Reviewed on Playstation 3

The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has had a long and not altogether successful life. The first Sonic game I played, on the Megadrive, was - and remains - an absolute classic. Very simple gameplay yet with a variety of options for experts to discover and an emphasis on pure adrenaline pumping speed. Since then there have been many Sonic games that take advantage of both the processing and graphic improvements of each generation of consoles. Unfortunately the developers of these new games rarely saw fit to leave a successful formula alone. They tried to “improve” Sonic by adding new characters and different styles of gameplay. In doing so they made things worse not better by diluting the essence of the franchise: speed.

Sonic Unleashed takes the same well-beaten path to failure.

The plot, such as it is, involves Eggman unleashing some ancient force from a poor, helpless planet. In doing so he manages to give our spikey haired hero a dose of lycanthropy: during the night Sonic turns from his usual skinny, blue self into the Werehog: a large, furry creature with elasticated arms. In this form he meets Chip, an irritatingly cute companion that you’ll soon want to strangle.

The werehog concept pretty much defines the way the game will go. We have two styles of play, traditional Sonic for the day and werehog for the night. One is light and fast, one dark and tedious. Between the different stages we have a dull FRP-wannabe section with overly long cutscenes.

Let’s do the good stuff first. The traditional Sonic stages are superb. We have speed, bouncers, corkscrews, speed, rails, rings, alternative pathways and speed. Oh, and did I mention the speed? These stages are fast and furious, just the way Sonic should be. Controls are responsive and the whole thing just works. There are also lots of extras to be found, enticing you to play the stages again.

Then night falls, the Werehog comes out and the game collapses. The werehog stages have no place in a Sonic game. There’s no speed, instead you wander around thumping stuff and doing combos. If I wanted to play a button mashing combat game I’d buy a button mashing combat game, not Sonic. Still at least these stages are easy enough to get through - or so it seems at first. Then the game throws in some dreadful platform-style sections where you need to time your button pressing exactly right or plummet to your doom. As if all that wasn’t bad enough these werehog stages go on and on and on and on…

If only the developers had spent their time building more of the speed stages rather than spoiling everything with the werehog then Sonic Unleashed would have been a classic. As it is the game is a curate’s egg; it’s good in parts but those parts make up only a small amount of play time. Taken as a whole Sonic Unleashed stinks.

February 14th, 2009 PS3, Reviews | no comments