Why doesn't Sega ever port Sonic Unleashed to the PC?

I don't want to buy a Series X yet though. I guess my third 100% playthrough will have to wait.

 

The Werehog stages were never that bad. They're like... whatever. It's very by-numbers 3D platforming with button mashing beat em up combat that shows up all too frequently. If you reduced the number of combat encounters a sizeable amount, especially those that lock you into a room until all enemies are defeated, then the Werehog would maybe be kinda nice. I've just never found the Werehog gameplay to be bad. It's not.

But still, that doesn't wouldn't address the biggest problem; that being the fact that the Werehog gameplay even exists in the first place. On its own, the Werehog gameplay is slow and repetitive, but generally inoffensive. It's only when you put it next to the far superior daytime gameplay and force it on the player that it begins to stink. But that's the bread and butter of Unleashed. You could improve theoretically vastly improve the game in a remaster, and yet I don't think it could ever be truly fixed whilst still remaining the same game fundamentally.

 

Sonic Unleashed is one of those game projects that had massive potential spoiled from terrible ideas. Like imagine if this game had nothing but daytime stages. I find it really weird that in 2021, Sonic Colors is the only boost 3D Sonic game we got where Modern Sonic is the only playable character. It would have been nice if Sonic Team had put a ton of effort into make a 3D boost Sonic game where players can only do boost gameplay. They could have pad the length with replay-ability by making it a super fun game to speedrun and from having multiple characters that could boost. Like I enjoy playing as Tails in a Sonic Generations mod. It's a good showcase of what could potentially be done with Tails in a modern 3D Sonic game.

 

I have a different theory: The game is really photogenic. It looks so good in screenshots and videos that it can't have been that bad of a time, right? It's so visually pleasing. How can they get that so right, but the rest so wrong?

Also: A lot of the fanbase are into art/visual design and Sonic Unleashed is one of the most visually impressive games I've seen. No wonder it has people rooting for it even if it's gameplay has a lot of problems.

Games like Shadow and 06 don't have that blessing. You can tell something is wrong at a glance.

 

I'm one of those people that was loving Unleashed on release and was having an especially real one when it immediately started getting shit on from all directions. Could not believe the vitriol (especially when it got to the point where the Wii version was faring better).

I can't speak for others but if anybody sees me specifically gushing about Unleashed you can at least be assured that I'm being completely genuine. Sane though? yeah can't help you on that one.

 

I went through a few years of really not liking Unleashed, because of how stupid it was. Following hot on the heels of 06, Sonic Team should have known so much better than to create the Werehog gameplay. And just to ice the cake, they included the confusing medal system on top and didn't polish up the game's performance before release. Unleashed is a really good game, but it's also really fucking dumb. Replaying it last year reminded me of just how good it actually is. And at the same time, it's got the most asinine of design choices. It's so weird.

Unleashed Wii was always the hottest of garbage. That game has precisely zero redeeming qualities. It's awful. It's one of those that I just don't understand anyone liking.

 

The Wii version isn’t bad. I think it’s actually far better to start out with if you haven’t played the main version of Unleashed, as it’s a lot less demanding.

One of the reasons I prefer Colors and Generations over Unleashed is because, while Unleashed’s daytime levels are amazing, they’re SO alienating if you’re not already accustomed to the boost game. Unleashed’s levels are full of shit that is basically guaranteed to kill you if you’re not familiar with the gameplay, like the quick-time events and drifting segments. The Wii version is great if you’re just starting out IMO, because it eases you in much better and makes it much easier to jump into the main version.

Also I find the Werehog levels are much more digestible in the Wii version, personally. Still not good by any means (they're shit in all versions) but you're at least not wasting 30-40 minutes apiece.

 

They should replace the Werehog levels with porting the Wii stages to the HD version

 

I personally enjoy Unleashed. Sonic Unleashed is incredibly good when it's good. The Werehog stages are, imo, often blown out of proportion. The only really bad ones are Empire City and Shamar, the former because the tightrope sections made them even slower (and the controls for it sucked) and the latter because it's far too easy to get lost and spend 20+ minutes stuck in a combat room. The others are inoffensive at worst, okay at best.

If the medals had been placed more evenly, and the Werehog progression wasn't tied to a leveling system that can majorly screw you over (I would not be surprised if the majority of complaints regarding the werehog came from the fact that you all but need to level up the werehog for later stages, whereas you can very easily play the day stages without ever putting in a level into Normal Sonic), then Unleashed would be a better package.

 

idk, they way people talk about the werehog like it's this Ride to Hell tier abortion of game design and then you play it and it's just furry god of war, makes me wonder if most of these people have ever played a video game that isn't Sonic.

 

I'd spin that accusation the other way and say the Werehog is less tolerable the more action games you've actually played since it's flaws become more obvious. The people that are more forgiving toward it usually are the ones who haven't played other games.

 

I think if the Werehog gameplay was actually like God of War then people would've liked it.

The issue is that it's not and it feels like they did the bare minimum in trying to copy it and suffers because of it. And it's not just the combat, it's the platforming and puzzle segments too.

GoW actually made you want to play it while the Werehog feels more like a chore you have to do to get to the daytime stages.

 

I think people would like the Werehog if it didn't exist

 

N...no?

The praise for Unleashed comes mostly from us Adventure kids who view the game as the last gasp of the Adventure era's passion and verve. Things like the plot being emotional without being complex; the clear work put into the art-style, world design, and character design; the charming world adventure concept; the fact that the game had all these NPC's who were charming despite their simplicity. These are things Colors all abandoned in the name of soulless throwback pandering and abandoning even the pretense of coherence, characterization, or narrative. These are things the Generations mod doesn't have at all. Maybe if you're exclusively talking about the people who just focus on the daytime stages and ignore the rest of the game (and as a Sonic Retro member, your fandom sphere is probably filled with way more of those people than us Adventure kids) but Unleashed is praised for WAY more than its daytime stages. It is the last true AAA 3D Sonic game. Frankly, the only third (SA1 and 2 are the others, 06 I guess is a failed trainwreck of one) of them. The game clearly had a massive budget relative to the rest of the series (adjusting their budgets to account for differing dev costs by generation) in a hope to right the wrongs of 06. There is so much clear passion and care put into so many aspects of it.

True even Unleashed's defenders don't really care to defend the werehog (it's pretty mediocre at best) but there is way more to praise the game about than the Daytime stages. So much of what makes the game great is lost in the Generations mod.

I fucking bawled while watching someone else (Snapcube) play through the Dark Gaia fight with Endless Possibilities blaring in the background. I sure haven't had that emotional response to any Sonic game since and there's a reason for that. Unleashed is so much more than its gameplay...pretty sure I sobbed at the ending back when I first played the game too, but what I can definitely say is that Dear My Friend was on my ipod for years after beating the game. That game affected kid me in a way no Sonic game ever did since.

Dammit. I miss that. Can Sonic make me cry from emotions at the final battle again? Really missin' that.

God Unleashed was good and the plot and the Sonic-Chip friendship is like 80% why. Take that out and you just have a bunch of bullshit-hard boost stages and insufferably long werehog stages. Honestly that mod deeply mis-represents Unleashed by necessarily having to strip the levels of their context and just blandly presenting them to you.

Man, Colors really did kill Sonic. I hate that game more and more with each passing year, christ almighty. Burn everything past Unleashed except Mania to the ground and start over.

(Also, the fact that this entire last page has been people discussing Unleashed solely on gameplay terms and not even gesturing towards the narrative is proof of how hilariously out of touch this forum is with the other half of Sonic fandom, I don't even mean this as a criticism but it's honestly wild that NONE of you even so much as mentioned any aspect but gameplay whereas in other spaces all people talk about that other stuff. I really am out of place on this forum XD)

EDIT: I am listening to the vs. dark gaia fight song and getting weepy-eyed again and filled with even more furious rage at colors' entire existence that I didn't even know existed inside of me

that game truly did destroy my childhood passion of a series, huh

 

Yeah, why do you think I like this place so gosh-darn much?

I'm not gonna argue your other points, but I will say this. Reading your posts kind of makes me regret introducing the term "Adventure kids" to the lexicon. I think you've gotten way too attached to thinking of that as your identity. You aren't who you are and you don't like what you like purely because it's what you played when you were a kid, and other people in your age group are not a monolith. Try to be more open-minded than that, and be open to trying to see things through someone else's perspective. Don't try to put yourself, or other fans, in a box.

 

I call myself an Adventure Kid because I am one. My history with this series is getting a gamecube as my first console and playing SA2B on it, and then playing the series through till Unleashed, having my mind blown, and then falling off the wagon when the next game threw away everything Unleashed stood for credibility.

I have spent ten years watching my childhood obsession eviscerate itself in the name of disowning everything that drew me to it in the first place. At some point I'm just done. You went through this with the 3D games in general, I went through it with the post-Color games. Surely you can understand the feeling of watching something you loved as a child abandon everything that made you love it when you first experienced it.

That is why me and my fellows want Unleashed ported to the PC. The game is so much more than 7.5 boost stages and that generations mod doesn't even come close to the true experience of playing the game.

 

My personal takes on HD Unleashed as someone who grew up with it (at age 8-12) but also played the classics and Adventure via their 2010-era 360 ports at the time. Note that I've done replays of it every other year or so since it launched.

* Day stages are fantastic, and I tend to prefer how they handle in the original game over the Generations Project.
* Medals are awful the first time through, but on replays they're very easy to just grab as I go.
* Night stages are held back the most by their framerate. With that said, I think that the base moveset (pre-upgrades) is awful, and it only gets fun once you unlock more moves to combo between.
* The presentation of Unleashed is chefs kiss. Like REALLY chefs kiss. The way the humans look and interact with Sonic feels so natural. The worldwide representation feels authentic. This game looks nuts for 2008.
* I've never been a fan of any particular Sonic plots (they all fall short in some way) but Unleashed is fine enough. Easily SA1/2 levels of coherence in my eyes... which is a compliment all things considered.
* Eggmanland as a stage has the worst of Werehog design, full stop. For all the good that Shamar and Spagonia do, holy shit does Eggmanland's night sections spoil the experience.

Overall the biggest changes I think the game really needs (aside from framerate, which seems addressed on Series X) relate to Werehog and how he is paced. This is not revelatory information. He isn't beyond the point of saving though as some may think... I just believe that the XP system should be paced more rapidly or cut out altogether so he feels more complete from the first stage of Apotos.

 

I think @Frostav is right about why people love Unleashed. I really don't think the Unleashed mod project had anything to do with it. From my knowledge, people like Unleashed almost entirely because it was the last attempt at a serious plot until Force's. I've just never understood the appeal of Unleashed's plot because I find the cutscenes absolutely appalling. I think Chip is the most annoying Sonic character ever created and that the jokes are way more cringey than anything Pontac and Graf thought up.

Even though Unleashed is my most disliked Sonic game, I'd still like to see it on Steam. I don't know why people like it but they do and it would be nice for them to have it.

 

All right, it sounds like you've got it all figured out, so what are you still doing here telling people who still enjoy the series that THEY'RE out of touch? I like Sonic games, I never DIDN'T like Sonic games, and even when it got bad or wasn't catering to my tastes, I've always been able to find plenty to enjoy and appreciate about it. Hope springs eternal, y'know?

But if you've hated almost everything about it for 10 years... at some point, I'd wonder if maybe it's just something I was a fan of as a kid, but I grew out of it. Or that I'll always love the games I grew up with, but the series wasn't for me anymore, and that's okay, it doesn't HAVE to be for me. 'cause dude, I promise you, there are kids right now who are gonna feel every bit the way about Forces' ending as I do about Sonic 2's, or as you do about Unleashed's.

Newer stuff is NEVER gonna resonate with you quite the same way, because you're not the target audience, and you're not the same person you used to be. And that's okay. This has never been a consistent ride, and if you're gonna enjoy your fandom then you might, at times, have to look at it through a different lens. I love this series, and I hope I always will, but either way... it's a video game. It's supposed to be a good time, but if it isn't, it isn't THAT important, and it's definitely not worth clinging to this hard if it's just making you miserable.