So just like sonichuman said, motion control inputs are laggy. This alone is pretty much a deal-killer as far as calling this a good game. And really that’s too bad, because the basic gameplay mechanics seem pretty solid. The sword moves themselves don’t break the pace, and if they just responded to your “waggling” faster I really think that this might’ve made an 8. But instead I’m feeling this is more a 4 to 5-ish game.
General summary…
Pros:
level design and general gameplay concepts are solid
music is great
story is passable (especially compared to most recent Sonic games)
graphics are impressive for Wii
Shadow, Blaze, and Knuckles are playable too
banter between Sonic and Caliburn is entertaining
Cons:
laggy input on the motion controls are infuriating, pretty much alone making the game fall to mediocrity
Not very impressed with boss fights so far either. Mostly just consist of blocking and then counter-attacking. Pretty basic stuff. Maybe they get harder later on.
and even then sometimes when you try to counter attack them the laggy inputs ruin your chance to attack at times. But yeah it’s just like I said before though that this game could have been really awesome had great potential but they faltered on the gimmick.
I’ll get to my con list at some point when I get a chance but I won’t be able to do it now…I’ll possibly be able to put it up later tonight.
The bolded part is my main issue with Sonic Unleashed. The Wherehog stuff isn’t terrible. It decent platforming and decent combat. It gets the hob done the real issue is that no one asked for or wanted anything like this. Those speed levels are so much fun if they had just stuck to doing the speed levels and devoted the time they put into the night levels and put that effort into more speed levels the game would be brilliant. Best Sonic ever? No but best one in a long as time. I still think the game is pretty good but the night levels really just come off as this sort of distraction that i rush through looking for sun coins so i can do more of the day stages. i doubt i ever tough one of the night levels more then once but i’ve already done some of the day levels like 5 times a piece. They are a blast they should have just stuck to those.
When/if the werehog ever makes another appearance they should keep it simple and emphasize the arm usage. Make it like Ristar, just grab enemies and face smash them or something. All Sonic can do is jump and roll to attack and I never get bored with that, he doesn’t need some God of War combo shenanigans.
keep it simple!
It does seem like Sonic Team is jumping the gun on giving Sonic ‘variety’ and ‘shaking things up’ before they’ve even exhausted what they can do with the standard S3&K style setup.
Unleashed’s style is one I’d like to see more of, but more subdued and with more varied elements. Unleashed, Heroes and Rush all have a style that’s so terribly worth exploring if Sonic Team would just give them the time of day instead of jumping onto the next gimmick that looks shiny.
Unleashed was pretty good. I just like the speed stages though. They could have just remade Sonic 1-3 the same way as unleashed and let you be SS whenever you want. Would have been an awesome game. The idea of sonic is to move fast most of the time. Not a crap load of platform collecting stuff…
Oh yea, something that really bugs me about these new sonic games, is becoming super sonic against the last boss only. WTF.
no you’re not taking up so much of my time it’s just that when I first attempted to write down the cons that was my best opportunity to do so…now anytime I’ve been visiting SRK I just haven’t had enough time to really sit down and flesh out the cons again which I believe would at least take me a good 20-30 to think up and type. Like now I just came back from the movies with my crew (Watchmen) and I need to head home cause I got projects. I’m going to put it up when I can relax again and just put down everything I wanna say without being rushed lol.
The recipe is Sonic, Tails(A possibly optional Knuckles), and lots of speed.
You don’t need fuggin action stages, or a million crap side characters that nobody probably will remember.
Man and I feel so bad for them.
I don’t understand why these shitty gimmicks are necessary. Is there some fucking loser as the head that suggests it, and makes everybody go along with it? Each time they come within inches of making a game that people can remember, and then they fuck it up to the point where only half of the game is memorable, and the other half of the game feels like a massive chore, rather than having fun.
I don’t want Super Sonic all the time unless I can turn the option on and off from a completed save file. He makes the games too easy. It’s much more fun to not be SS.
Something else that bothers me about this game is the lack of a clear definition for how your score breaks down. I can’t figure out why sometimes I get 3 stars on a mission when other times I get 5 stars on the same mission, even when like the completion speed was slower or I accidentally sliced up a couple villagers.
The sword lay REAALLY needed to be mapped to a button. The waggling is unnecessary for attacking every enemy especially since no matter how you swipe the wii mote you don’t get anything specific. If they had done swipes for just Soul Surge than it would have been cool because for some reason when you’re in Soul Surge it seems to pick up your motions better. This doesn’t help the fact that there’s often lag between the swipes and what happens on screen as Remy can attest. You start getting used to the lag a bit but then when you start entering into the fights with the different characters and especially Second Arthur fight then it gets to the point that it’s slapping you in the face and you can’t ignore it. This is the biggest fault of the game as if this was actually working properly this game would be far more enjoyable. This aspect alone makes BK fall flat on it’s face since it’s not where it should be.
The Secret Rings camera…ok…this camera was ok for Secret Rings and I didn’t mind it really but after playing Unleashed…this camera shouldn’t have even been back. I’d even say that controlling Sonic with the wii mote alone was probably a bit better using the secret rings camera and the way how Secret Rings was set up…but a game it was a dumb move. If you’re going to have a game that has combat in it…especially sword play you’re going to need a camera that can move about and isn’t just completely focused in just one spot. This is semi ok for a game that’s usually about speed and you’re generally not going to be going backwards or having enemies surrounding you but that shit ain’t gonna cut it in this game. You can actually get surrounded in this game and you can’t see the enemy that’s just behind the camera taking a stab at you. Thank god they increased the distance that Sonic back flips in his game so you can get out of those situations but it’s still a problem that’s there.
Crush 40…I love these guys but there are always a few people who don’t like their sound…which is the only reason I put them in both pro and con. If you don’t like Jun’s guitar in the background while slaying knights or hearing Gioelli’s lyrics during epic climatic last struggles then this game more than likely isn’t going to make you fans of them. IMO though I think this games music is close to being on SA2’s level but with less lyrics…liking it is going to vary from person to person.
let’s see what else?..OH Yes…the villagers are dumb. You’re not supposed to attack the villagers and in fact saving them can help increase your points at the end of the level to increase your proficiency (experience level) in each style. I remember one stage where they tasked you with not even touching any of the villagers but a group of enemies pops up right in the middle of a flock of them. There’s no way you can just lock on to the enemies and attack them alone and the villagers just sit there looking dumb. Not even the sword buzzsaw spin could cut the enemies down without nicking a villager in the face in the process, good thing you didn’t task you with taking down every enemy in the process and being able to jump over a lot of them otherwise there would have been more wii-mote chucking moments (the closest I’ve come to wii-mote chucking was Blaze, Second Arthur, and a few moments where I didn’t have any rings and I’d try the sword buzzsaw spin attack and the enemies would somehow seem to have gained invincibility for that moment and just were like ‘bitch please’ and smacked me away).
Something else I wish they would have done was expand more on the usage of the Soul Gauge. As far as I know you can only use it for Soul Surge (ground and aerial) aaaaand that’s it. Secret rings at least had 2 different functions that were pretty useful. They could have come up with something else to use it for like using a small portion of the meter for an attack that had a wide effect and took out several enemies at once.
I still haven’t gotten completely to the end of this game yet…I have to fight the true boss of this game in order to have fully beaten it. If I have any more pros and cons on this game I’ll post em up or if anyone has any other questions I’ll try to answer them as best as I can.
Well in this regard at least the different characters get different things out of Soul Surge. Sonic gets the super slice-'em-up homing attack, Blaze gets the invulnerable wall of fire spin, and Shadow gets Chaos Control out of it. I haven’t even tried Knuckles yet.
Oh, I found out that Tails, Amy, Silver, and Jet are unlockable FOR MULTIPLAYER ONLY. Jet took me forever to get, you have to beat the Great Megalith “Race the Clock” mission with 5-star rating. I am not far enough in the game to get Silver or Amy yet.
and yes the fact that the different characters do get different soul surge elements I just think they could have gone a bit further with it…like gave Shadow chaos blast or something as a secondary usage for a set amount of the gauge.
and I’m guessing you saw the small twist the game had since you’re able to use the other characters now. I think you’re gonna completely beat the game before me.
[details=Spoiler]I had guessed that Merlina was going to be the main villain within just the first few videos. The way she worded things and some of her behavior seemed fishy.
I was surprised that Arthur wasn’t even real though. I thought he really was just going to be corrupted and would become a good guy later.[/details]
The “Rampage” level in the Dragon’s Lair area is the biggest load of bullshit. The camera is in way too tight for you to try and land on those dinky little platforms.
Beat the final boss in the main story. This really is some of the best writing in the Sonic series in quite a while IMO.
Too bad about the laggy input. I also agree with sonichuman on the camera being in too tight a lot of the time. All around this is not the 8 that Nintendo Power gave it, though yet again it could have been with a few fixes. Improve the controls and zoom the camera out a bit more…
The music is still great though. ‘With Me’ and ‘Live Life’ are particularly good IMO.