Changes for a hypothetical PC release of Unleashed

So since Lost World came out there have been occasional rumors buzzing about Steam releases for other "modern" Sonic games, namely Colors and Unleashed.

I've always seen Unleashed as a game that went very underappreciated by the gaming community, even if it has some legitimate gripes against it - it all seems to come down to whether or not you can tolerate the Werehog, whose gameplay I think is ok. But there are a lot of obvious adjustments they could make to the game to make it less frustrating in some regards and more accessible.

I don't know why Sonic Team decided - for this one game only, mind you - to map the homing attack to the boost button. It's okay at first until you obtain the air boost ability, which can send you flying off usually into the abyss if you miss the window of opportunity for a homing attack and the problem becomes very evident. Clearly they learned their lesson as none of the other boost games have this (they map it to the A button as in the previous titles), so I would hope this would get fixed. I was thinking maybe removing the upgrades as well and simply giving Sonic all of his abilities from the start might not be such a bad idea, but that might mess with the intended flow of the game. Or maybe it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Looking at the Werehog gameplay, something that's really annoying (dunno if this was intentional as a way of punishing players) is that when you get an enemy's HP down to 0, it starts a dying animation. If you hit it before the animation finished, it has to start over. It seems like it'd be a really easy fix just to have the dying animation play out uninterrupted. Similarly, when an enemy dies, it leaves behind Chaos Drives for Sonic to collect and use for power-ups. Daytime Sonic collects these automatically upon killing an enemy, whereas Werehog needs to touch them (or get very close to them) to pick them up. I'd have him just absorb them right away. This would help alleviate one of the more tedious elements of the game. Would also want to do something about those catwalk sections - maybe just make them a bit wider and more forgiving.

Outside of the main gameplay, there's the way the game is structured as well. You have to mash start a million times during cut scenes to skip them, which has always seemed a little weird to me. Just have start pop open a little menu that lets you skip a scene. Medal collecting is something people complain about frequently with this game. I don't think any required level (the day/night Act 1 of each area and the bosses) should be gated behind the medals. Alternatively, you could simply reduce how many medals you need to just finish the story, while putting the optional levels behind the original, higher medal counts. They could even let you unlock DLC levels this way, although I'm sure Sega would rather just sell them. My final suggestion would be with regards to the chili dog missions, which are pretty standard Sonic fare (collect x rings, beat level in x time, defeat x number of enemies). While previous Sonic games featured challenges like these, in Unleashed they tiered them so you effectively have to do each challenge three times while getting progressively more demanding. Say you have to collect 100 rings, then 300 rings, then 500 rings. Why not just cut to the chase and start you out with the hardest version of the mission? Especially since the requirement for the first mission is usually so pitifully low there's barely any challenge to it. It's a completely optional side quest, but the chili dogs you get as a reward are a big help for leveling up Sonic, and as it's set up you have to play each level nine times - assuming you don't fail on any of them. The Werehog also has missions like these with the same structure.

I mean some would say just to play Unleashed Project anyway and not worry about it, but I do have a very soft spot for this game and wouldn't mind a PC port, although it would behoove Sonic Team (or whoever would be porting it as I know this is typically outsourced) to polish up the game considerably and address some of these minor details.

 

Probably. In general Unleashed seems like it would be a lot easier to "fix" than if they tried porting Sonic 06 or something (which I doubt they would given how notoriously bad that game is), but if they did release it they'd likely take the cheapest route possible. Oh well, that's what mods are for!

 

I was going to suggest this actually, but forgot about it.

I totally agree. I thought it was cool in like the first level - I was hoping it'd be like Kingdom Hearts where every world had its own distinct theme. Then I got to the next world and was like "Oh... This again"

Eggmanland is like the best level because it's the only one where it doesn't happen.

I think you could keep it for certain, bigger fights, but it plays if there's even just one enemy. Annoying as shit.