It was a hard time to be a Sonic fan in 2006. The disastrous release of Sonic The Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for a series that had been slowly declining since the blue hedgehog first transitioned to 3D platforming with Sonic Adventure (Sonic 3D Blast notwithstanding). Much maligned by video game press and fans alike, Sonic 2006 - as it colloquially came to be known - was a critical bomb and a glitch-filled mess that soon became fodder for comedy gamers like the Game Grumps. After Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic Heroes before it, Sonic 2006 was the low point for the franchise before Sonic Boom was a twinkle in SEGA’s eye.
In 2008, however, there was a ray of hope. With arguments about the Sonic Cycle to dampen the enthusiasm, still there was some hype about the latest title in the series, known as Sonic Unleashed. Early screenshots seemed to show a return to 2D platforming, with Sonic Rush being the most immediately-comparable game in the franchise. I remember my time on the Sonic Stadium Message Board (yes, I was one of those people), where the excitement of the fans was dampened by the Sonic Cycle, which had become a meme of sorts in the community. I remember the main comment on the game being ‘SEGA, please don’t fuck this up’. Even as optimistic as Sonic fans could be about a new game on the horizon, everybody expected the game to mess up in some way.
When the Werehog was announced, the fandom let out a collective groan and it seemed that all of the arguments about the Sonic Cycle were correct. It seemed that Unleashed was going to be yet another poorly-made Sonic game where the focus on a gimmick would destroy the whole game and leave the world waiting for the first good Sonic game in years.
However, now that we are in 2017 and living in the relatively-brighter days of Sonic Mania and (with caution) Sonic Forces, and on the back of Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations to boot, it seems that Unleashed would take its place in history as the forgotten game. If we ignore Sonic Boom and to an extent, Sonic Lost World before it (one of which was seen as a spin-off, I might add), it seems that the franchise has recovered in gameplay terms. However, time will tell if Forces is as good as it should be, given the potential for massive disaster.
For now, however, we should draw some critical eyes toward Sonic Unleashed. As a game, it had a lot to do in order to restore faith in the series. It certainly wouldn’t have benefited from the perceptions of the Sonic franchise, with many critics seeming to doom the game from the start, a problem compounded by the Werehog. However, it is notable that this game was the one that introduced Sonic’s winning formula; the boost-a-thon gameplay and mixture of 2.5D platforming and 3D speed sections that made Colours and Generations critical hits. Despite being an overlooked game, Sonic Unleashed was the one that ultimately started the franchise onto its more solid footing.
The game itself is, in my opinion, under-rated. Critics panned Sonic Unleashed, oftentimes painfully so; Zero Punctuation of The Escapist himself claimed that it was time for the series to end. Some critics even scored Unleashed lower than Sonic 06. Given that Sonic 06 was so riddled with glitches, unfinished gameplay and poor design in every aspect of the game, to give Sonic Unleashed a final review score that was so comparable was a humiliating thumbs-down.
Upon booting the game myself these last few weeks, however, I think the critics were dead wrong in their negative opinions of Unleashed. Certainly, the game has a large share of problems, but it is at its core an above average game that added a foundation and sense of identity that Sonic had lost for a long time.
Firstly, the elephant in the room; is the Werehog that bad? In some ways, yes, the Werehog gameplay is terrible; the most frustrating aspect of these sections is that Sonic doesn’t have a drop shadow underneath him, so precise 3D platforming of the kind that is required is a frustrating exercise in calculation and educated guesswork that doesn’t do the game’s production value any justice whatsoever. Compounding this problem is the fact that much of the Werehog gameplay is the intricate 3D platforming part of the game where mistakes are punished by dropping down bottomless pits. Such a simple thing as a drop shadow could have impacted this part of the game so strongly and this makes it ever more frustrating in its exclusion.
However, the other parts of the Werehog gameplay are not nearly as bad as critics claim. As a beat-em-up, the game is functional, despite not being in any way amazing, and some of the combos can be fun to use. Once mastered, the use of quick-time-event critical finishers makes the combat a lot easier and a lot more conducive to high-score chasing. On top of this, the other gameplay on offer, including the platforming (despite the aforementioned lack of a drop shadow), runs smoothly and makes for a nice change of pace. The music in the Werehog sections makes a fitting backdrop to the action, and the graphics are as gorgeous as other parts of the game thanks to the power of the Hedgehog Engine. Some elements of the Werehog half of the game are frustrating, certainly, and even boring at times, but I find that if you take them at the right pace these sections serve as a good antidote to the rushing, boost-heavy speed gameplay of daytime Sonic stages, and not nearly as terrible as critics like to think.
The daytime Sonic stages, however, are indeed the main attraction of the game. Colours are bright and vibrant and watching the game flow in motion is beautiful and awe-inspiring, even today. Every aspect of the game looks astounding, right down to the character designs themselves. Everything is given a design consistent with the game’s style and the Pixar-cartoonish look suits the game well. This is the first time that the human characters actually seem to fit thematically into Sonic's world. The gameplay itself, with speed-based platforming, is the best that Sonic has been since the Genesis era, with the targeting reticule over enemies pre-Homing Attack being one of the most important gameplay innovations; gone were the days of guesswork and Homing Attacks going haywire and catapulting players off of cliffs, and now the player was squarely to blame for their mistakes.
The speed itself can mix from an excellent platforming flow to a frustratingly-too-fast reaction test. Thankfully, with plenty of variation between the different parts of each level, such as the 2.5D sections, the rail-grinding, and the chase sequences, each level has plenty of moments that shine.
My favourite level is Spagonia, where the beauty of the game shines in the background and in the gameplay itself; it truly stands as a statement of intent for what the game is meant to be, with the accompanying background music being an optimistic song that stands as uniquely memorable. Quick-Time-Events are take-them-or-leave-them; thankfully though, they are set at a level that most gamers can, with a modicum of practice, overcome fairly easily such that they become a fairly inoffensive affair.
What is truly masterful about Sonic Unleashed’s level design is Eggmanland, a monster of a final level that clocks in at over a half-hour of challenging gameplay. It can be horribly frustrating and anger-inducing, but this level is excellent as a summing-up exercise, and challenges players’ mastery of every aspect of the game to their highest level. While it can be an annoying final level, a few replays allows Eggmanland to stand as one of my favourite final levels of all time in any video game, simply because of how it masterfully acts as the perfect ‘ultimate’ challenge.
Some of the worst aspects of Sonic Unleashed, however, can really detract from the overall experiences. Hub-worlds can be frustrating and slow in parts, and the villagers themselves that populate these worlds are sometimes annoying and sometimes too cryptic to be useful. Too many times did their quests seem completely separate and aside to the game that rarely did I feel any sense of memorability from these characters, which is such a crying shame as their designs look so good. However, the hub worlds themselves look beautiful and are pretty cool to explore, and on top of that give a real sense of location to the levels attached to them.
On top of this, at its worst, both daytime and night-time stages of Sonic Unleashed can be frustrating exercises in patience. Before you have unlocked Sonic’s full move-set, some stages can be set at a challenge level that just becomes annoying. Chun-Nan’s night-time level is probably the worst stage in the mix, along with Adabat (despite the daytime level being an enjoyable experience). The Werehog is at best a mildly-effective change of pace with a mildly-weird gimmick, but at worst is an annoying exercise in frustration.
Importantly, however, the daytime levels can just feel too damn fast at times. Gameplay often relies on course memory rather than any real platforming skill, but thankfully the flow of a level when you are proficient is beautiful enough to distract from the course memory aspect and really give you a fun ride.
What is most frustrating and anger-inducing about Sonic Unleashed are the Sun and Moon Medals. Later levels in the games are locked behind a levelling system, where if the player hasn’t collected enough medals, they are unable to progress. This forms a frustrating roadblock at the mid-game stage and can really break the flow of the story and the gameplay, which is where the game’s problems really make themselves obvious to the player.
The story of the game is set at the level of a children’s cartoon, for better or for worse. This often leads to cringe-worthy dialogue and jokes that never quite hit home, and is definitely the weakest part of the game. Chip himself is about the most annoying part of Sonic Unleashed; think of Navi, but with a voice and more annoying. However, something that I would bring to the table is this: isn’t Sonic kind of meant to be a cheesy, children’s cartoon kind of thing?
What is perhaps better than the story itself is the game’s length, which has a good variety of different levels on offer and a good amount of replay value in each level in collecting Sun and Moon Medals and in ranking up, which becomes easier with each play as the game has a modest level-up system that offers boosts to gameplay, including movement speed and combat prowess. The length of the game and the size of the package on offer compares very favourably to Sonic Generations.
Overall, while a critic can be harsh against Unleashed for all of its gameplay shortcomings, I think the game is definitely a strong entry in the Sonic franchise and deserving of a better opinion. What I think that this game’s reception proves, however, is that games don’t exist in a vacuum. What Sonic needed so badly after the debacle of ‘06 was a win, and he needed it badly. Sonic Unleashed, while it was a decent title, was just not good enough such that critics gave it much harsher attention than it deserved. If nothing else, Sonic Unleashed is a game that suffered from its time and instead of ageing badly, the game seems to have gotten better with age and the understanding that we have of the Sonic series today. Ultimately, while it took later titles like Colours and Generations to cement the modern Sonic formula and bring it back to something that we enjoy today, these games were built on the back of Unleashed, a game that got a lot of undeserved flak for being the unfortunate title to which so many expectations were heaped. Unleashed became viewed as a bad game, the focus falling on its design mis-steps rather than the massive forward strides in gameplay that it did take, such that now I feel that it is certainly a good game.
While Unleashed is by no means great, I feel that it forms an above-average platformer that was judged too harshly, and is more than worth a look today for not only the great day-time stages and the beautiful graphics but also for the depth and length of the package on offer. Gamers may find themselves surprised to see a well-polished, enjoyable game out of something so derided as Sonic Unleashed, and though the Werehog was a mis-step even today, it was not nearly bad enough to deserve such critical blowback as it did for the time. Sonic Unleashed may be a nice little title to look at if you’re looking at something to play while we find out if Sonic Forces will be worth our time after all.
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