Why do some people 'round here not like Sonic Unleashed?

[Eternal EX]

I loved Sonic unleashed. To me it changed Sonic in a way i kinda want it to stay for a few more years, the 2D/3D thing. That was by far the best part of the game next to some of the music. The stages were good (WAY BETTER THAN FUCKIN HEROES OR 06/07) and how Tails+amy came into play I didn't mind. Only real problem I had was chip's english VA. To me, he should've been a she or a young kid. And tails VA isnt much better (just steal the Aang's *the last airbender* VA and I'm sure it would work wonders). The werehog was to me only missing more combos. Thats the main problem with the game was lack of effort they put into the poor hairy guy.

8.5/10 and best sonic game since Sonic adventure 2/battle

[brobotnik]

The boss fight was shit. Not gonna deny that. But it seemed more to me that you had some sort of issue with any villain other than Eggman, and frankly, that's just petty. Hell, I got the impression you wouldn't complain if it were just, oh I dunno, a fucking big Egg mech or something like that you wouldn't have complained at all. If that's not the message you were trying to convey, well that's partly my bad I guess, but you still have to admit there was a distinct OMG EGGMAN ISN'T THE FINAL BOSS GAME IS RUINED FOREVER vibe going on with that post. But then again, we got handed the Egg Dragoon and that managed to be a neat boss even despite it being done with the Werehog, so... well, order doesn't mean everything.

If anything, the problem's more in the execution factor rather than the fact people other than ol' Eggy exist. If you just said the final boss was shit and left it at that, there probably wouldn't be any issue.

I can see how you'd get that impression, so let me elaborate.

I'd be totally fine with a final boss that isn't Eggman. (And one thing I absolutely stand-up-applaud Unleashed for is that Eggman didn't join the good guys at the end to shout "GO SONIC!" and hold hands in a drum circle hug-fest.) Just so long as they put time and energy into creating a boss character with actual personality and an interesting story behind it, I think Sonic fighting anybody could be fine. SEGA just seems to have an addiction to crazy-huge monster fights, as if Super Sonic's powers won't work on anything less than ten stories tall.

Hell, when Metal Sonic turned out to be the ultimate bad guy of Sonic Heroes I thought that was absolutely great-- then five seconds later they turn him into some kind of gigantic robot dragon for absolutely no good reason.

My major issue is that none of the final bosses in any of the recent Sonic games have had any charm or personality. They're just huge, empty nightmare monsters. Even Perfect Chaos, to a large extent, was pretty empty. (Tikal's conversations to him were the only thing that made him work as a "character," which I'm being generous in stating.) There's a reason that Biolizard, Iblis, and Dark Gaia aren't showing up in games like All-Stars Tennis/Racing and the Mario/Olympic games: fighting each of them was a hollow, unmemorable experience. They're "characters" that don't even serve the plot, really-- they ARE the plot, the macguffin that triggers the rest of the game's awful story until it all collapses into a confusing anticlimax. Their existence always makes the rest of the game WORSE.

Most people in the preceding handful of posts have already made statements that help back up my Eggman complaint (Frozen Nitrogen, AuroraWinters, Octarine: I owe you high-fives and a free coke), but I'll get to the thesis: I point to Eggman because he's a character that already exists, already has a great personality, is already Sonic's arch-rival/nemesis, and has not been the final boss in a major console release Sonic game for years upon years upon years. I'd sure like to see that, for a change.

This stuff seems so obvious, I have no idea how things have gotten to a point where I find myself making this argument to SEGA or Sonic Team.

(Edited to clarify at the end of that last sentence.)

Edited December 13, 2009 by bro-botnik

[Phos]

After the twitch gameplay that occurs in stages in Shamar and Adabat, it baffles me that people can still call this game "auto-guided" or "control-starved" solely over the boosting, particularly when such reckless boosting is the #1 cause of death in just about anywhere but the first few levels. Sure there are straightways and control-robbing boost pads about the place, not gonna deny that, but I can't help but feel some people are completely missing the point of most of the stage design here.

My complaint has little to do with how many things that can kill you. I understand what they were going for with the stages, and I don't really care much for a game so heavily focused on Time Attack and risk versus reward.

All the same, it's hardly the worst of Sonic's problems and prioritizing it over, say, elements that are actually playable is just silly.

The thing about this is that it's such an easy thing to fix, it's matter of choice.

Off topic: Flametsreak, that picture of Sonic looks nice without the Nike smile.

[Solid SOAP]

I loved Sonic Unleashed; it was one of the most memorable and charming games I've played in recent years. The visuals are beautiful, the gameplay is fun and refreshing, and it's camp is enjoyable (My friends and I genuinely enjoy poking fun at it's script, as we do with pretty much every Sonic game), honestly. The Werehog levels were extremely unecessary, but I enjoyed most of them, actually. Once you get decently upgraded with XP and such, they're fun to go back to and look for medals, get a higher score, get a better time in, etc. The speed stages were honestly some of the most fun Sonic stages I've played in 3D yet. The boost is a fun and unique feature, the platforming is fun, and I like being able to collect secret items in each level to unlock me hidden levels, cutscenes, music, etc. I personally enjoyed the town stages, the characters were fun to talk to, the side-missions were for the most part enjoyable, the hidden collectables were fun to find, and they were all just beautiful to look at and I liked the varied environments I had to explore.

Easily my favorite 3D Sonic, just under Sonic 2 as my favorite Sonic game of all time. It might not be an absolute gem of a game, but it's a very enjoyable platforming game that gets overlooked quite a bit purely because it has Sonic on it and there was a silly gimmick attatched to it.

[Ebby]

By the same token, it's not 1999 anymore. Sealed-evil-in-a-can Perfect Chaos was fun the first time, but that shit gets old fast.

Man, I hear that. I thought I was the only getting sick of it...

[Jix Hedgehog]

tl;dr

I thought Unleashed was alright, my main complaint is the controlling in Sonic levels, too many walls n' that.

The story also took an ugly turn about half way in.. (golem fighting ..?)

Apart from that, I didn't mind the Werehog levels at all, especially when it came down to hunting the emblems .. you could always turn around easily.

What was wrong with emblem hunting? It worked for Sonic Adventure.

[Marcello]

What I didn't like was:

- It was hard to walk slowly with Sonic. In Adventure you could go slowly if you wanted. But I guess that slowness wasn't needed for this game

- Werehog. I liked him at first, but after a while the battle music got really annoying and some enemies took too long to kill. But I like his boss battles alot more than normal Sonic's.

- The battle as light Gaia thing. It went way too slow. The second part was pretty cool, though. And it had cool music..

-Sometimes when I went too fast I'd accidently go over a direction changin boost pad and kill myself.

-It was annoying to die a few meters from the goal ring and losing all your points .

-Medals.

I did like the game,though. It had good music and it was really fun :-/

[The-Master-Board]

Short answer: Because it didn't feel like Sonic at all.

Long answer: The Werehog is stupid, in fact all the characters are stupid. Werehog could've been Knuckles, Professor Pickle and Chip combined render Tails moot of any worth as they both fill the roles of Genius helping the hero and Sidekick respectively. I actually felt sad for Tails as this game basically turned him into a glorified chapperone, and Sonic has his little teary moment when Chip "dies", then Tails arrives and Sonic doesn't even say a word and just takes off running like he doesn't even acknowledge Tails. So my point is, more useless characters were added where roles were open for use by the already LARGE cast, yet they chose to add new annoying ones.

The human models were just stupid looking, not full human like in '06, not anime-esque like in Shadow or the adventures...they just looked horrible, plus an abundance of humans with no furries or furrie cities? besides Amy looking out of place in human cities.

The game places all the Sonic history, and disregards it by having a "world" map, which pretty much shows that none of the previous locales you've visted in other games exist.

The werehog levels were too long, the daytime stages while being fun for about the first five minutes become quite tedious when you realise that the game is practically controlling itself and you're just there to occasionally interact.

QTE rather than programming some extra abilities.

The fact that Eggman isn't the main villain yet AGAIN, and that we get some generic and hilariously lame "dark" monster of the week yet again again.

Personally I hate realism, so that's what made this a killer for me. I like my Sonic games like how they were in the classics, ie; surreal, strange, weird worlds with checkers and loops and dancing flowers and floating islands of colour, a world that is most definetly not our own world. Unleashed pushes this, so far in fact that you have not only faux countries of our world, but also flags and citizens and landmarks and steroetypes of various nationalities all masked up in half-veiled attempts to disguise this. In Japan it was called Sonic world adventure for f*#@sake!

Sonic isn't about realism, Sonic is about fantasy and whimsy, a talking blue anthropomorphic hedgehog who can exceed the sound barrier is NOT something that needs to exist in concepts of our world, I want him in his own world, his own existance.

I often forget that this was the last major game in the Sonic series, which is a good thing as I'd like to forget this ever happened. To me I can't feel like I am playing a Sonic game when I'm playing this..it just doesn't feel right. Even STH'06 felt like Sonic, Unleashed did not.

Edited December 13, 2009 by The-Master-Board

[Marcello]

Unleashed seemed to be the least realistic, from the 3D games minus Heroes to me. I like the realism from the Adventures more, though.

[Djawed]

Yea i gotta agree with master board. It was totally nothing i remembered of all the previous games. And i liked those.

They threw everything away and added dumb crap to the game with bad implementation as well.

[Crystal Kingfisher]

It's really depressing as I thought that Sonic '06 (minus the overly-sensitive controls) was the way forward for Sonic in 3D. It had an epic story and the art / music was really good. I'm playing Sonic '06 now on PS3 (I've finished it in '06 on X360) and am enjoying it much more than I ever enjoyed Unleashed.

Sonic '06 sucked! All it did was glitch constantly, it had a horrible storyline, it had horrible gameplay, and SonicXElise was the worst couple ever. The music was good though.

Anyway, the reason why some people didn't like Sonic Unleashed was basically the Werehog and the medals. Personally, I thought Unleashed was OK, but I mainly liked the daytime stages. I hated the Werehog.

[Dr. Mechano]

I think Eggman/Robotnik loses some of his credibility as the antagonist... or even the villain of the series when he really isn't anymore. He might be the instigator, but you really aren't fighting him so much as you are fighting something that he has unleashed haphazardly time and time again.

I don't mind the occasional game/storyline where Eggman/Robotnik let's loose some sort of mythical creature/evil entity/what have you. I thought Sonic Adventure with Perfect Chaos did a good job with that aspect. But I would also love a return to the mad genius that tried to take down his enemies and control the planet with his technological prowess, too.

My viewpoint is when I play a Sonic game, nine times out of ten I want that epic Sonic (and friends) vs. Eggman/Robotnik fight at the end with the kick ass music blasting from my speakers.

I used to have this mindset too.

But now I'm satisfied with Eggman's role as long as he's well-characterized and gets plenty of screentime. In many ways, Eggman's gradual softening-up is what's made me such a big fan of his. What might be perceived as villain decay to some is tremendous character development to me. His status as a character is what matters first, followed then- and only then- by his status as a villain.

I'll take likable-yet-benign Eggman over uninteresting-yet-threatening Eggman- Granted, if they could combine traits and make Eggman the main antagonist while still retaining his over-the-top endearing wackiness, I'd be all for it. The important thing is that Eggman is characterized as a humorous show-stealing awesome mad scientist, and even as the main antagonist, these colorful aspects of his personality must be present, lest we end up with a cold stoic as our final boss like that other continuity had.

I do admit, though, it is incredibly satisfying to see him surprise Sonic and actually be the final enemy (Sonic Rush Adventure, anyone?). And I'd honestly love to see Eggman be the final boss of a 3D game, so long as they keep his lovable personality intact in so doing.

[Octarine]

I'll take likable-yet-benign Eggman over uninteresting-yet-threatening Eggman- Granted, if they could combine traits and make Eggman the main antagonist while still retaining his over-the-top endearing wackiness, I'd be all for it. The important thing is that Eggman is characterized as a humorous show-stealing awesome mad scientist, and even as the main antagonist, these colorful aspects of his personality must be present, lest we end up with a cold stoic as our final boss like that other continuity had.

Being threatening and being awesomely wacky definitely aren't mutually exclusive; Unleashed for the most part did a pretty good job of proving that. If only it had taken it that one step further -a step that by no means would've undermined his silliness, if it were handled correctly- I'd be calling that game the perfect example of Eggman at his prime. It was still really good, but dammit. So close.

Seeing Eggman pull a Ganon again would definitely be sweet. It was nice in Rush Adventure, but the twist was pretty (intentionally?) transparent, and it diminished it somewhat that he had to share it with Nega. Both Rush games were good examples of how I think a final Eggman boss ought to be, though: they were both machines, but with an extra supernatural twist to keep things interesting and distinct from the regular bosses. If Unleashed's final boss had been an Egg Wizard-alike with Dark Gaia replacing the Jewelled Scepter, I'd have been in heaven.

Edited December 13, 2009 by Octarine

[Phos]

Unleashed seemed to be the least realistic, from the 3D games minus Heroes to me. I like the realism from the Adventures more, though.

Unleashed includes countless real world landmarks, and almost every level's visual style is very closely based on the real world location they adapted. It's not just the most realistic 3D Sonic game, it's the most realistic Sonic game period. It looked nice, but it leaves me wanting some surrealism so it really looks like Sonic's world.

[Rusty Spy]

It's not just the most realistic 3D Sonic game, it's the most realistic Sonic game period.

Ahem.

[Ebby]

The human models were just stupid looking, not full human like in '06, not anime-esque like in Shadow or the adventures...they just looked horrible, plus an abundance of humans with no furries or furrie cities? besides Amy looking out of place in human cities.

Whoa. It's ALWAYS like that in Sonic games. Look at Adventure, it's sequel, and Sonic 06. There's NEVER a furry city. The only furries are the characters themselves.

[brobotnik]

Being threatening and being awesomely wacky definitely aren't mutually exclusive; Unleashed for the most part did a pretty good job of proving that.

I agree! I thought the addition of his little robot sidekick was a huge step in the right direction for that. It gives him someone to play off of other than Sonic. Seeing him chow down on a giant sub sandwich while plotting the next details of his master plan is the kind of eccentric weirdness he'd been needing for a while, too. At the same time, the opening cutscene showed him cracking the planet apart and ejecting Sonic into space to die. And none of that seemed contradictory.

Here's hoping they stay the course on all of that stuff! I'm pretty worried that a lackluster reception is going to discourage SEGA from continuing down the same threads that Unleashed started. On the whole, I was completely impressed by the friendlier art style and the humor in all aspects of the game. I thought they absolutely nailed most of that, and I'd hate to see that stuff get tossed aside again.

[azoo]

Eggman's personality was indeed awesome in Unleashed, however that little bit at the end with him being knocked away because of Dark Gaia was definitely unnecessary. He shown a nice amount of goofiness, yet a slick, suave very determined and serious-business side that was truly hardcore in every way possible. SA-55 ("Ergo") was also a nice touch for him as well, as he's needed a new henchman for a while, and the overall character was pretty hilarious. Professor Pickle was pretty awesome too, and I actually wouldn't mind him being in future games as a guide. I must say, Eggman, Pro. Pickle and SA-55 were the best represented characters in the game, hands down.

However, I can't say much else for the others. Although his cockiness has returned, Sonic's still "little goody-two-shoes" with the same "cool" phrases and dialouge. He needs to be more like his counterpart from the Sonic OVA (or heck, even the Fleetway comics)-- where Sonic was a snarky carefree butthole that only did things under his whim, yet still helped others and did good things because of what he believed in. Tails is just the same old guy that carries around gadgets and flies your plane, and nothing else, whenever Chip had nearly all the qualities Tails used to have as a tag-along, childish best friend/sidekick. Tails, while still needing to fly Sonic's plane around sometimes, should go back to being what Chip basically was, except maybe a little less cartoony.

As for the game itself, the daytime stages were built too much around holding X, dodging things, watching the game play itself and typing in the right combo of buttons shown on the screen, and sadly shown that Sega (once again) doesn't notice that Sonic is a hedgehog, and that hedgehogs roll. Still, it was fun in itself, and made you want to make good ranks, and I feel it felt like the gameplay was more suited to a character like The Flash. As for the nighttime stages, they were actually really good, just absolutely non-fitting for a Sonic game. The human designs were really fitting towards the Sonic series, though, and had a nice cartoony vibe that made them blend with the animal Sonic characters and Eggman nicely (now only if they would add other anthro-characters into the background). Graphics were indeed beautiful, but yes, way too far on the realistic side, no matter if it was almost a caricature of the landscapes. Music was nice and varied and oriental, but didn't seem Sonic-y enough for my tastes. The storyline was good, though, as it was a nice balance of epicness and cartoony camp, even if it did get overboard sometimes.

All in all, the game was really rather good, but wasn't that good of a Sonic game, and that's the problem.

Edited December 13, 2009 by Azukara

[Phos]

Ahem.

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/details/1199/white_houses.html

http://galen-frysinger.com/graphics/jordan3.jpg

http://aguyinnewyork.com/images/2005photos/CentralPark103005.JPG

[brobotnik]

However, I can't say much else for the others. Although his cockiness has returned, Sonic's still "little goody-two-shoes" with the same "cool" phrases and dialouge. He needs to be more like his counterpart from the Sonic OVA (or heck, even the Fleetway comics)-- where Sonic was a snarky carefree butthole that only did things under his whim, yet still helped others and did good things because of what he believed in. Tails is just the same old guy that carries around gadgets and flies your plane, and nothing else, whenever Chip had nearly all the qualities Tails used to have as a tag-along, childish best friend/sidekick. Tails, while still needing to fly Sonic's plane around sometimes, should go back to being what Chip basically was, except maybe a little less cartoony.

The Tails/Chip factor was one of my bigger beefs with the game. Chip was an important aspect of the game's (largely lackluster) story, but you're absolutely right: everything he did-- from hovering near the start of daytime stages and "rooting" for Sonic to kick ass, to floating in the background of cutscenes and providing "funny" antics-- should have been handed to Tails during the planning stages. Tails was created as the innocent "little kid" sidekick, so for him to have gradually become Sonic's dull tech-support while a new, spritely little guy takes his place as Sonic's BFF is a huge shame. It's almost like they crafted him as a deliberate in-your-face to Tails fans.

And: ahaha, "snarky carefree butthole" is a pretty great way to sum up how I think Sonic should behave. If the games could somehow give him a personality that lies somewhere between the OVA and Sonic X, I think that'd be pretty spot-on. I thought Unleashed came pretty darn close.

Edited December 13, 2009 by bro-botnik

[Octarine]

Argh, Tails... I honestly keep forgetting that Tails was even in Unleashed. I definitely agree, though; having Sonic go through one of the more traumatic periods in his life (y'know, by his usual doesn't-give-a-crap standards) and having him need to be cheered up multiple times by the newcomer but not once by his best friend was a pretty wonky decision. I mean... he's painfully transforming into a raging monster every night, Tails. Give him a hug or something already!

That said, he was at least handled better than he was in '06. Not high praise, I know, but I at least appreciated his connections with Professor Pickle and the return of the classic Tornado. I actually did like Chip as well, but I'm quite glad he was a one-shot character. Fox boy needs some love.

Edited December 13, 2009 by Octarine

[Blacklightning]

I'd be totally fine with a final boss that isn't Eggman. (And one thing I absolutely stand-up-applaud Unleashed for is that Eggman didn't join the good guys at the end to shout "GO SONIC!" and hold hands in a drum circle hug-fest.) Just so long as they put time and energy into creating a boss character with actual personality and an interesting story behind it, I think Sonic fighting anybody could be fine. SEGA just seems to have an addiction to crazy-huge monster fights, as if Super Sonic's powers won't work on anything less than ten stories tall.

Eh, as long as a boss plays well I really don't give a damn if it's flamboyant or badass or whatthefucknot. But maybe we just have different tastes as far as the matter's concerned. I just feel something shouldn't need to have some great big backstory or well-written personality to be an enjoyable and/or memorable boss fight, particularly when said entity only actually appears just this once in the entire game.

Still wouldn't mind some more normal-sized bosses though. I mean, I know it's Eggy's style to build things three stories tall at minimum, but we don't get enough similar-sized bosses anymore, even without Super Sonic.

There's a reason that Biolizard, Iblis, and Dark Gaia aren't showing up in games like All-Stars Tennis/Racing and the Mario/Olympic games: fighting each of them was a hollow, unmemorable experience.

Or maybe Iblis is too large to grasp a tennis racquet.

Either way, I felt it was more because they're generally unsuited to spinoffs like these as opposed to them being, erm, "unmemorable". Expecting them to make an appearance is like expecting Sonic 2's Eggsterminator to show up - as if size and power isn't an issue, you still have to take into account the themes which a light-hearted spinoff is supposed to stand for.

The thing about this is that it's such an easy thing to fix, it's matter of choice.

Right, because they totally wouldn't have to draw up more concept art, models, AI and playtesting sessions in the process. It only would've been a matter of choice if both choices had been for all intents and purposes already finished and ready to implement.

Not to mention you'd have a very hard time explaining how Eggman was able to bring a Dark-Gaia scale machine down to the centre of the freakin' planet without changing events prior.

[Phos]

Right, because they totally wouldn't have to draw up more concept art, models, AI and playtesting sessions in the process. It only would've been a matter of choice if both choices had been for all intents and purposes already finished and ready to implement.

I really can't imagine why you would think I was implying that they could magically conjure such a thing into the game after already making Dark Gaia. No, what I was referring to was that they could have chosen to make Robotnik the final boss from day 1.

[Blacklightning]

I really can't imagine why you would think I was implying that they could magically conjure such a thing into the game after already making Dark Gaia.

Because single-sentence posts are absolutely pathetic as far as debating goes? You really didn't explain much until I actually called you out for it, and frankly, you're making a bad habit out of it these days. I'd much prefer you just made everything perfectly clear from the get-go instead of making troll-level remarks in some dire attempt to sound witty.

[Phos]

How was I meant to anticipate that you would misconstrue my post like that? Keep in mind, I was responding to this:

All the same, it's hardly the worst of Sonic's problems and prioritizing it over, say, elements that are actually playable is just silly.

Which implies that it's something to apply on a going forward basis. It's not like no one was complaining about monsters of the week before Unleashed came out.