large part due to the whole concept of the Werehog and beat-em-up styled night stages, with more praise being made towards the ‘Boost’ or Daytime stages - which would, of course, serve as the formula or template for Colors Wii, Generations HD, and Forces.
However, the game has since become a cult classic among Sonic fans, potentially becoming one of the fan favorites among the series as a whole, with a lot of praise being made towards the Day stages and their level design, the story, visuals, and even the ‘Night’ stages among some.
Personal Experiences
I remember finding out about this game around 2012 - around the time I started to become more invested in the franchise and fanbase. And while the game definitely it’s share of naysayers, I actually found that a lot of people generally considered it to be ‘underrated’ and just being better than a lot of the game’s critical reviews made it out to be. But at the same time, I never really found myself having much desire to play it, especially compared to Colors and Generations which had come out more recently, until around 2016. This was about the time I started to grow more appreciation for the Boost formula after finally getting to play Generations at a good framerate on my PC and beating that, plus beating Colors Wii, and so I was definitely becoming more interested in trying Unleashed.
Unfortunately, my brother’s Xbox 360 was basically dead at that point, and I didn’t have a way to play it. I was slightly interested in at least trying the Wii version, but I always remembered that being considered to be the worse game. I do remember trying out the Unleashed Day stages via the ‘Unleashed Project’ for Sonic Generations, and while I did enjoy that, it didn’t quite feel like I was getting the full, true experience.
In late 2018, I ended up buying the Wii version, which I initially liked overall, but in Spring of the following year, I decided to buy a PlayStation 3 and that game along with a few others. Unleashed wasn’t my primary drive to get a PlayStation 3 - I had always been interested in the console and it’s exclusives despite never owning one myself, but it was definitely one of the factors in my decision to buy the system.
And I was really excited to play it. I loved Generations, I loved Colors Wii, and I even thought Forces was alright after playing that, and Unleashed seemed like more of the Boost formula, but from what I could tell, with more content, more original level themes (compared to Generations and Forces, anyway) and a greater atmosphere and story. There was even a few days I passed it off as my favorite Sonic game.
But after actually beating it… I mean, I still liked the game, but I started finding things about it that led to me backing off of calling it ‘my favorite Sonic game’ or even just ‘one’ of my favorites. I have gone back to the game since then, albeit mostly with the Day stages, and I haven’t really found myself replaying in it’s entirety, or playing most of the Night stages for that matter, until I played it for this review.
Story
The story begins with Sonic confronting Eggman while aboard his ships… in space. Sonic transforms into Super Sonic as he’s captured by Eggman, but falls into one of his traps, leading to Eggman draining the emeralds’ energy to shoot a laser towards Earth, splitting the planet and awakening Dark Gaia (while also turning Sonic into a werewolf). After Sonic is thrown back down to Earth, he meets up with a creature named ‘Chip’, who appears to be suffering from amnesia and not understanding who he is. Sonic runs into Tails, who brings them to rescue someone named ‘Professor Pickle’, and it is revealed that Sonic needs to search for the Gaia Temples and restore the Chaos Emeralds to their places. That’s pretty much the basic premise, and of course the story evolves from there.
I will say that I do consider this to be one of the better stories in Sonic games. It’s one that I really feel like mixes both lighthearted and serious elements and provides that ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon’ feeling while also having elements of character development and worldbuilding. It doesn’t really feel like it’s taking itself too seriously to the point where it feels laughable like Shadow or 06, but still keeps a level of sincerity and has a lot of good moments - particularly the intro cutscene which is really well-animated and does a good job introducing the characters and setting up the main plot.
On that note, the story presentation here is a massive step up over previous games, both in terms of the FMV and *especially* in-game cutscenes. The intro cutscene, as I talked about, looks something like I would see out of a present-day animated CGI Sonic movie, and the way characters are animated definitely feel a lot fluid, more lively and full of emotion. The characters are actually lip-synced to the dialogue this time - I noticed one scene where Tails’ mouth seemed kind of off but for the most part it actually feels like they went out of their way to sync the mouths to the English dialogue.
However, I don’t feel like the story’s perfect by any means. The core plot itself feels sort of derivative of Sonic Adventure - Eggman finds out about a powerful, ancient entity, awakens it to use for his own power, only for the entity to betray him and almost cause destruction to the entire world. And this was already kind of an issue with 06’s plot, and here it really just feels like Sonic Team retreading similar ground.
But of course, the structure aside, there’s still what actually happens within the plot to talk about. And while it can be entertaining, there were a few times where I felt like the game introduced plot or character elements that it… really didn’t seem to build off of.
The biggest example was with Amy’s place in the game - where in her first cutscene, she approaches Sonic but then mistakes him for someone else, making Sonic feel embarrassed and alienated by his Werehog form. A good plot element for sure, but one I feel doesn’t really go elsewhere after that first cutscene and with Amy realizing that it was Sonic in the next one. I guess there is that one cutscene towards the end with the heart to heart between Sonic and Chip after realizing he’s Light Gaia (which is honestly a really good scene no doubt) where Chip brings up Sonic’s confidence when it comes to being himself, even as he’s the Werewolf which I guess could be tied to that concept, but even then, it’s not until much later and outside of that it really isn’t build up towards.
That sort of thing is especially apparent considering that I feel like not a lot happens in this game’s plot. There are good moments with the characters - Sonic and Chip, especially - but a good chunk of the plot just feels like not much more than Sonic and Chip going around the world and heading to the Gaia Temples to restore the emeralds.
Also, this might be somewhat of a controversial take but… I don’t really enjoy Sonic’s characterization in what is considered the ‘Dark Age’ games, and that does apply to this game as well. This is something I didn’t talk about in my 06 and Secret Rings review despite it being an issue in those games as well (mostly 06), but for as much as I see people shitting on Colors onward Sonic for the ‘Baldy Nosehair’ jokes or just being too cocky or whatever, and while I can understand that in some cases, I feel like in the games released between 2006 and 2009 has the opposite problem where his ‘hero’ persona is kind of just too overplayed.
In this case, he has his one-liners in the intro and after boss fights, but I feel like a lot of the time he just kind of comes off to me as a generic ‘hero’ without any real personality outside of that. I mean, from the start Sonic’s had that cocky side of him that was even present in the Adventure games, but here, I feel his personality is a bit too flat, and that’s also added to when this game does from time to time add in plot elements that it just… doesn’t really do much with.
Okay, but despite all my complaining, I still could enjoy this story overall - the presentation alone gives it a step up over some of the previous games, and despite there being parts of the plot that I do find a bit too empty, there are definitely those good moments that still manage to stick out from time to time. I just don’t necessarily think it’s one of the pinnacles of game writing/stories that some people think it is. It’s good and entertaining as far as Sonic games go, but nothing that really blows me away.
Presentation
I talked about how the story presentation was a step up over previous Sonic games, and to continue off of that, I’d say this game’s visuals are overall a step up when comparing it to the last 360/PS3 Sonic game. I definitely feel like between the Hedgehog Engine and Sonic Team becoming generally more experienced with the hardware, Sonic Unleashed really feels a lot nicer to look at and the art style overall feels more defined altogether.
The models of Sonic and his friends really feel like what I would expect as a translation of them into 3D, and the environments, while I do feel are a bit dull color-palette wise, still feel like proper replications of real world countries as this game was going for - Chun-Nan being inspired by China, Apotos being inspired by Greece, so on and so forth. There are many who still argue that this is still the best looking Sonic game, and while I do feel like the base for this art style would built upon and improved in later games (particularly Generations and Forces), this definitely feels like a step in the right direction in terms of art direction and graphical fidelity. I mean, for the love of god, they actually made the human NPCs mesh in with the Sonic characters, I gotta give props for that.
One very big problem though… the framerate. For as poor as I found 06’s art style to be, at least it did aim for 60 FPS even with a lot of slowdowns here and there. The Xbox 360 version targets 30 FPS, which remains even when playing it on the Xbox One or Series X (in which I played on the One X for this review), while the PlayStation 3 is capable of going up to 60.
That may sound fine, but Sonic Unleashed has a major issue with having an incredibly unstable, inconsistent framerate. Admittedly while playing it on the One X, it didn’t really seem to be much of an issue - the One X and especially Series X’s overall power does seem to make the framerate a lot more stable, albeit I did notice slowdown and framerate drops in places (especially Jungle Joyride), and in general I have heard the 360 version is a bit more stable when it comes to framerate drops but still pretty bad about it. The PS3 version is even more unstable though, and while it does look smooth when it does hit 60FPS, those moments are very few and far in between, with the only level that was consistently hitting 60FPS being Cool Edge Day.
I get that, especially in retrospect now, the 360 and PS3 aren’t exactly the most powerful consoles out there, but this game really ends up feeling poorly optimized all around, and I feel like, especially in a game like this that emphasizes speed and fast-paced platforming, the framerate issues are really noticeable. I mean, I would be okay if it was a stable 30FPS, but the game doesn’t even have that going for it unless you’re playing on a Series X or are okay with a fewer amount of frame drops on the One X. Even then, those are consoles released less than 1 year and 4 years ago respectively, whereas this game is almost 13 years old designed for hardware released almost 15-16 years ago at this point.
Hell, it’s probably worth mentioning that despite this being referred to as the ‘HD’ version (as opposed to the Wii/PS2 versions being referred to as the ‘SD’ versions), this game doesn’t even run at a resolution that would be considered HD. The industry standard considers ‘HD’ to be at a resolution of 1280x720, whereas this game runs at anamorphic 880x720, a resolution that… frankly I never even heard of prior to playing this game.
As such, this is definitely one game I really feel would benefit from a remaster or modern port. And while I’m glad Colors is being remastered and ported to newer consoles and as such becoming more accessible, I would like to see a modern Unleashed port that at least fixes the framerate and resolution.
Anyway, onto the soundtrack. In a series known for almost always having really good game soundtracks, it is hard for me to pick a ‘favorite’, but Unleashed… is definitely among my personal top favorites from the series. There’s a really good mix of orchestral and jazzy themes that is topped off with having music that fits the different parts of the world you’re traveling, using different instrumentation to adapt to the different styles, as well as having more fast-paced themes for the day stages and more relaxing themes for the night stages. I really like the game’s ending theme, ‘Endless Possibility’, which I actually found was by the same band who did the Phineas and Ferb intro of all things, and I mean… Phineas and Ferb was part of my childhood so, cool!
Outside of that, I really like a lot of the level themes, with my favorites being Rooftop Run Day, Dragon Road Day, the Night Boss themes and the Empire City Night Hub theme. Admittedly, I don’t really remember the night stage themes quite as much as the Day stage themes, but I mostly blame that due to how overplayed the ‘Battle’ theme is. I mean, the track itself is nice, but it plays every time you get near an enemy, and honestly, I really feel like there was missed potential to have it change based off of what part of the world you’re in, or at least have it be a Super Mario World-style leitmotif that changes instrumentation or pace.
Gameplay
To get this out of the way, Sonic Unleashed is the first game in the series to utilize the ‘Boost’ formula. Well, kind of. Elements of the boost formula can be traced back to the Rush games - which had more of a focus on fast-paced platforming and implementation of the ‘Boost’ gauge - but Sonic Unleashed is ultimately the first game with the Boost formula in it’s current, most common form. A mix of 3D and 2D sections, an expanded moveset, and in general just being all around having more of a focus on Sonic’s signature element, speed.
I’ll be honest here - the Boost gameplay is personally my favorite of the major Sonic ‘formulas’, which is somewhat of a controversial take within the current state of the Sonic fandom, especially after Forces ended up being a disappointment for many. But I believe I’ve mentioned in the past that my favorite Sonic games tend to be ones that in my eyes have a good balance of both speed and platforming while incorporating level design with alternate pathways and elements of flow to incentivize replayability.
And while both the classic and Adventure formulas have their share of this, I really feel like the Boost formula, especially at it’s best, has the best balance I’m looking for. And while I do understand the appeal and desire for a return of the Adventure formula, I really feel the Boost gameplay tends to match what I particularly like from the series - fast-paced platforming, an expanded moveset with abilities like the stomp, quick step and drift, and level design that incentivizes replayability.
Like I said, this was the biggest draw to Unleashed for me after playing Colors Wii and Generations. So, how well does Unleashed pull that off compared to it’s later counterparts?
Well, I will say that I do like the Day stages overall. In a lot of ways, it really feels like an evolution of what Adventure 2’s speed stages were going for. In that case, SA2’s speed stages more or less utilized more straightforward pathways and linear level design, but emphasized mastery of flow to the levels and maintaining high speed, plus of course utilizing those level design elements to maintain a high score and letter ranking, which was ultimately where replayability comes in. It was a different method to that of Sonic Adventure 1, where that game’s stages were more open and the environment allowed for more shortcuts and incentivized exploration on top of utilizing Sonic’s movement with the environments to find different ways to get to the goal. And then Heroes, on the other hand, combined elements of the two, making levels feel closer to the classic games with alternate pathways and whatnot while maintaining the element of fast-paced platforming.
But as mentioned, Unleashed goes for more of the Adventure 2 style - which makes sense, considering Adventure 2 did sell well and was generally considered one of if not the best 3D Sonic game up to that point. Adventure 2’s style wasn’t necessarily always my cup of tea, but it did have an appeal, and Unleashed builds on top of that. Levels are more straightforward and linear, but also more speed-focused, fast-paced and built around mastery of flow. This especially goes in hand with what the ‘Boost’ gameplay where Sonic’s moveset is expanded upon while the player maintains a ‘Boost’ gauge which gives Sonic a burst of speed when used and allows him to easily plow through enemies, but of course, you’re still limited to how much energy is actually in the gauge.
Now, I will say that overall I did enjoy playing through Unleashed’s Day stages, especially as the first (3D) Boost formula game and the implementation of Sonic’s expanded moveset to go along with that. The mix of speed and platforming just feels really fun here - like Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure, but in 3D. There’s a lot going on - there’s occasional alternate pathways, quick time events, and you’re given plenty of opportunities to utilize Sonic’s moveset to move faster through the level, especially when replaying. It can definitely be exhilarating and replicates just what the series is about - speed.
Course, I do still prefer some of the later Boost games, and there is a reason for that. While the level design is still definitely fun to me, I can’t really deny that it does feel a bit *too* linear for me, and even with the occasional alternate pathways, I don’t really feel like they add much to the stage design overall.
Let’s take Generations in comparison. When it came to alternate pathways in that game, it at least felt like, for the most part, they had their advantages and disadvantages - in general, actually feeling like completely new ways to explore the level, in some cases feeling faster or slower, but also incorporating new design elements that make each path feel more interesting and making replays of the levels feel more unique.
With Unleashed, I tend to find that for most of the game you’re being confined to a single path, with most of the alternate pathways just feeling like a slightly faster version of the ‘main’ pathway, which even then can only be achieved by memorizing the stage and being fast enough on your reflexes. I know there are people who prefer this approach, and I understand that, plus Unleashed generally does ‘feel’ faster than… well, just about any Sonic game really, but at the same time, I also feel like the design here just makes everything feel too confined, and doesn’t really have the more open, branching level design that I like about Generations or even Heroes and Adventure 1.
Plus, Sonic’s control in this game feel a bit… weird to me. In moments where you do slow down and have to platform within the day stages, Sonic’s sensitivity just feels a bit too high for me. What I mean by this is that Sonic feels like he takes off at a high speed whenever you’re pushing the analog stick, making him just feel slippery in moments where you do have to platform. I have seen this as a complaint with the Boost gameplay in general, but at the same time, platforming in Colors Wii and Generations definitely didn’t feel nearly as slippery as it does here Unleashed.
EDIT: This is something I initially forgot to talk about when I published this review, but I wanted to add that the control scheme for this game is also weird to me - more specifically, the homing attack. In other Sonic games, usually what happens is that after jumping, you press the jump button again to lock onto an enemy. And while I should say I'm glad this game brought back the 'reticle' from Secret Rings which helps me understand what I'm doing when I try and pull off a homing attack, this game maps the buttons in a way that feels really weird after playing other 3D Sonic games. You jump with the A or X buttons on 360 and PS3 respectively, which is of course what I expect, but after the reticle shows, you don't just press the jump button again, rather you press the 'Boost' button, or the X or Square buttons on 360 and PS3. This feels like a very odd change, and frankly when going back to this from other Sonic games, it does take me a few tries to get used to, and it also causes me to mess that up when going back to other Sonic games after playing this one.
And while I like the introduction of the new mechanics… I gotta say, I’m not a fan of this game’s drift in particular. With Generations, it just felt a lot tighter and a good substitute for the game’s slower turn when you’re going at high speeds. Here, the drift just feels way too loose for me, and there were many cases where it felt just as bad, if not worse, than the regular turn. The turning arc just feels so wonky that I rarely found myself having any desire to use the drift even when I needed to turn.
In general, I definitely get the impression that Unleashed’s day stages feel a lot more trial and error heavy compared to other Sonic games, especially with how fast you’re running and the implementation of stuff like QTEs. And while there are people who like that, it’s not always my cup of tea, and especially on a first time playthrough, it does make the game feel more annoying. Especially if you don’t have great reflexes like, well, me, there were definitely times where I messed up the QTEs, and while for the most part that would just send you down a slower path, there are times where I found myself falling down a bottomless pit. Plus, there were definitely times where I didn’t move fast enough when moving along the levels at a fast rate, and again, found myself falling down a bottomless pit. The game really doesn’t feel very forgiving, especially to first time players, and the trial and error heavy design is something that people will either really like, or really hate. Or, y’know, if you’re like me, be somewhere in the middle, where I can still have fun with Unleashed’s Day stages but on occasion find them to be pretty annoying to play.
Ultimately, I do still think the Day stages of Unleashed are definitely fun, and since this is the first ‘Boost’ game of this form, I can’t really be too hard on it, but I do think they have their problems. When looking at what this game’s Day stages are intending to do - fast-paced and reflex/speed-based platforming, I can appreciate what it does well on that front even if it isn’t entirely my cup of tea. I can’t deny that I had my fun with Unleashed’s day stages, but they’re far from perfect, and I definitely feel that on a level design and control front, later games would definitely improve upon this formula.
But while I did enjoy the Day stages, even with all their problems… Unleashed still has more than that. At least half the game, you spend as… the Werehog.
And I’m just going to be upfront - I did not enjoy the night stages. I feel like pretty much all of them ranged from being ‘tolerable, but boring’ to being outright tedious and repetitive. Here’s the thing - when I was originally going into the game, I actually didn’t want to hate the night stages. I figured, at the very least, they wouldn’t be as good as the Day stages, but when taken into account, fun in their own right.
But I honestly couldn’t even say that. To be fair, I’m not really experienced with the whole ‘hack-n-slash’ or ‘beat-em-up’ genre that Unleashed’s Night stages go for, and so I can’t really compare it to those, but all around the Night stages in this game just felt really repetitive and monotonous to me - slowing the game down to a crawl after the blistering fast pace of the Day stages.
You spend a lot of the time fighting enemies, as one would expect, but I don’t really feel like the mechanics have a lot of depth to them. A lot of the time, I feel like all I’m doing is mashing X and Y repeatedly while occasionally running around in circles to dodge enemy attacks. There are combos you can pull off, listed in the game’s menu, but I really just don’t feel like they add to or speed up the gameplay enough and this game just does not do a good job of incentivizing you to actually use the combos. I guess you also can upgrade the Werehog with RPG-style mechanics, which does allow you to improve your life, strength, and so on, but even that doesn’t really add much in my experience.
What also doesn’t really help is that a lot of what else you do in the night stages is basically just slow platforming with a lot of those ‘tightrope’ sections that you need to be very precise on, or just boring puzzles.
Stages like Arid Sands Night and the Werehog sections of Eggmanland especially exemplify all my problems with the gameplay. The former just feels like a sequence of mandatory arena battles with tons of enemies where I can’t help but constantly think ‘can this just end already?’ when I’m playing it, and Eggmanland has some of the worst precision platforming in the game, especially with the pipe/tightrope sections in that level, where if you mess up even slightly, you die with no way to recover.
Now, I won’t deny that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the alternative playstyles in the Adventure games, but I could at least understand how at least most of them could apply to the core fundamentals of Sonic gameplay with at least a level of fast-paced gameplay and platforming. The Werehog, on the other hand, just feels like a basic, slow-paced beat em up platformer hybrid that just is all around not fun for me and really doesn’t go well with the faster-paced Day stages. I’d probably take it over the Big stages in Adventure 1, but even then, at least that was just a few levels, whereas the Werehog is at least half the game, if not more if you consider how long the levels take.
I know there are people who enjoy the Night stages, and that’s fine, but there’s a reason why a lot of people, including me, don’t. I’m not one of those guys who’s just going to say “haha, sonic werewolf is cringey, amirite?”, but I legitimately just don’t find much fun in the Night stages. The only thing I found them good for was collecting medals due to their slower pace and allowance for exploration, but that was about it.
Which reminds me - medal collecting, another problem I have with this game. But let’s back up a bit. Like Adventure 1 and 06, this game has hub worlds, with each country having their own that of course leads into the next main stage. But as mentioned in some of my previous reviews, I didn’t like them in those games - when it comes to Sonic games, I definitely prefer more of a linear structure going from one stage to the next, and I really feel like these bog down the pacing of the game - especially in 06’s case where everything just feels like a giant empty space with slow character movement.
But I will admit, I don’t think the hub worlds are as much of an issue in this game. I would actually say that hub worlds as a concept make the most sense for this game, since you are traveling throughout the world, and the hubs themselves aren’t too big, and as such, it’s easy to find where you’re going. Plus I feel like the human NPCs, in addition to just looking better, actually have stuff to say with their own little stories and whatnot. I will say the ‘Entrance Stages’ have a similar issue to the regular Day stages where Sonic’s movement feels way too fast and sensitive, which is odd considering the ‘main’ hub sections don’t have that issue, and occasionally I didn’t quite understand where the game wanted me to go, but in general I did find the hub worlds a lot less annoying to traverse compared to Adventure 1 and 06.
But I do have one major issue with this game’s structure, and as I mentioned, that’s the medal collecting. As you progress through the game, you have to ‘level up’ your medal collection by finding them throughout the stages and hub worlds, and doing so unlocks levels that you need to progress. Unfortunately, I found an issue where, especially later in the game, even when I did try to look for medals in the stages, I would often come up short of what was needed. It’s a similar thing to what Super Mario 3D World does, and I’m not a big fan of it in that game either, but even in that case, it was a lot easier to explore the levels and actually go out of your way to look for Green Stars.
With Unleashed, the levels are designed in a way that encourage you to go as fast as possible, maintaining an overall flow, but the game also wants you to look for those medals. And of course, when you’re boosting and speeding through the levels, there’s a good chance you’ll skip past the medals. There are some that are scattered on the main path, but there are also others that are in small nooks and crannies that you’ll most likely miss the first time. So, as expected, you’ll have to replay the levels, while trying to keep a lookout for those medals. And with how the levels are designed, trying to explore just feels clunky and pace-breaking.
I do stand by that the Werehog stages were better when it came to medal collecting, but at the same time, both ‘Sun’ and ‘Moon’ medals have their own progress bar, and in many cases, one type may be more common in the Night stages, while the other is more common in the Day stages. Night medals felt more common within the Day stages throughout my playthrough, and as such, when the game needed me to have a certain level of night medals, I would come up short. Oddly enough, I feel like this is something that would benefit more from the Adventure-type gameplay, especially Adventure 1. I wouldn’t mind the medal collecting aspect if it were optional, like the red rings in Colors Wii, Generations HD, and Forces, but they’re a mandatory part of the gameplay, and you’ll need a certain level of them to finish the game.
Sometimes you do unlock extra, optional acts within worlds, which make medal collecting slightly less painful as you at least get a change of level design, but I didn’t really feel like they helped much, plus a lot of them were pretty dull in their own right, but I won’t get too into that.
There’s also those Tornado Defense sections that pretty much just came down to long QTE segments, but there were only two of them (that I at least ‘had’ to play) so I guess it wasn’t a big deal.
I felt the bosses were pretty lame as well, having that issue a lot of Sonic games from this period do of just feeling like waiting through different enemy attacks in order to get a chance to hit the boss. The last few boss fights felt especially lame - the first phase of Dark Gaia basically just being “use Gaia Colossus to get close to the boss, do some QTEs, then do platforming sections in a limited amount of time” which you just do three times over, with the second phase being slightly more interesting but just coming down to hitting Dark Gaia’s tentacles a few times with Super Sonic, then doing some QTEs with Gaia Colossus.
And I’m just going to say, too, that Eggmanland was designed by Satan himself. I already touched upon that with what I talked about with the Night stages, but man this stage just all around feels too long and has some really annoying level design for both the speed and Werehog sections. I do like the idea of switching between the two within an individual level, but the level itself just feels extremely tedious - being really long, making it worse considering when you run out of lives, you have to start the level from the beginning. Frankly, it just all around feels like some of the worst of both the Day and Night stages combined into a single, really long, level.
I also noticed the loading times, especially on the PlayStation 3 version, tended to feel really long - almost as long as 06’s, but at least not quite as frequent. Still, I remember on my first playthrough of the game after getting the PlayStation 3 that the loading times definitely felt longer than most of the other Sonic games I had played up to that point, and it especially annoyed me when I had to switch between day and night in the hub worlds. The 360 version at least has a little clip of Sonic transforming in those cases, but the PS3 version just has a clip of a medal spinning, which is pretty boring to look at.
Conclusion
Honestly, I didn’t expect my Unleashed review to be this long but, well, here we are.
Frankly, when looking at the Day stages, despite having my problems with them and don’t quite enjoy them as much as what Colors Wii and Generations HD offered, I can still enjoy them, especially when considering this was their first go at the current form of the Boost formula. I do enjoy the Boost gameplay, and I feel Unleashed at least is enough to scratch that itch for me.
But looking at this game as a whole is where my opinion sours a bit. The fact that at least half of the game is dedicated to another gameplay style that feels slow and monotonous alone doesn’t help, but there’s also stuff like medal collecting sprinkled throughout that also bogs down the game.
As such, like Rush Adventure, this is definitely one game I go back to for the day stages, rather than the game as a whole or really anything else it offers. I will frankly say it - if this game was just the Day stages and ‘Boost’ gameplay, I would rank it at least a bit higher than what I do in my Sonic tierlist. But as a whole… I can see it as a good Sonic game, with a lot that does bring it down.
But of course, at the same time, I can’t deny that this game does have it’s appeal. There are many people who consider this one of if not the best Sonic games, and while not everything about it is my personal cup of tea, I can definitely understand and respect that. It’s a game I can enjoy for what it does well, even if there are things that don’t meet what I’m looking for in a Sonic game.
If you’re going to buy this game in 2021, I would probably lean more towards getting the 360 version, especially if you have an Xbox One X or Series X - largely just due to the framerate, at the very least, being more stable and consistent. You can also get the PS3 version on PSNow, but at the same time, the concept of playing a fast-paced Sonic game with the input lag that PSNow has doesn’t exactly sound pleasant to me, plus the PS3 version of course feels a lot more unstable.
And while I like the introduction of the new mechanics… I gotta say, I’m not a fan of this game’s drift in particular. With Generations, it just felt a lot tighter and a good substitute for the game’s slower turn when you’re going at high speeds. Here, the drift just feels way too loose for me, and there were many cases where it felt just as bad, if not worse, than the regular turn. The turning arc just feels so wonky that I rarely found myself having any desire to use the drift even when I needed to turn.
In general, I definitely get the impression that Unleashed’s day stages feel a lot more trial and error heavy compared to other Sonic games, especially with how fast you’re running and the implementation of stuff like QTEs. And while there are people who like that, it’s not always my cup of tea, and especially on a first time playthrough, it does make the game feel more annoying. Especially if you don’t have great reflexes like, well, me, there were definitely times where I messed up the QTEs, and while for the most part that would just send you down a slower path, there are times where I found myself falling down a bottomless pit. Plus, there were definitely times where I didn’t move fast enough when moving along the levels at a fast rate, and again, found myself falling down a bottomless pit. The game really doesn’t feel very forgiving, especially to first time players, and the trial and error heavy design is something that people will either really like, or really hate. Or, y’know, if you’re like me, be somewhere in the middle, where I can still have fun with Unleashed’s Day stages but on occasion find them to be pretty annoying to play.
Ultimately, I do still think the Day stages of Unleashed are definitely fun, and since this is the first ‘Boost’ game of this form, I can’t really be too hard on it, but I do think they have their problems. When looking at what this game’s Day stages are intending to do - fast-paced and reflex/speed-based platforming, I can appreciate what it does well on that front even if it isn’t entirely my cup of tea. I can’t deny that I had my fun with Unleashed’s day stages, but they’re far from perfect, and I definitely feel that on a level design and control front, later games would definitely improve upon this formula.
But while I did enjoy the Day stages, even with all their problems… Unleashed still has more than that. At least half the game, you spend as… the Werehog.
And I’m just going to be upfront - I did not enjoy the night stages. I feel like pretty much all of them ranged from being ‘tolerable, but boring’ to being outright tedious and repetitive. Here’s the thing - when I was originally going into the game, I actually didn’t want to hate the night stages. I figured, at the very least, they wouldn’t be as good as the Day stages, but when taken into account, fun in their own right.
But I honestly couldn’t even say that. To be fair, I’m not really experienced with the whole ‘hack-n-slash’ or ‘beat-em-up’ genre that Unleashed’s Night stages go for, and so I can’t really compare it to those, but all around the Night stages in this game just felt really repetitive and monotonous to me - slowing the game down to a crawl after the blistering fast pace of the Day stages.
You spend a lot of the time fighting enemies, as one would expect, but I don’t really feel like the mechanics have a lot of depth to them. A lot of the time, I feel like all I’m doing is mashing X and Y repeatedly while occasionally running around in circles to dodge enemy attacks. There are combos you can pull off, listed in the game’s menu, but I really just don’t feel like they add to or speed up the gameplay enough and this game just does not do a good job of incentivizing you to actually use the combos. I guess you also can upgrade the Werehog with RPG-style mechanics, which does allow you to improve your life, strength, and so on, but even that doesn’t really add much in my experience.
What also doesn’t really help is that a lot of what else you do in the night stages is basically just slow platforming with a lot of those ‘tightrope’ sections that you need to be very precise on, or just boring puzzles.
Stages like Arid Sands Night and the Werehog sections of Eggmanland especially exemplify all my problems with the gameplay. The former just feels like a sequence of mandatory arena battles with tons of enemies where I can’t help but constantly think ‘can this just end already?’ when I’m playing it, and Eggmanland has some of the worst precision platforming in the game, especially with the pipe/tightrope sections in that level, where if you mess up even slightly, you die with no way to recover.
Now, I won’t deny that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the alternative playstyles in the Adventure games, but I could at least understand how at least most of them could apply to the core fundamentals of Sonic gameplay with at least a level of fast-paced gameplay and platforming. The Werehog, on the other hand, just feels like a basic, slow-paced beat em up platformer hybrid that just is all around not fun for me and really doesn’t go well with the faster-paced Day stages. I’d probably take it over the Big stages in Adventure 1, but even then, at least that was just a few levels, whereas the Werehog is at least half the game, if not more if you consider how long the levels take.
I know there are people who enjoy the Night stages, and that’s fine, but there’s a reason why a lot of people, including me, don’t. I’m not one of those guys who’s just going to say “haha, sonic werewolf is cringey, amirite?”, but I legitimately just don’t find much fun in the Night stages. The only thing I found them good for was collecting medals due to their slower pace and allowance for exploration, but that was about it.
Which reminds me - medal collecting, another problem I have with this game. But let’s back up a bit. Like Adventure 1 and 06, this game has hub worlds, with each country having their own that of course leads into the next main stage. But as mentioned in some of my previous reviews, I didn’t like them in those games - when it comes to Sonic games, I definitely prefer more of a linear structure going from one stage to the next, and I really feel like these bog down the pacing of the game - especially in 06’s case where everything just feels like a giant empty space with slow character movement.
But I will admit, I don’t think the hub worlds are as much of an issue in this game. I would actually say that hub worlds as a concept make the most sense for this game, since you are traveling throughout the world, and the hubs themselves aren’t too big, and as such, it’s easy to find where you’re going. Plus I feel like the human NPCs, in addition to just looking better, actually have stuff to say with their own little stories and whatnot. I will say the ‘Entrance Stages’ have a similar issue to the regular Day stages where Sonic’s movement feels way too fast and sensitive, which is odd considering the ‘main’ hub sections don’t have that issue, and occasionally I didn’t quite understand where the game wanted me to go, but in general I did find the hub worlds a lot less annoying to traverse compared to Adventure 1 and 06.
But I do have one major issue with this game’s structure, and as I mentioned, that’s the medal collecting. As you progress through the game, you have to ‘level up’ your medal collection by finding them throughout the stages and hub worlds, and doing so unlocks levels that you need to progress. Unfortunately, I found an issue where, especially later in the game, even when I did try to look for medals in the stages, I would often come up short of what was needed. It’s a similar thing to what Super Mario 3D World does, and I’m not a big fan of it in that game either, but even in that case, it was a lot easier to explore the levels and actually go out of your way to look for Green Stars.
With Unleashed, the levels are designed in a way that encourage you to go as fast as possible, maintaining an overall flow, but the game also wants you to look for those medals. And of course, when you’re boosting and speeding through the levels, there’s a good chance you’ll skip past the medals. There are some that are scattered on the main path, but there are also others that are in small nooks and crannies that you’ll most likely miss the first time. So, as expected, you’ll have to replay the levels, while trying to keep a lookout for those medals. And with how the levels are designed, trying to explore just feels clunky and pace-breaking.
I do stand by that the Werehog stages were better when it came to medal collecting, but at the same time, both ‘Sun’ and ‘Moon’ medals have their own progress bar, and in many cases, one type may be more common in the Night stages, while the other is more common in the Day stages. Night medals felt more common within the Day stages throughout my playthrough, and as such, when the game needed me to have a certain level of night medals, I would come up short. Oddly enough, I feel like this is something that would benefit more from the Adventure-type gameplay, especially Adventure 1. I wouldn’t mind the medal collecting aspect if it were optional, like the red rings in Colors Wii, Generations HD, and Forces, but they’re a mandatory part of the gameplay, and you’ll need a certain level of them to finish the game.
Sometimes you do unlock extra, optional acts within worlds, which make medal collecting slightly less painful as you at least get a change of level design, but I didn’t really feel like they helped much, plus a lot of them were pretty dull in their own right, but I won’t get too into that.
There’s also those Tornado Defense sections that pretty much just came down to long QTE segments, but there were only two of them (that I at least ‘had’ to play) so I guess it wasn’t a big deal.
I felt the bosses were pretty lame as well, having that issue a lot of Sonic games from this period do of just feeling like waiting through different enemy attacks in order to get a chance to hit the boss. The last few boss fights felt especially lame - the first phase of Dark Gaia basically just being “use Gaia Colossus to get close to the boss, do some QTEs, then do platforming sections in a limited amount of time” which you just do three times over, with the second phase being slightly more interesting but just coming down to hitting Dark Gaia’s tentacles a few times with Super Sonic, then doing some QTEs with Gaia Colossus.
And I’m just going to say, too, that Eggmanland was designed by Satan himself. I already touched upon that with what I talked about with the Night stages, but man this stage just all around feels too long and has some really annoying level design for both the speed and Werehog sections. I do like the idea of switching between the two within an individual level, but the level itself just feels extremely tedious - being really long, making it worse considering when you run out of lives, you have to start the level from the beginning. Frankly, it just all around feels like some of the worst of both the Day and Night stages combined into a single, really long, level.
I also noticed the loading times, especially on the PlayStation 3 version, tended to feel really long - almost as long as 06’s, but at least not quite as frequent. Still, I remember on my first playthrough of the game after getting the PlayStation 3 that the loading times definitely felt longer than most of the other Sonic games I had played up to that point, and it especially annoyed me when I had to switch between day and night in the hub worlds. The 360 version at least has a little clip of Sonic transforming in those cases, but the PS3 version just has a clip of a medal spinning, which is pretty boring to look at.
Conclusion
Honestly, I didn’t expect my Unleashed review to be this long but, well, here we are.
Frankly, when looking at the Day stages, despite having my problems with them and don’t quite enjoy them as much as what Colors Wii and Generations HD offered, I can still enjoy them, especially when considering this was their first go at the current form of the Boost formula. I do enjoy the Boost gameplay, and I feel Unleashed at least is enough to scratch that itch for me.
But looking at this game as a whole is where my opinion sours a bit. The fact that at least half of the game is dedicated to another gameplay style that feels slow and monotonous alone doesn’t help, but there’s also stuff like medal collecting sprinkled throughout that also bogs down the game.
As such, like Rush Adventure, this is definitely one game I go back to for the day stages, rather than the game as a whole or really anything else it offers. I will frankly say it - if this game was just the Day stages and ‘Boost’ gameplay, I would rank it at least a bit higher than what I do in my Sonic tierlist. But as a whole… I can see it as a good Sonic game, with a lot that does bring it down.
But of course, at the same time, I can’t deny that this game does have it’s appeal. There are many people who consider this one of if not the best Sonic games, and while not everything about it is my personal cup of tea, I can definitely understand and respect that. It’s a game I can enjoy for what it does well, even if there are things that don’t meet what I’m looking for in a Sonic game.
If you’re going to buy this game in 2021, I would probably lean more towards getting the 360 version, especially if you have an Xbox One X or Series X - largely just due to the framerate, at the very least, being more stable and consistent. You can also get the PS3 version on PSNow, but at the same time, the concept of playing a fast-paced Sonic game with the input lag that PSNow has doesn’t exactly sound pleasant to me, plus the PS3 version of course feels a lot more unstable.
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