» Sonic Unleashed -- PS2/Wii version, The fastest since SA2!

Sonic Unleashed is an absolutely fantastic game. I've had it for over a month, and it's still as much of a blast to play as it was the first time. Unleashed is essentially a perfect fusion of four of my favorite games: Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Rush, Crash Bandicoot, and Spiderman (the movie game).

For those of you who don't already know, the story begins in space, where Super Sonic has just foiled Eggman's latest plan. Unfortunately, Sonic walks right into a trap, in which the positive energies of the Chaos Emeralds are reversed, changing him from a flying golden superhero to a slow, brutish Werehog that looks like he can bench-press 400 pounds.
(Click images to enlarge)

(images courtesy of Gamespot)

Luckily for Sonic, he only turns into the Werehog at night, leaving him fast and furious in the daytime. Our hedgehog hero's speed has had a slight increase since SA2, partly due to the inclusion of the Boost Mode, which was first introduced in Rush. When using the Boost, Sonic is propelled forward even faster than usual, and sends any obstacles (including enemies) flying. Other recurrung powers are the Lightspeed Dash which lets him run along a trail of rings in midair, and the Homing Attack, which helps Sonic home in on a far-off enemy to get across an otherwise deathly bottomless pit.

Sonic also has some new moves, such as the Drift, which allows him to easily get through sharp corners without losing any speed; Sliding, which helps him duck under low overhangs without losing his head; the Quick Step, which allows his to swiftly strafe left or right to avoid enemy attacks with split-second precision; and Wall Jumping, which obviously allows him to jump off two walls that are close to each other.

With all these abilities at his disposal, Sonic's daytime levels are blazing fast and incredibly fun to play. Unlike some of the blue hog's past games, Unleashed doesn't suffer from "This Game is Playing Itself" sydrome whatsoever, and will require input from you, the player, more than any Sonic game I can remember. Because of the numerous obstacles that can cross your path, along with the well-placed shortcuts that you have to watch out for, your reflexes are put to the test because of all the Quick Stepping, Drifting, Sliding, and Boosting you have to do.

An excellent feature to point out is that, in certain portions of the daytime stages, the camera view seamless switches from 3D to a more classic 2.5D sidescrolling view, which gives the gameplay even more variety since Sonic can use different attacks when in 2.5D mode.


Now, before you start getting too excited, you should know that the entire game doesn't take place in the daytime. That's right, there are heaps of nighttime stages, which can mean only one thing: for about 2/3 of the game, you'll be playing as Sonic's muscular, badly-groomed alter-ego, the Werehog. That's not a bad thing, though. For starters, the Werehog has a fun battle system, which is mainly focused on combos. Depending on the order in which you press the three attack buttons, he will do several different unique attacks that will pound enemies to dust. Please note, the combo system is the aspect of the game I found similar to Spiderman -- there is no web-swinging in this game.


The night stages also have a strong, Crash-Bandicoot-esque focus on platforming. In night stages, you find yourself hopping on floating platforms above bottomless pits pretty often, while avoiding / beating up any enemies that come your way. Sonic's big arms have multiple uses as well: besides beating the tar out of baddies, the Werehog's arms can stretch great lengths to reach far-off or too-high ledges, helping him reach places he normally couldn't. He can also use his arms to swing across horizontal poles monkey-bar-style, or climb vertical poles.


Although Werehog is obviously much slower than his Hedgehog counterpart, he can still run at a reasonable speed by rapidly tapping the Control Stick in a direction twice. He often needs the momentum from his running to jump across gaps, so you often find yourself doing more running than walking & brawling, which is fine with me since it gives a tad bit more speed to the night stages. Overall, I found the night levels just as enjoyable as the daytime stages.


Unfortunately, every game has its flaws, and for Unleashed, it is the Village system. Every single time you finish a level, you have to go to a 2D "village" and get information from NPCs, most of which are totally useless and the remainder of which are just plain lame. Luckily, you can be in and out of each village in just a couple minutes, so they don't bog down the gameplay too much.

All in all, I give Sonic Unleashed a 9/10. It has top-notch graphics, outstanding, upbeat music, a humorous story, and gorgeous Pixar-style cutscenes. Check it out sometime!

I can't wait to get this game for the WII. I've heard that the ps2/3 versions are much better and less laggy though

Well, it's actually the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions that are considered better, and the PS2 / Wii is considered slower. However, I have the PS2 version (which is the one I reviewed in this topic), and I absolutely love it. It's not quite as fast as on 360/PS3, but it's still a really fast game and loads of fun to play. Also, I never noticed any lag in mine, so there shouldn't be any in the Wii version either.

I play the Wii version and found it enjoyable.

Then again, I'm not DONE with the game.

Surprisingly enough, its the night stages that I didnt like. They're too slow for a Sonic game, they're long, and for every day stage, there are like 3 night stages.

Still, its a great game.

Yeah, the Werehog is definitely too slow considering the name of the game is Sonic, but I like his stages anyway anyway. They give a bit more variety to the normally speed-obsessed style of the series. Believe me, I love running at 300 MPH as much as the next guy, but it's nice to slow down and beat up monsters now and then.

Yeah its fun, but you'd think they'd balance the amount of day stages and night stages. Too many night stages!

The 360 version is superior IMO despite the hour long Werehog levels lol. Its alot of fun though and I enjoy both sets of levels.
They also released a content pack for the 360 & PS3 versions recently featuring several new day time levels and a couple of new werehog levels for chun-nan. Its worth a look if you havent got it already and there very challenging.