Sonic Unleashed

Oh good! I knew I should've switched to night... This one got me! hehe!

The Game of the Year indeed!

P.S.: Tweaker... remember all that blalbing we all have been speaking during the SAGE, about what Sonic Unleashed should be like? Well, that's exactly what it is! If you ever get the opportunity to play it, please, do! You won't regret I'm sure!

This game is awesome!

 

I'm looking forward to IGN's 360 review. This sounds odd to say, but I hope Matt C reviews it. He saw a lot of good in the wii review and was positive. I'd imagine he'd probably dig the 360 version.

Really, without being a fanboy, I'd say this game deserves a 9. It really is well put together.

 

Without a doubt.

The general concepts of the game (even if we forget that this is a Sonic game that we are talking about) is absolutely well developed, and they achieved what they wanted to make flawless. The concepts are just too good to be ignored. I mean, as Cooljerk said, without being a fanboy, why would this game deserves a note lower than Banjo, or Kameo, or Super Mario Galaxy?

 

Question, if you want to pick any level or act you want, can you just pick them from the map screen without entering the hubs if you've already found them in the hubs? I don't want to look around the hubs all the time in search of one specific act.

 

<!--quoteo(post=249079:date=Nov 22 2008, 09:46 PM:name=Solid SOAP)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Solid SOAP @ Nov 22 2008, 09:46 PM)

eee!! I love it! The fans which are normally venomous are actually defending the game and attacking reviewers over it! This was posted at NeoGAF by the BIGGEST sonic troll I've seen.

 

I agree, a solid 9.

I just finished Empire City's night stage. Wow. It got really frustrating later on, but it was the good kind. The kind where you fuck up, and not the game. It was a wonderful level. It took me like half an hour, but I still got a B. Go figure.

Can't wait to try the day stage.

Also, I love some of the NPCs. Professor Pickle is the shit, as is Otto (the old short dude with the cane). The character design is just so well done. Even the "generic" ones still have some sort of life to them. Sometimes it really feels like I'm walking around a city, especially in Spagonia.

Anybody else notice that Sonic's mouth pops to the side of his face that's facing the camera? I sat there for like five minutes turning the camera around and was just amazed. I was wondering when they'd start doing that. I do think though that Tails and Amy's mouths should be on the side too.

By the way, am I the only one who's noticed the framerate weirdness with the Werehog? It seems to me like maybe his fur shading might be a little much for the Hedgehog Engine at times. I was walking through Empire City's hubworld at night and it seemed...I dunno, it just didn't seem as smooth.

 

I'm not sure if I'm going to enjoy the 30 minute levels, especially when I'm trying to get S ranks on 'em. I mean, Knuckles and Rouge's levels were bad, but they took like, what, 5-6 minutes at most? Ah well. If it's fun, I guess I won't complain.

 

I haven't seen it mentioned, but the werehog has 2D gameplay as well. A lot of it. A whole lot of it. Most of his platforming is in 2D in fact. Empire city is riddled with 2D platforming.

And, in all honesty, the werehog platforming gameplay reminds me of the secret levels from Mario Sunshine. They're certainly not Galaxy worthy (if we're comparing the werehog to Mario Galaxy, I'm sorry, the werehog gets smashed) but they're damn fun. Lots of tricky jumping.

The double jump feels so much better in the 360 version than in the wii version too. It makes these jumping platforming bits a lot more enjoyable. The biggest compliment I can give the controls are that they're invisible. They work like you expect them to, to the point where you don't have to think about how to play. That's the hallmark of great controls. Good controls aren't obvious, they're masked.

These are entirely different from Knuckles and Rouge's levels. Those levels were wide open, and in all honesty, I felt like they had extremely poor level design. By contrast, the werehog is extremely linear (although he has a bunch of branching paths too) with lots of very tight gameplay. To put it simply, you'll see platforming that you'd never have seen in Sonic Adventure 2. Or really any 3D sonic game.

 

Well, I like wide open design, but in terms of a large, wide open level when you need to find stuff randomly hidden in places to complete the level objective? Not so fun.

Also, in watching the gameplay of the final phase of Dark Gaia -- the part where you play as Super Sonic -- I am sure that they came up with the idea behind it after playing the remake of Doomsday in Retro Sonic, right down to the laser attacks that make Super Sonic lose rings.

 

Wow, Sonic fans attacking the reviewers?! Now that's unusual!

I'm so glad the cycle broke up! Damn you, cursed cycle of death!

 

Has anyone had any problems with the Werehog regarding lives? I hear that you can only have like, 3 lives or something, when you start up the game, as opposed to saving all the lives you have all the time. So has anybody lost all their lives during the 360 minute Werehog stages, and was forced to return back to the hub world? That would really suck.

 

Hell, I've seen platforming that I've never seen before, that I know of.

Don't fret over the length of the stages. I got a B because when you die the clock keeps ticking, and I died a lot in that stage. Luckily, they knew where to put extra lives XD.

The break up between the fighting and platforming is nearly perfect. Sometimes, you even have to do both at once. And it works. The werehog stages and gameplay surprised me. I expected it to be good, but they're damn good. Especially if you play a lot of Sonic stages consecutively. It's the perfect break, other than going outside for a cigarette and checking the Internet. Sonic's stages are amazing, but after all that reflex testing, you need the werehog stages to "wind down".

Also, destroy everything, apparently that's part of the scoring system.

I also love how "real" it feels when you're holding the trigger to dash. I just...I just love the werehog. I'll admit it. It's a fucked up idea, but they did the best they could with it, and it worked out very well in the end.

 

When I begin a level, I start with 5 lives.

I've lost all my lives during the werehog levels a couple of times, but thats because some of the platforming is very tricky. The werehog throws lots of lives at you though, and 1-up placements are glorious. They will usually toss you a 1 up just after a lamppost and right before a very difficult section. I can't stress enough how smart the 1-up placement in this game is. It looks like they were definitely placed in reaction to some beta testing comments (gasp and gasps!)

you saw this sort of extra lives placement a lot in Mario Sunshine's secret levels and Mario Galaxy. It's the way GOOD platforming is done - make it challenging, not difficult, and give you lots of wiggle room. If you die in this game and get a game over, you feel like it was your fault, not the games.

EDIT: Also, I love the werehog dashing animation. Its very cute.

 

You also get to increase your starting life count by the Gaia Gate stages.

 

Isn't that just in the Wii version though? There are no lives in the levels for whatever reason, and 100 rings doesn't give you one. You have to get them from the Gaia Gate to increase your life count.

In the 360 version, 100 rings gets you life (which isn't hard to do if you can avoid shit), and there are 1ups in the stages.

Also, does anybody know what the significance of the different teas is?

 

No Gaia Gates in the 360 version? Awesome. In the Wii videos I saw of them they looked drab and boring, I much prefer the bustling towns I've seen in the Xbox version.

 

There are 1-ups in stages in the Wii version -- I know I've seen several in the day stages, and I thought I'd seen them in the night stages as well.

 

I beat the whole game without finding a single one in the levels. Hell, I was on EggmanLand with still 3 lives because I didn't know were you found lives.

 

There aren't any 1-ups in stages for the wii version. All the 1-ups are obtained in the gaia gate and are permanent.

 

I liked the puzzles in the Gaia Gate stages, but yeah, they were pretty dull little hubs. And for some reason you could teleport between them. The Entrance Stages or whatever in the 360 version are the shit. It's like a tiny 3D area with little bits of platforming and occasional puzzle solving thrown in, in order to reach each Act. I love being able to use my abilities outside of the main action stages.