I won't waste your time telling you about one of the greatest gaming icons of all time in sonic the hedgehog,but I will tell you about one of the greatest falls and comebacks I've ever seen.the genesis era sonic games were massively popular and successful for sega but the dreamcast era was a bit more sketchy in terms fo reactions.Aloto of people loved it and alot of people could not get past how different and how the transition was alot less smooth then the rival mario's transition.And while Sonic Adventure 2 was a huge success alot of people just did not go for the new style.Then Sonic Heroes hit and more mixed signals,and then shadow and sonic 06 and the general hate of those two games mostly the latter and most people consider the series dead on it's feet.And that's where Sonic Unleashed comes in.
Anyone else thinking two face looking at this pic or am I just nuts?
This coming after sonic 06 raised alot of flags.Some people wondering if sega had gone nuts making sonic a werewolf and some people seeing the speed of the day stages and the very uniqueness of the night stages and were happy to see this.But is it good?
Well just from the opening cinematic you can tell 2 things that are very consistant throughout the game.The graphics and music are outstanding.The very orchestral and often very fitting music for the different cultures seen throughout the game is just beautiful and while maybe not as good as generations' soundtrack it is something to hear giving it a very grand feeling to it.The graphics I could really say the exact same thing word for word as I did for music.Gorgeous settings,and a very nice framerate in the "In game" cinematics (I'm a bit of a framerate whore).And then you realize what's going on and it is one of the most bizzarre stories.Eggman uses the power of the chaos emeralds to literally crack the earth into seven pieces......What? That's impossible? All life would go extinct on earth?.....Is that logic you're using cause if it is take it elsewhere.
Sonic falls from the in orbit egg fleet and lands on a small woodland creature named chip who develops amnesia from having a now pretty big werehog land on him from orbit.......see above for any questions you may have regarding logic.Basically the main plot is going to different temples around the world to recharge the chaos emeralds which were drained from eggman's planet cracker cannon restoring the parts as he does.The plot is okay for what it is and it's done in a very simplistic way with not as many cinematics or major plot points sans near the end revealing that chip is light gaia the polar opposite of a creature named dark gaia who lives inside of the planet and is wreaking havok as well as eggman trying to drain dark gaia's strength for his own use.Again it's a weird plot but it's not meant to be shakespeare.
And after doing some of the stages you may start seeing why people are conflicted.The day stages are fast and insanely fun though Again I do think that generations has a slightly better handle of it.Your reaction time has to be at least pretty good to avoid some of the stuff coming at you or of course have it memorized.All in all though it's a hell of alot of fun.And then there's the night stages.....I don't mind them.Yeah I know it's such a weird idea having sonic turn into a werehog for these but in all honesty it does play pretty well as a kind of cross between devil may cry and prince of persia (Sands of time trilogy) and I actually had alot of fun with it as well.Alot of the bosses as well are great.Maybe not amazing but fine battles nonetheless with dark guardian and the Egg dragoon being two of the better ones.
But there are two things that drive me mad about unleashed.One of which is the fact that in my version at least(I have the ps3 version I've heard the wii one is different but I don't know for certain.) the sun and moon medal collection to unlock stages is obnoxious. I mean at first it's not too bad but in the later parts it's unreal.When I was going to adabat the second last stage in the game,I was contemplating giving up when I saw 32 sun medals needed to unlock.But all in all just the idea of restricting progress by forcing you to collect mcguffins that in some cases are pretty hard to find is just a bad idea.it's artificial length at it's worst.
Speaking of worst and length in the same statement Eggman land......
This is me after 40 minutes of that goddamned stage.....and it wasn't close to over yet.
Oh my god.....The stage looks glorious.I mean it looks like how eggman would build a fortress and it's looks really damn cool buy HOLY HELL My first successful run of it lasted over an hour! That's insane for a sonic stage and I know what they wanted to do using both day and night elements combining the two styles into one epic stage but my god....they got carried the hell away.And I'm no professional at day or night stages so I died quite a few times in fact that run was the third session I had trying to beat it so really it's like 3 hours and after how long it took me to get enough medals for adabat the stage right before eggmanland I was on edge so suffice it to say I was not a happy camper.
But did those two things ruin my experience? Well not really.The game is a hell of alot of fun and really I think that eggmanland was fun........for the first while of it.The medal collection was a bit of a pain though so while generations does blow it away with it's non-restrictive progress system I think unleashed was a fine comeback for the hedgehog after 06.....then again anything would after that train wreck
