what: Sonic Unleashed (Mobile, 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

Alright, time to move on to the next Sonic game I have to review - Sonic & the Black Kni-

GOD DAMN IT THERE’S ANOTHER VERSION OF UNLEASHED?

Background and History

After the release of the console versions of Sonic Unleashed, Sega Europe signed a deal with GameLoft, a video game company that specializes largely in mobile games, mostly based on various AAA releases and other IPs including… My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? That awful pay-to-win Farmville clone? God damn it I’m already dreading this.

Anyway, this game was announced at E3 2009 and released later that same year. Which is honestly kind of strange to me considering by then Sonic and the Black Knight was the latest console Sonic title and I’m not sure why they wouldn’t announce and develop a mobile version sooner but, whatever.

One definite weird thing about this game is that I can’t really tell whether this game came out in the west. The Sonic Wikia appears to have North American release dates for versions of Blackberry and Nokia devices, but the Wikipedia page for Sonic Unleashed only lists a PAL release date, and some of the game’s sources from around that time only announce it coming out in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

And that’s really all I could find on it. I did see a couple sources saying the mobile version received mixed reviews but since then it definitely seems like this game has mostly faded into obscurity. And after playing it, I kind of understand why.

Oh yeah, I’m not going to talk about personal experiences, but I will say I did hear of this game once around 2012 but mostly just forgot it’s existence until I played it this past time.

Story

The story has basically the same core idea as the HD and SD versions, albeit simplified and has some changes. Sonic still gets turned into the Werehog, Eggman is still trying to take advantage of Dark Gaia’s power (who doesn’t actually appear but is still mentioned) and Sonic meets ‘Chip’, who is suffering from amnesia but is actually Light Gaia.

So, those same basic beats are there, however the story largely follows Sonic ‘chasing’ Eggman rather than talking to different people around the world and seeking out the Gaia Temples. Basically, imagine the story of the normal game, but simplified to probably the most basic summary. Also, Apotos is called by it’s real world name ‘Athens, Greece’, for some reason.

The story presentation is also resorted largely to text rather than the FMV/in-game cutscenes of the HD and SD versions, which is reasonable, considering this is an early mobile game, so no comment on that.

Presentation

The game’s visuals are alright for an early mobile game. The environments and tile sets in particular do look good, still sticking to the approach of the HD game while placing it in the context of a 2D mobile game from the 2000’s. Sonic’s sprites look fine, although the Werehog sprites do look a bit… dopey to me, making him look more mildly irritated than anything. The game’s framerate feels really choppy though.

And the game’s music? I mean, it still uses the same themes as the console versions. Except, this time, MIDI-fied as if you downloaded someone’s pre-made variants from the actual soundtrack. Also, a lot of the level themes are missing, but that is more of something to tackle when I talk about the actual gameplay.

But I did want to touch upon one strange thing I noticed. After looking at other gameplay videos of the game on Youtube and going through different downloads, I noticed that there’s… technically multiple versions of the game based on the different phones that were available at the time. The first one I found (that 1. actually worked and 2. was in English) was a version for Nokia 6000 phones, and after playing through that one, also downloaded versions for Samsung and Sony phones.

I’ll talk about this a bit more when I get to the gameplay, but I felt the most prominent inconsistency I noticed was the sound design all around. The Nokia 6000 versions had music throughout the stages yet no sound effects, the Samsung version had both music and sound effects, and the Sony version… played music for the first 10 seconds or so of a stage, but then stopped entirely afterwards. When watching SomecallmeJohnny’s review of Sonic Unleashed, he also noted the case of the music only playing at the beginning of a stage. I can kind of understand different ports of the games for different phones, but I am… not entirely sure why the soundtrack is inconsistent across different variations of the same game.

Gameplay

One thing I will say is that this game actually made me pretty nostalgic for mid/late 2000’s-era mobile phones. Obviously I didn’t play this game growing up in that era, or really any of these old Java mobile games, but it does hold that aesthetic to it that makes me nostalgic for my mom’s old Motorola Razr. And the concept of having games on mobile phones in general was a new, innovative idea back then, and nowadays is something that’s pretty standard across mobile phones. The idea of having games on mobile phones was always appealing, and old Java mobile games like this one paved the way for the mobile game market now… for better or worse.

That said, playing this game kind of makes me glad we’ve moved on from that era. Because I gotta say, this game… isn’t very good.

When people bring up this game, the most common comparison I see is to the Rush games. Which isn’t surprising - after all, the console versions especially take upon the Boost formula which is basically a 3D evolution of the Rush gameplay, and being on significantly less powerful platforms, this would pretty obviously be the best route to take. At it’s core, this is pretty close to what I imagine a DS version of Unleashed would be like if one was made in a similar fashion to Colors.

The two gameplay styles also have their own variations here. The Day stages are pretty much what I talked about - taking some queues from the Rush titles, whereas the Werehog is, once again, a slower-paced platformer beat ‘em up. I did notice that in the Nokia and Samsung versions I tried, the Day stages actually take more prevalence here whereas the Sony version has more of a balance.

You would probably think that the greater prevalence of the Day stages would be a good thing, and I mean, it is, but unfortunately the Day stages in this game are just… not good.

First of all, the controls. I did notice some slight variation in the controls between the three versions I played - the Samsung and Sony versions did feel a bit faster - but unfortunately they all suffer from similar issues. Sonic in general just feels really janky and jerky, sluggish at low speeds and slippery at high speeds. Sonic’s jump in particular I found to be imprecise, floaty and inconsistent. I generally found the air control to be lacking, and I felt that at times, the jump would feel too weak, leading me to not be able to get enough height or movement to make my jumps, and other times the exact opposite was the case where it felt too imprecise and stifling my ability to do platforming.

On that note, platforming in general kind of sucks in this game. In the Nokia and Samsung versions in particular… well, I complained about Altitude Limit in the first Rush game, and imagine if almost every stage in the game was an even worse and more watered down version of that. That’s basically what I felt here, and these controls feel far worse than Rush’s for platforming. On the other hand, there’s the Sony version which for the most part just felt like I was holding right or boosting and occasionally jumping.

It makes me glad that I live in an era where there’s J2ME emulators and I can remap the controls to my controller through AntiMicroX or JoyToKey, considering with how bad these controls feel as it is, I can’t imagine playing this on one of those mobile phone keypads from the 2000’s.

And as expected, the Werehog is even worse. When it came to combat, I complained about the HD version which I felt lacked depth, then complained about the SD version which was even more lacking in depth, and here, it’s even more lacking than the SD versions. There’s basically no combos to pull off, and the entire time you’re pretty much just mashing buttons. I guess it is somewhat reasonable since this is a watered down version for mobile phones, but it makes them feel all the more repetitive.

The platforming is just as bad as the Day stages too, having similar issues I mentioned with both the level design and controls. The Werehog feels even more sluggish here, with stiff movements and floaty, inconsistent jumps.

Another thing I noticed was that half of the console versions’ levels aren’t represented in this game. Chun-Nan, Apotos and Mazuri have versions of their levels here, and for some reason out of the versions I tried Spagonia is present in the Sony version but not the Nokia and Samsung versions. But Empire City, Adabat, Holoska, Shamar and Eggmanland are completely missing here. As such, the game is pretty short, although after actually playing it that’s probably a good thing considering I don’t actually want to play more of this game anyway.

I will give this game one thing though, it doesn’t require collecting medals or talking to Professor Pickle for progression.

Conclusion

I mean… did you really expect me to be positive towards this game?

The mobile version of Sonic Unleashed is basically just an extremely watered down Rush game where every level feels like a worse Altitude Limit. The controls are sluggish and imprecise, the level design is dull, and overall this feels like a flash game rather than something officially licensed by Sega. Frankly, this feels like the modern Sonic equivalent of Sonic Jam for Game.com or Sonic Blast - maybe not quite as bad as those (if only for the decent visuals), but still pretty terrible regardless.

I’m aware that at the time, this game actually received okay reviews, but at the same time, I really gotta say that if this was considered alright for mobile games at the time, it kind of makes me glad we’ve evolved from this since then.

But ultimately… I can’t really say I expected much else. This game just reeks of being a licensed cashgrab, and at the end of the day it’s a rather minor footnote when it comes to all the different Sonic games that are out there, and at this point is pretty much forgotten by most people.

As such, I don’t really have much to say about this game. It’s bad, and that’s basically the extent of it.

(also if anyone expects me to review any more mobile sonic games they can shove it)