3/5 ★ – MatthewB_03's review of Sonic Unleashed.

I think it's okay. Not amazing, but not bad. But it's certainly enjoyable PLOT: It starts with a beautiful CG cutscene that looks on par with Pixar and truly shows how much promise an animated Sonic film could have. The characters are full of expression but most of all there's a close up of Eggman's face and you can see each individual pore in his skin. Not detail we needed but definitely detail we deserve. Anyway Sonic and Eggman fight and Eggman actually wins - he sucks the Chaos Emeralds out of Sonic and drains their energy to fuel a laser that splits the world apart, awakening Dark Gaia - a demon that dwells in the Earth's core. The machine Eggman used on Sonic has some of Dark Gaia's energy and it's put into Sonic, making him become the Werehog. Eggman shoots Sonic out of his space shuttle and straight down into Earth. At night, Sonic changes into the beast, but at day he's normal. Sonic meets Chip who's a little flying fluffball with a nice sense of humour but he has amnesia and doesn't remember who he is. They then meet Tails, then they all meet Professor Pickle. He tells them to go to each continent and place the drained Chaos Emeralds into an altar in each of the Gaia Temples, and that's basically the plot. The final Gaia Temple has something really cool about it and even though the game is over a decade old, I just can't spoil it. After that Sonic faces Dark Gaia and he saves the day. It's a little more complex than that and I'll explain more a bit later but that's the gist of it. It's simple and it's fun, and that's all it needs to be. CHARACTERS (Spoilers): Sonic is the confident, cocky hero he's always been. He cracks a few jokes but knows when to be serious. He doesn't let anything beat him and never gives up. Except for when he does. Yep. Before he faces Dark Gaia at the end, his Werehog power which makes him stronger is stripped away from him by Dark Gaia as it's his energy inside of Sonic. In Werehog form, he's stronger and more relentless so when that's taken away in such an instant, he loses hope. He pupils shrink, he falls to his knees and looks at the ground. He accepts his own defeat and his own death. This game got pretty dark and to be honest I like it. It's not sticking to the safe boundaries the series usually did. Sonic loses all hope and pleads for Chip to run, but Chip doesn't... why wouldn't this funny flying creature run for his life..? Chip downright sucks past the 6th Gaia Temple. He realises his true purpose. He is Light Gaia - a 5inch hovering rat is the natural counterbalance to a demon that's half the size of the Earth. WHAT?! That's so dumb. The reason he couldn't remember anything at the beginning is when Eggman split the world, he and Dark Gaia awakened earlier than they should've so he had no memory. He saves Sonic when he loses hope. Chip, the comic relief character, is the reason Sonic is alive and is the Earth's ONLY hope. That's not development, he just changed. Dark Gaia is stupid too. His design is great: he's so huge and his eyes are jet black with a large gaping mouth. He's pretty terrifying. But he just comes in at the end of the game so he doesn't seem like too much of a threat. Everything that happened is because of Eggman - the bumbling idiot that's so clever yet dumb, so funny yet serious, he's such a good antagonist unlike Mr. I Don't Talk I'm A Big Big Demon over here. Other characters show up too. Tails is just the sidekick like always, Amy is still obsessed with Sonic and it's just annoying, Professor Pickle guides Sonic on where to go, and that's all the major characters. GAMEPLAY: The game is split into two types of stages: the Daytime and Nighttime stages Daytime is the regular Sonic stages - you boost through enemies and take the fastest paths to get the best times. The boost gameplay always creates a sense of speed that no other game can define and it's so exhilarating to burst through cities in an instant Nighttime stages are the Werehog levels - a beat-em-up combo genre with an emphasis on exploration. It's really fun to look around and find collectables and there's all sorts of enemies to fight. Whilst it can get a bit repetitive, it is really fun and you can unlock some really cool attacks if you level up enough. The main issue is the levels just take too long, up to 20 minutes for me, although I did search every nook and cranny to find the main collectable: Sun/Moon Medals. They're mandatory to progress in the game and you need a lot so I collected enough to ensure I didn't have to replay any levels but I still had to go back once or twice. Its such a pain. PRESENTATION: This game is gorgeous. It's an early PS3/360 game, but it looks like an early PS4 game, it's breathtaking. However that comes with a cost, the cost being sometimes a stable 30fps, then drops to 15fps. It's a pain to play because the Daytime stages are reaction-based and when you get huge performance issues like that, it makes it a bit less fun. Thankfully it only happened in one or two levels but it doesn't make it any less infuriating. On the plus side, the artstyle is amazing. It blends the real world and the cartoony nature of Sonic really well rather than being jarring like Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. It's really the performance that bogs the game down. There's so much motion blur to try and mask it as well, but it makes it worse in some cases. MUSIC: I have the soundtrack downloaded on my phone and that is the highest honor I can bestow. There's so much variety here and each track represents the country. Empire City (USA) is Jazzy with trumpets and saxophones, Spagonia (Italy) has violins, Chun-Nan (China) has flutes and other wind instruments. There's so many different tracks for one country - Hubworld Daytime, Daytime stage, Hubworld Nighttime and Nighttime stage. The Daytime pieces have a faster tempo and are more energetic, and the Nighttime pieces are mellow and soft. Top tier OST. NEGATIVES: The game is slow in terms of continuing the story. Not pacing, but there's so many unecessary steps. Lets say you enter Chun-Nan. You enter the hubworld, go to the Entrance Stage hubworld (yes, a hubworld inside a hubworld) play the level, go back to the Entrance Stage hubworld, beat the boss, watch a cutscene, exit the main hubworld, go to the World Map, go to the Spagonia hubworld, go to Professor Pickle and he tells you "Ah Sonic my boy I see you've restored another Chaos Emerald and fixed a piece of the planet! Do it again in Shamar" and you repeat the same process. It takes too long just to get from one level to another. I already mentioned the Sun/Moon Medals and the performance, but those are some issues I dislike The in-game cutscenes are animated so jerkily. It's hard to describe but the movements aren't fluid. The Werehog form has stretchy arms so Sonic can grab onto ledges and poles from far away but sometimes the cursor just won't show up and you'll fall to your death The plane levels were fine but they're clearly filler to pad out the game longer OVERALL: Whilst the game has lots of great aspects, there are some where it falls quite flat. If the Nighttime stages were half the length, the progression from one level to another didn't take ages and all the general filler was either cut or reduced to a minimum, it would've been far more enjoyable. The gameplay holds up very well and was a great stepping stone for the next entry, Sonic Colours. The story is charming enough, but the characters don't do anything particularly unique. If I was being generous, I'd give this an extra point purely for the passion put behind this game as it is evident at every minute I was playing Sonic Unleashed, but if we ranked games on passion rather than content then the Chicken Little videogame would be the best game to exist. Needed a bit of polish and a good stable framerate to bump it up higher 6/10