4.5/5 ★ – dr_sabertooth's review of Sonic Unleashed.

Hey guys here's my first review, it's of my absolute most favorite game, sonic unleashed Despite this being the first game I've ever played I'll try my absolute hardest to not let that cloud my judgment, so with that being said lets begin with the story. story The story begins with sonic up in space taking down one of Eggmans ships in one of the best openings I've seen for a sonic game, when he gets caught by Eggman he uses the chaos emeralds and turns into super sonic. After Eggman tries to escape super sonic chases after him and in the posses destroys the ships, he eventually traps Eggman in a room, Eggman begins begging for forgivness when he suddenly presses a button and sucks the power from super sonic and the chaos emeralds, he uses the power of the emeralds to unleash a laser that breaks the planet into 9 pecies and awakening dark Gaia. But because sonic was connected to the emeralds power recently and dark Gaia being awoken, the darkness takes over sonic and turns him into the werehog, Eggman launches sonic onto earth where he somehow survives the fall and after the sun rises he turns back into his normal self, but before that happens he meets chip, a small flying thing that sonic fell on, he can't remember anything and since he just seems to love food sonic names him chip until he gets his memory back. After trying to see if anyone knows him sonic turns back into the werehog, he also discovers he has stretchy limbs, later on he finds tails who says he was gathering data for professed pickles, after sonic tells him what's going on they fly on the tornado 3 to spagonia, they arrive the next day to find out proffeser pickles was kidnapped and they fly to mizuri to rescue him from Eggmans base, after saving him they find out sonic needs to find all 7 temples of Gaia to restore the emeralds power and put the planet back togrther. after some time of sonic going around the world and restoring the emeralds chip discovers he is light Gaia, the opposite of dark Gaia, and every 1000 years the planet is broken apart and the fight to restore balance between light and dark, but when Eggman broke the planet early it cause dark gaia to split up and for chip to lose his memory. After a pretty great scene of sonic and chip at the docks of adabat, they fly off to the final temple where they discover that Eggman has turned the final temple into Eggman land and that the temple in under Eggman land, after running through it they eventually restore the last emerald but Eggman ambushes them in a rebuilt version of the robot from the opening, after sonic the werehog rips this robot apart, they fall the the earth's core and find out they're too late and dark Gaia becomes complete, but not before ripping the werehog from sonic. When dark Gaia tries to finish sonic off chip uses his powers to protect sonic and bring all the Gaia temples together giving sonic a pathway to get to dark Gaias weak spots, but it wasn't enough and dark Gaia turns into his final form and chip uses his powers again to Form the Gaia colossus and sonic turns into super sonic for the final boss, after super sonic kills dark Gaia he turns back into normal Form and after Ana emotional goodbye from chip, he sends him back up to the surface while he stays behind to defend against dark Gaia, after sonic wakes back up from where he started he puts on chips bracelet as a memory of him and runs off. Im gonna be honest, this games story is one of my absolute favorites in the entire sonic franchise, I loved sonics personality in this game, the way Jason griffith portrays sonic is one of my favorite portraits of sonic, the interaction between chip and sonic is what I love the most about this game, the way sonic is willing to help chip out even if it's not his responsibility, and how chip manages to keep his spirits up when he's feeling down at parts when people don't recognize him as the werehog, the bond between sonic and chip is how I wish sonic and tails would be in the newer games but that's beside the point, the scope of this game is absolutely breathtaking, I love how many cultures get explored in this game, if find it amazing. The gameplay For the first time in 3D sonic uses the controls he uses in the sonic rush games, he had the homing attack, the slide, and most importantly, the boost button, this edition is probobly the one that has the most fans split, I personally enjoy the boost game play, also there are afew moves that are new to this game that havnt been in other games, first off he has a stomp moves, it's kinda like the bounce bracelet but with a bounce, he also has the wall jump, drifting and the ability to hop between rails with the bumber buttons, But obviously sonic unleashed isn't just day time stages, the other half of the game is the werehog, he's not as fast as sonic but he can do wall grabs when there is a grippable object to grab onto, he can also grab onto poles and hovering objects, but on top of park our he also has a double jump and the ability to run on all fours, a shield and a ton of combos to pull off in combat[IMG=49E] Now that I talked about the basics of the controls let's go over what I think about both game play styles, the day time levels are really fun to blast through and try to spped run and the levels can have multipul ways of reaching the goal which I love, but the levels feel abit too empty at times, but that's to be expected because they're working with the boost game play in 3D for the first time, the night stages are also kinda fun at times, definitely not as fun as the day stages but I don't hate the werehog as much as many people do, first off I love pulling off combos whenever I unlock new ones and I find it satisfying to pummle a bunch of enemies to death, but the main issue is some levels can go on for too long and after only afew hours of playing you see all the enemies the game has to offer, some of them are easy to deal with but than there's some enemies that are completely annoying to deal with, like any of the robed wizard ones, or the night time buzzy bombers, the most annoying this is that they attack randomly while trying to pull off combos and the wizard ones can respawb if you don't kill every other enemy, or I think thats how it works, I've tested it and they only die when all other enemies are gone. One of the most annoying things about unleashed is its progression system, to unlock more levels you have to find sun medels for day stages and moon medals for night stages, the problem is that you don't unlock these as end level rewards, the problem is that they are hidden in levels, and with day stages you often boost past them, I havnt played the wii or ps2 versions but I have hered that this issue is fixed in those versions. One issue I have with the game is that the game can be really difficult, especially in the later half of the game, the part of the final boss before you turn into super sonic can be extramly annoying and it took me 30 minutes to beat the first time I got to it, but besides that I think the game play is pretty great with the exception being the sun and moon medels The music and presentation To start off with this I believe that sonic unleashed is the best looking sonic game to this day, and has the best graphics I've seen out of a 3D platformer, the models are also amazing, in sonic 06 the realistic astetic didn't really work for sonic but with a more stylized approach to this the humans In this game look like they fit right into the sonic world, and while I'm still on the graphics the opening of the game is the best opening I've seen for a sonic game, it just has everything I like about sonic, a grand scale, sonic being seriouse and full of himself, it also features Eggman being threatening again after awhile of being a complete joke, and he hasn't really been like this since. the music for this game is incredible, some of my personal favorites are Windmill isle act 2 Dragon road act 1 Endless possibilitie Dark Gaia phase 2 Shamar night Holska hub world night. If I continued I would pretty much be listing all the songs in the game, I just love the soundtrack to this game, each song fits the current situation of the mood, i went out and bought the official soundtrack that's how much I love this soundtrack. Extras The first thing that could be considered extras are the dlc stages, there nothing special, there just the day stages but made harder, but another main extra is the challenge stages, these can either be find x number of chao or destroy 50 robots, there completely optional but still fun, you can also use rings in any stage to buy food and other stuff to upgrade yourself, either osnics speed and boost meter or the werehog health attack power, and other stuff like that, you can also unlock music in this game, music disk are hidden in every level containing that levels music, which you can listen to it later in proffesser pickles lab/ hut in shamar. With everything considered I'd say sonic unleashed is a really great sonic game, it's music and presentation is incredible, it's story is really good, and the game play almost perfect beside the huge issue of sun and moon medels and the repetitiveness of the werehog stages, overall I'd have to give sonic unleashed a 9/10