So I wanna talk about Sonic Unleashed, a game that’s like 4 years old but I don’t give a sh
it. I’ll say it straight up, I fu
cking love this game. The music (well that’s to be expected), the levels (debatable), etc.
(ran out of things to mention) Coming off the previously god-awful Sonic ’06, but hate’s divided on Unleashed. Talking about the superior 360/PS3 version here btw. There were many complaints: The game is “Boost to Win” (and that mentality gets you killed easily in later levels), how the hub worlds are bad (even though they’re small and there’s only 1 point where you have to talk to people, it’s pretty early on too), how you have to collect medals to proceed (which is a legitimate point), or the Werehog in general.
There might also be the level up system like an RPG but I don’t hear very many even bring that up, but it was more reasonable than Sonic and the Secret Rings. The only Sonic stats that needed levelling were speed and ring energy, so he started off pretty good, on the other hand Werehog started off weak with low health, barely any combos to start with, his power up mode to unleash the beast was small, etc. Most of the levelling is spent getting the Werehog form up to speed. Honestly the only issue I really had with the Werehog levels is that he doesn’t move that fast, unlike the power characters in Sonic Heroes. Also, his levels are too long compared to Sonics. A Sonic level will take around 4-5 minutes first time while a Werehog level will take 15. I just considered the combat average. Not horrible, not great, just average, because I’ve played far worse (before DMC2) and Werehog gets better as he levels up.
The Werehog levels can be somewhat hard if you don’t take the time to level up, which I did as soon as they let me do hot dog missions after Sonic’s second level. They basically just have you going through levels doing 3 different objectives for Sonic: Collect rings, kill a certain amount of enemies, or finish within a time limit (these normally require using the best shortcuts). Doing the hot dog missions after every level really helps, especially for the last few levels. One annoying thing on later playthrough is that there’s someone in one continent to tell you which area the next level is available in. Even if you know what level is next, you usually can’t do it until you talk to him first.
Also, having to collect tons of sun and moon medals during both Sonic and Werehog’s levels, boss fights and hubs was pretty stupid. They also went to ridiculous lengths by having the requirement to play Sonic’s final mandatory level, be 120 sun medals (out of 200) while the Werehog’s is 100. Tons of people had a problem with that and rightfully so. I was aware of the medal requirement ahead of time and was constantly collecting medals during the game, by the time it came to the Adabat levels (last unlock), I think I had around 130 sun medals, and I had collected a majority of the ones in main levels, hubs & boss fights. But moving on, I loved the Sonic levels just like most people, but unlike most people my favorite Sonic level wasn’t Spagonia (shocking, I know). Honestly, my 3 favorite levels were:
Adabat
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UWsXqDM_xGM
Also liked Act 3 of that since it was all about reflexes (if you’re speeding through, which is expected)
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XjlIBlWGnXc
Shamar
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mSidhvcFVBo
And Eggmanland (yes, really). Eggmanland had a big difficulty spike compared to the likes of Adabat, Shamar & Empire City. So big that they start leaving extra lives regularly 1/3 into the level just so you don’t continuously see the game over screen. It’s a ridiculously long level, and there’s death-traps all over the place. There’s also 3 hot dog time trail missions for it too, but that’s not the problem, completing the level 3 times without dying is. A first run would take between 35 minutes-1 hour. These days I can run through it in around 15 minutes. Once I eventually got used to it, I learned to really like the level once I could speed through it without dying.
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Dm0VQjAFDFg
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8kDQYeip80I
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=g2JxhpuQGcs
Oh, there’s also one infamous side mission in Shamar worth mentioning since its far harder than others. For ages the thing stopping me doing it was the wall running section before the end.
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=SMXB0Gl9WQI
