I really, really want to like Sonic Unleashed.
The game is split into two distinct gameplay styles. The day stages feature Sonic running fast and dodging hazards. The night stages see Sonic transform into the “werehog” and fighting a whole bunch of enemies. There’s a couple of flying stages thrown in too, although they’re reduced to QTE style events instead of the Panzer Dragoon style gameplay used in Sonic Adventure.
Day stages are a far too quick for my taste. The new boost mechanic allows Sonic to reach maximum speed by pressing a single button, rather than using the level itself to gain velocity. It’s fun to blast through levels, but it often feels like the gameplay has been reduced to holding the dash button. It’s a shame, because they look fantastic.
The night stages are fun in places, but they drag on for far too long. You might spend 5 minutes on a day stage and then 20 on the subsequent night stage. It doesn’t help that dodgy camera angles make jumping puzzles harder than they need to be and you’ll often die in completely unfair ways.
The imbalance in gameplay time really spoilt the game for me. I watched the leaked trailer so many times - seeing Sonic running through these fantastic looking levels really got me hyped for a great 3D platformer. Instead it feels like 90% of the game is spent slowly walking around punching things as the werehog, or wandering around trying to unlock enough medals to move to the next continent. When the day stages finally come along, the boost feature encourages you to blow right through them.
Even though it feels like two different games glued together, it’s an improvement over the mess of Sonic 2006. It’s just a shame they had to pad it out so much, especially when most of the padding is tedious and unpleasant to play.
