Unpopular Sonic Opinions

I think maybe you should stop assuming people are trying to discredit you and instead realise when an attempt at humour is being made, especially when it's not even targeted at you but instead at IGN.

 

Moving on from the Unleashed talk (I fully agree btw, that 4.5/10 was deserved), some things I've been thinking about recently:

Its perfectly fine that everyone in the cast doesn't interact with each other and everyone doesn't need to be friends with each other either. Its fine for Sonic and Shadow to just have co-worker vibes, Sonic is already buddy buddy with most of his former rivals, he doesn't need 1 more. Its fine if some characters barely ever have any canon interactions either, maybe they just don't vibe or have any reason to talk. That said, it'd be great if Tails could get some friends outside of the main 4 (or at least interact with anyone not named Sonic tbh). Maybe if Sonic Team was cool they could use Frontiers as a set up for a Tails-only game featuring other characters so our boy can have a bigger social circle. And let Knuckles hang out with Chaotix again.

Another thing, I'm very much in favor of keeping the boost (or something similar) around just because I prefer seeing Sonic going fast via running really fast over rolling into a ball. Part of what sells the sense of speed for me isnt just watching the environment blow past in a blur, its seeing Sonic actually exerting himself to move at that speed, and I don't get that feeling when I'm just watching a blue ball moving. Its why I never use the spam dash in SA1, its why I'm ok with rolling being a hot mess in Gens, and why I never bothered unlocking the Spin Dash in Frontiers. In totally cool with the Spin Dash and rolling co-existing with the Boost, I just like seeing the little blue guy run.

 

Unpopular opinion I guess: Sonic Unleashed is mid. It is not worth the scathing discern of most people, nor is it worth the endless praise of Sonic fans. It did an equal amount of awesome and impressive things vs terrible and objectionable things. It's always treated like it's a cornerstone for the series, and in a few ways it might be (visual fidelity, a shift in art direction) but it's not the peak of Sonic (that'd be S3&K) nor was it the true "jump the shark" moment (that was ShTH). Why it keeps causing headbutting this hard is beyond me..

I've probably shared that opinion in here before but Unleashed arguments have happened in here before too. lol

EDIT: serious typos wtf me

 

Alright well I couldn't tell that was meant to be a joke. If so, I apologize.

 

Unleashed is my favorite Sonic game but honestly I can't even get proper mad at the IGN review, it's just funny in the end. The bit @DigitalDuck mentioned where they talk about input lag and show footage of the guy jumping into a pit for no discernible reason never fails to get a laugh out of me.

I do think it's a bit of an unprofessional review given the reviewer didn't even finish Unleashed, but in the end it's not worth it to get super in arms over a bad review from 15 years ago that even IGN themselves have since disowned.

 

I like Sonic Unleashed quite a bit, but I can definitely understand why "casuals" wouldn't like the game that much. The pacing is kinda bad especially on a first playthrough. I think the Werehog is decent fun, but the stages go on far longer than the daytime levels, with the medal collecting dragging the pace of them even more. The hub worlds are kinda charming but they serve no gameplay utility at all, since you can't really mess around with Sonic's controls in them all given Sonic's controls are nerfed. Like yea boost controls wouldn't work in a hub world, but then maybe you shouldn't put a hub world in a boost game? The whole point of the hub world in Super Mario 64 (the 3d platformer that codified the hub world) was to give the player a place to mess around with the controls and find cool secrets. Unleashed achieves neither outside of the areas where they give you free control, but frankly they still don't really fit the boost formula and aren't that fun. My main enjoyment from Unleashed comes from replaying the daytime stages in the menu and while they are quite fun, I would personally argue the Modern stages in Generations far outdid them in terms of level design and control. So I end up replaying the stages in that game a lot more, and it doesn't suffer from the same pacing issues that plague Unleashed especially for a casual player. Sorry for the somewhat out-of-topic ramble, but Unleashed was brought up and I wanted to get my thoughts out on the game. Maybe something here could be considered a semi-unpopular opinion? lol

 

The 3D games would all be so good if Sonic Team just accepted this.

I still prefer Sonic games to be very short, but I've given up on that since Frontiers' success means we're definitely getting more bloated, aggressively padded games in the future.

 

I would agree. I played Unwiished immediately after I finished the HD version and I found it to be a much more consistent and enjoyable experience.

I loved how the game just went from level to level and boss to boss with the medals only being needed for bonus unlockables and extra lives.

I loved how the werehog levels were shorter, focused on platforming more, and tried to be visually interesting.

I love the starry sky in Apatos night act 3. I love how Chunan is you exploring a Chinese houses and lake structures before you walk the great wall and climb up a river to reach a castle.

Those things stood out to me. I can only remember things like dying because the tightrope Mechanic in empire city or dying over and over because of the multiple enemy rushes in Night shamar. Because the bad left such an impression on me.

I also love how the game didn't require you to actually learn how to fight with the werehog while the HD versions do as it lessens the amount I have to be engaged with this mode I didn't ask for.

I would give Unwiished a 6 or a 7. Yeah the highs are nowhere near daytime HD levels but the lows are far less low than anything in the HD and that counts for a lot.

 

I think the main difference in opinions on Unleashed is entirely with regards to mandatory vs. postgame content. If you're the kind of person to play through a game and just stop when the credits roll, Sonic Unleashed is not good. Even the day levels aren't at their best because of the need for medal collection (although the night levels are better for this in general), and of course you have to play the night levels between.

But after that, when you can pick and choose which levels to play, the lows disappear. It doesn't matter that the night levels are shit - I just don't replay them. It doesn't matter that the medal collection is shit - I don't need to do it anymore. I have a game with (including DLC) about 50 daytime levels to pick and choose from, and some of these are the most fun I've ever had. And even though I'll agree that Colours and Generations are better as complete packages, I wouldn't take any level from either of those games over Jungle Joyride 1-2.

I think that's the main divide with games like Unleashed. I'm more than happy to just dip into what I like for a short burst of fun so I love the game, but if you're playing from start to end there's so much chaff and not enough wheat.

 

yeah like, I think things would be better (or at least solicit fewer complaints) if the game leaned more into the "revolving cast" kind of concept. You have your "core" people (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman) and then every game maybe bring back a few different characters to help out. I get the appeal (business-wise) of always introducing at least one new character every game, but that doesn't help the general feeling of most of the cast being just shunted off into off-screen-lore-land. If you had, say, Silver show up in a couple levels and cutscenes to help with a part of the plot, and then later, say, Rouge and Shadow to do similar, I think it'd ease a lot of issues people have with how Sonic's huge, huge cast is used.

 

I'd rather call it "Unleashed: WiiS2", because I like puns and wordplay, and "Unleashed SD" makes me think of Dragon Ball SD.

 

I'm going to call it Sonic Unleashed Lite.

 

The PS2 version deserves to be excluded. It is a fitting punishment.

 

Speaking of Unleashed, I love the song Endless Possibility, but I absolutely hate what I basically call "the Werehog verse". You know the one. The part where it goes "You're losing speed, You're losing your flow, But inside me's a power you'll never know". Just that whole part to me, drags the song down. Like, without that verse? Easy S tier Sonic song. but that verse drags it down to like a B tier Sonic song. Literally any time I listen to it, either the one from the Symphony in 2021, or just the regular version, it gets to that part and I skip to the guitar solo after it. You honestly miss out on nothing from cutting that verse. Is that an unpopular opinion? I dunno. I don't see people talk about it much, but maybe it's an opinion people have but don't talk about.

 

Definitely agree with this. It's just the vocals for me, I like the instrumentation as it sets up for the guitar solo nicely but the weird half-rap half-shout half-sing (yes that's too many halves) gets in the way of that.

 

That third half really ruined the song, (speaking as a poor songwriter and worse mathematician)

I recently replayed unleashed, over a decade since the last time I touched it, and approached with more patience, and I rather enjoyed the challenge.

I don’t know how I did eggmanland so easily years ago!

I only wish there was an option to stop music being interrupted by fights/deaths, as there’s a fantastic OST often interrupted with trumpets (still a banger but not twice a minute).

 

this post just made me realise that I guess this is my most relevant unpopular opinion- I hate the Chaotix being considered "Knuckles' friends", "Knuckles' boys", the Knuckles secondary cast.

They were introduced in a game where he was the lead. In the mid 90s, 30 years ago, in an irrelevant console add-on.

They were reintroduced in Heroes, where they were not related to him, and have been relevant for 20 years, always as their own characters and not relevant to Knuckles.
Why should the one game from the 90s, and the one irrelevant now dead comic, dictate what these characters are over their own existence for decades?

I dread how the appeal to 90s Nostalgia and Archie Nostalgia is now risking chaining them again as "Knuckles' lads" as the pandering to those angles gets more power over the franchise.

 

The strat back jn the day was to load the OST onto your 360 and then use the built in music player to override the game soundtrack with the relevant track. It was a manual process, but given the length of the stages, not too much of a problem. I don't know if you can still do that on the newer X consoles.