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Binding: Video Game Brand: Sega Of America, Inc. EAN: 0010086650174 ESRB Age Rating: Everyone 10+ Label: Sega Of America, Inc. Manufacturer: Sega Of America, Inc. Model: 65017 Platform: Nintendo Wii Publisher: Sega Of America, Inc. Release Date: November 18, 2008 Sales Rank: 94 Studio: Sega Of America, Inc.
Features:
Sonic the Hedgehog returns in this platform for Nintendo Wii with 2D and 3D elements
Different style of gameplay depending on whether it is day or night
Nine beautiful levels based on real-life locations
Amazon.com Product Description: Transformed and unleashed, Sonic races to save the world...and himself. Sonic the Hedgehog is on an adventure unlike any other. Powered by an all-new engine, Sonic Unleashed blends classic Sonic gameplay with a variety of in-game perspectives to create an entirely new and unique gaming experience. Merging blistering 2D action with meticulously rendered 3D environments, players race through intriguing locations across the globe as Sonic to save a chaotic world.
The other side of Sonic
Sonic and his alter ego Werehog. View larger.
Collect rings for Ring Energy. View larger.
Swing into action with Werehog. View larger.
A New Sonic a New Story On a quest for world domination Sonic nemesis Dr. Eggman has managed to steal the chaos emeralds once again and this time drained them of their power. As a result not only has the Earth split into distinct sections, so has Sonic. Now he is two beings. During the day he is the usual speed-addicted hedgehog players will remember, but at night he becomes Sonic the Werehog. In either form it is the player's ultimate goal to find the missing chaos emeralds and return them to their proper place in order to set the world and Sonic himself, back the way he should be. Gameplay: The Two Sides of Sonic Like nearly all Sonic games, Sonic Unleashed is platform-based. The game combines the feel of 2D side-scrolling that fans of the Sonic series love, with sharp 3D graphics, and throws in an over the back third-person perspective reminiscent of FPS gameplay for good measure. And just as in earlier games, as players race through and explore the expansive world before them, using auto lock to hone in on enemies and areas of interest, they will rely on the power they gain from the rings they collect for a variety of things, but with the new twist of Sonic's split personality, things are a little bit different. Playing during the day, as you race across the world in the form of Sonic, speed is the main goal. Collecting rings fills you with 'Ring Energy,' which not only provides extra life, but also the advantage of 'Sonic Boost.' With this players can travel at speeds that approximate 300 MPH. In addition, Sonic Unleashed introduces two new features: the 'Speed Drift' and the 'Quick Step'. Speed Drifting is similar to drifting in racing games, allowing players to slide around corners at high speeds, while Quick Stepping is a sidestepping maneuver allowing Sonic to avoid enemies with quick steps to either side. Both keep you moving as fast as possible, so you can get as many rings as possible, which again keeps you moving as fast as possible. As night falls and Sonic assumes his Werehog form the rings provide a different kind of power more suited to his more menacing appearance. Much slower, but also much more powerful, the Werehog relies on the rings to provide life as well as strength to shield himself from the attacks of enemies. This is necessary because Werehog gameplay, although based in platforming, incorporates significant levels of combat as well. Red orbs gathered as enemies are defeated allow the player to unlock additional combo moves that will supplement the hack and slash and arm stretching abilities that the Werehog always possesses. Whether Hedgehog or Werehog, no matter which form players prefer they will get ample opportunity to explore the two sides of Sonic since each area in the game contains both night and day segments where each form must be played. Key Game Features:
Sonic’s World Transformed - Sonic maintains his high-speed abilities during the day, but at night he is transformed into a mysterious dark form with incredible never-before-seen abilities including 3D-action brawling and amazing agility.
Tight Navigation and Speed Control - Players accelerate to super speed with ‘Sonic Boost’ by collecting rings to increase Sonic’s ‘Ring Energy.’ Using ‘Quick Step,’ players will quickly move left or right to avoid obstacles instantly. Additionally, ‘Speed Drift’ allows players to rocket through turns without slowing down.
Powerful New Engine and Cinematic Graphics - With its new modified game engine, Sonic Unleashed enhances the classic 2D perspective with mind-blowing 3D stages. Other technology capabilities include global illumination, grid computing, continuous data streaming and an intricate path finding system.
Enhanced and Expanded Environments - Many unique and fascinating continents offer the player an opportunity to save the world in a dynamic, high-speed experience. In addition to exploring exciting unlockable areas, players dash through up to nine locations resembling real-life destinations including the Great Wall of China, Arctic Pole glaciers and many more.
Whether it's the updated graphics that retain the side-scrolling feel of classic games in the Sonic franchise, an expansive world to race through and explore or the multiple and new ways to play, Sonic Unleashed offers something for players of any age or level of ability.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Unleashed without thinking
When the existence of this game was leaked, the Sonic levels video looked really fun, and I looked forward to trying out the new gameplay style. I enjoyed the Sonic Adventure games as well as Sonic and the Secret Rings, so this looked to combine elements of the two. I was right and wrong.
First off- The Sonic levels are pretty good. As another reviewer mentioned, we only get 7 such levels in this game, if you exclude the silly sub-tasks such as "Get X number of Rings in 90 seconds!" stuff.
The levels themselves are interesting, but usually lack any kind of opposition. There are normally only a few robots here or there, as this time the main (and only) focus is speed and reaction time. The drifting is also fun but all too often it is hard to aim a drift into the right place, so you will commonly grind up against the walls regardless. They are decent, and a step in the right direction, but still misses that old Sonic feeling.
Now the Werehog. I was kind of sad when this was revealed, but I wanted to give it a chance. At first this new mode of play was acceptable: Search a corridor, break anything you can find to gain points, get trapped and fight off a bunch of enemies. Eventually, they just get into the realm of bad design, sending enemies after you that can move faster than you(without the dash), as well as these little hornets and other flying creatures that can hit you repeatedly, while sonic swings his fists under them rather than at them. At times the camera causes problems, resulting in a wasted life because you couldn't determine where you were landing in the 3-D space. The Night levels get old fast.
This brings us to the balance of levels. After the initial tutorials are set aside, the story leads you from Point A to point B in very linear fashion. As the story progresses, you aim to re-join the separated continents of Earth. You will not stay on a single continent and finish it, but you will hop around between locations very often. Even though each continent has a limited number of levels, you may find yourself playing 6 or more Acts of Werehog levels before you get the next story sequence activated and (hopefully) a day time level.
To Further illustrate how bad the balance of levels is, You can receive up to 3 medals for finishing a level, and single medals for sub-missions.
The number of medals you may earn as Sonic (Day Time): 71
The number of medals you may earn as Werehog(Night): 183!!!
Considering most Sonic levels take less than 4 minutes and Werehog's take 10 or more, this is really tedious if you do not like night levels.
Overall, I feel that Sonic Team's effort on this game was two-fold. They made an interesting engine to take advantage of what Sonic is most acclaimed for (Speed, tricks, and good reaction time), and then did almost nothing at all with it. Instead we have a mediocre brawler title with the occasional hint of what could have been an interesting game. Disappointing.
Rating: - though it goes a step back it still goes 3 steps forward
After playing it for awhile overall I can say Sonic Unleashed is probably one of best Sonic games on 3d to come out in awhile. What the game does right is bring the speedy stages we all love and make it fast and simple bringing that same feel you got from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and also not having camera problems like Sonic and Secret Rings.
However there is also Werehog stage like most said there are quite few however it isn't bad as one would think and as you progress through game the stage gets better, but the gameplay does take awhile usually a player will take 6-8 minutes just trying to finish it, that being said the ranking system on it isn't about speed so its easy to get good ranks on it and not have be about speed, rather it trys to get you pull off most points and rings you can under 9 minutes. The ranking on other hand for speed stages are all about how many rings and making it to end of stage at that time limit. Asides from gameplay the soundtrack is pretty good as well some of best graphics you'll see on the Wii and CG cut scenes are great with good story to back it up. My only problems are they should had less Werehog stages,more speed stages, rid of all text screens,The wiimote and nunchuck combo sadly are worst controls of game, and get rid of reptetive task of having to read samething. Overall game is pretty good and does better then Sonic and Secret rings or Sonic The Hedgehog on 360 and it barely does better then Sonic Heroes. My last thing I should say is when playing this game is to use the classic controller or gamecube for more precise controls asides from that most people asides from fans of hedgehog will indeed enjoy this game.
Rating: - Hedgehog up, Werehog down.
I was looking forward to this game for a while, and it met my expectations. The hedgehog levels are awesome, they're high speed, and plain awesome, and they're genuine Sonic. Five stars for the hedgehog. However, the place where this game falls is the Werehog. For me, the werehog was just to slow. And like other people said, I noticed there's a lot more werehog than hedgehog. I think Sega should make the werehog action just a little bit faster, so it's actually Sonic. They should also balance the stages a little. If I got a little more hedgehog, this would have been five stars. However, The game still deserves a Bravo, Bravo. I say you buy it.
Rating: - Unleash Sonic, but leash the Werehog.
I was really - really hoping this game would be awesome. Let's face it, there hasn't been an awesome Sonic the Hedgehog game in almost two decades. Ultimately, this game turned out to be only mostly awesome; but that's good enough for me, and certainly more than we've gotten in years.
The daytime levels are just as incredible - if not more incredible than anything I ever played in the original Sonic games. These are the reason I bought the game, and none of them disappoint. You've got all the classic Sonic stage elements here; bumpers, loop-dee-loops, and rails. This part of the game feels like a strange combination of Super Mario Galaxy and Excite Truck, and for me, that's a good combination!
During the day, the world fly's by and looks great doing it. The game moves only at 30 frames per second, but it is a very colorful, vibrant, and beautiful 30 frames per second. The speed is also complimented by excellent level designs. With the rare exception of a few poorly placed obstacles here and there, there is never a time where you feel that dying is just part of the game (as it occasionally did in Sonic and the Secret Rings).
They haven't gotten the controls perfect yet. There were a few times I inadvertently flung Sonic over a cliff through no fault of my own (most especially in the Adabat stage), but the control this time is a solid 90% as opposed to the 60% in Secret Rings and the flat out 0% in 2007's Sonic the Hedgehog disaster. For the most part, Sonic Unleashed is very playable.
If the daytime racing stages were the whole game, this would have been a five star review. Unfortunately Sonic Unleashed is actually two games. One is during the day when Sonic races around like mad; the other is at night where Sonic lumbers around as the Werehog.
Sonic the Werehog is essentially a platforming tank, able to bash enemies, climb up polls, and...bash enemies some more; its not that the Werehog is necessarily bad, just pointless and overused. The nighttime stages can be fun, but unlike the daytime stages I can't imagine ever playing them more than once, and what's worse is that you get three Werehog stages for every one hedgehog stage. The game simply never strikes a balance; the Werehog to Hedgehog ratio should at least be 50/50. Instead, the game is roughly 70% Werehog, 30% Hedgehog, and personally, I would have easily settled for just the 30%
Again, its not that the Werehog or the nighttime stages are bad - they're not - the problem is that no one is playing this game to do anything but speed through the courses. The Werehog levels simply don't amount to anything more than a decent platformer, and if it's platforming you're looking for, I say play Super Mario Galaxy, not this.
Still, everything that was great about Sonic the Hedgehog is great again here. This is ultimately what I like to call a good game plus. It's a good game, plus a bunch of other things that not only did we not particularly want, but that we never even asked for.
Don't get me wrong, Sonic Unleashed is a great game. But if you play, play for the racing stages, and leave the Werehog at home.
Rating: - Wherefore art thou, Werehog?
Sonic Unleashed is better than the last Sonic game that came out for the next-gen systems in '06. Of course, that's not hard to do. I can't help but think that someone in charge of Sonic Team at SEGA is one heck of a masochist. It's almost like they find pleasure in finding ways to torture us by giving us a taste of what we want, and then pulling it away right when we're beginning to enjoy it.
Case in point: the Werehog. There's nothing inherently wrong with the Werehog mechanic, and it certainly has its fun moments. Button mashing beat-em-ups are fun, but they're also not Sonic. Fans like me sound like broken records when we say that Sonic is all about speed, and the fact is that's not true. Even the very first Sonic game had levels where platforming and puzzle-solving were more important than speed (Marble Zone and Labyrinth Zone). The difference was that in these examples, the platforming was seamlessly mixed with the other stuff. Not here. With Sonic Unleashed, you really feel as if it's two completely different games, neither of which has the depth to keep the momentum going as far as it could, and SHOULD.
The daytime Sonic levels are probably the best 3-D Sonic levels ever created. But they're also only about 30% of the total game, while the Werehog section takes up the other 70%. I hope that if a sequel is ever made for this that they get the proportion more equal, or find a way to make the Werehog sections faster and more interesting.
Sonic Team is getting closer to a good 3-D sonic game. However, after so many missteps, I don't know if closer is good enough. Perhaps it's time to take Sonic the Hedgehog away from this floundering team of programmers and give it a life with someone new. If Sonic Team has so little faith in its trademark that it thinks it always needs a new gimmick beyond simple speed and platforming (the next Sonic game due next year? Sonic and the Black Knight. Why does Sonic need a SWORD?), then they should either stop making Sonic games or give the license to a new team who will do for Sonic what Miyamoto has been able to continually do with Mario.
- Unleashed without thinking
- though it goes a step back it still goes 3 steps forward
