Originally written: December 18th, 2008
So a couple of weeks ago, I rented Sonic Unleashed. Partially because I was interested in the game, and partially because I bought Sonic and the Secret Rings and discovered that I flushed 50 dollars in the toilet. So at least I only wasted $10 instead this time. Let me give you an idea of what it was like to be a Sonic fan a couple of months ago, when Unleashed was first revealed. The trailer showed an absolutely gorgeous environment, and had music that was beautiful and contained zero lyrics (unlike every other Sonic game released in the past 5 years). Sonic was zipping through the level at high speed, and it looked fan-freaking-tastic. But then...the werewolf was revealed.
Why was Sonic a werewolf? No, we weren't wondering how Sonic got to be that way, we wondered who the hell thought it was a good idea to turn Sonic into a werewolf. However...we stayed interested. If the daylight levels played as excellent as they looked, perhaps the werewolf levels would be designed just as well. E3 passes, we get some impressions...hey look, the game sounds fun! Though the guy at Gamespot did irk me a bit when he said that Sonic being a werewolf was a really awesome idea. Ugh.
Then...reviews come in. Wii version was average, 360 version was crap. Well good thing I'm a Wii owner. I decide to rent the game. A few hours later, I realized that Sonic's latest adventure was a turd.
What's wrong with it? While I'd like to go "everything", that isn't true. In fact, that's what's most frustrating about the game: there are parts of this game that are really, really fun, well designed, and clever. But the rest of the game is a god-awful, horribly designed mess. We should have known better back when we learned Sonic was turned into a werewolf, but we were so amazed by beautiful stages and great music that we suspended our disbelief.
So what's wrong with it? I'll start with Sonic's annoying little sidekick in this game, Chip. When you meet Chip, he's lost his memory. But he doesn't seem to care. What? Sonic offers to help him get his memory back...what? Not only is this a really awkwardly worded scene, but I can't even understand why Sonic would go so far to help some little creature, especially when the world has been cracked, or, you know, YOU'RE A WEREWOLF. And the worst part is that, from what I played, Chip was completely irrelevant to the storyline. Tails and Amy were there trying to help and figure out what to do, talking to a professor (who has dialogue that's supposed to be funny but just comes across as juvenile), and generally advancing the plot. What does Chip do? He flies around in the back of cutscenes eating ice cream. He has no point to being there. On top of that, he has an annoying voice, poor dialogue, and is a poor helper.
A poor helper is putting it mildly. Not only is Sega forcing this worthless character down our throats, but they make his dialogue unskippable. After a lengthy intro in which Sonic fights Eggman, gets turned into a werewolf, and falls down to earth, he gets into another portion of lengthy dialogue trying to explain his situation to Chip, which is completely pointless, since WE ALREADY SAW WHAT HAPPENED. After that, there's like 5 tutorial levels that last about 10 seconds each in order to teach you the ropes of how to run and jump and such. Hey Sega, remember Sonic Adventure 2?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-yILpGYro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCs42XSwI-c
HOLY SHIT SONIC JUST RIPPED A PIECE OF METAL OFF A HELICOPTER AND HE'S USING IT TO SKATEBOARD DOWN CITY STREETS
*ahem*
But still, look at that! There's no pointless exposition; you're given a brief indication to what's going on, and then the game lets loose with a high-speed chase, letting you figure out everything for yourself. City Escape is, in my opinion, the best opening level of any game ever made. Even including the cheesy lyrics, the stage is perfectly crafted to be nice to beginners while still giving you the sense of excitement a Sonic game needs. By comparison, Sonic Unleashed gives you annoying tutorial levels before actually releasing you into the first stage. By this point your attention span is killed and it takes you a moment before you realizing you're actually playing the game you paid money for.
And...it's actually really fun. The daylight stages of this game actually are well-designed, giving you lots of different paths to take while (generally) avoiding cheap deaths. The music is well-composed, the stages are fantastic-looking, and the whole experience is a lot of fun. Then you finish the level and then...
Oh god. The werewolf stages. These stages compose the worst about Sega today. Not only are you given ANOTHER series of tutorial levels before you can actually play, but even those are annoying. During one level, I saw a ledge with a bar over the gap, and another ledge on the end. Naturally, I know what to do. So I get a running start, and right before I jump...Chip freezes the game to tell me what the jump button is. I hate you. He unpauses and I fall off the ledge due to a lack of timing.
What the hell kind of game design is that, Sega? If you want to give me a tutorial, make it optional. In Sonic Adventure 2 we had Omochao, who had no part in the story and only activated if you touched him. And even if he did piss you off, you still had the option to pick him up and throw him off a cliff (seriously).
Anyway, even more problems with the werehog stages. For one, Sonic has these stupid stretchy limbs that don't make any sense. But whatever, I'll deal with it. But what's more annoying is that when you use them to grab ledges, it takes about half a second before the game realizes your button input, so the controls feel strange and unresponsive. The first time I got to one of those ledges, I kept messing up because I didn't know that it took so long for my limbs to respond, and I kept thinking I was doing it wrong. But nope, the game just sucks like that. And what's the point of the stretchy arms if I don't get freedom to use it? In one of the cutscenes, Sonic stretches his arm from building to building and leaps across that way, Monkey D. Luffy-style. But in the actual game, his arms can only grab specific ledges with a certain colored tag on it. Try to do it with other ledges? You just fall and die. That's horribly, horribly annoying.
And the combat. Oh god, the combat. It's like God of War with everything fun taken out of the game. To fight you have to wave the Wiimote and nunchuk around wildly, and there's no skill or strategy involved with the fighting at all. You just walk up to an enemy and wave your arms around until it's dead. Sure, on occasion you have to jump to reach an enemy or maybe you're given the option to pick up enemies and throw them around, but wild shaking is the quickest way to dispatch enemies, so why bother with any other options? It doesn't help that while running, Sonic the Werehog is slippery for some reason. No explanation is given; he's just slippery. This is especially annoying on narrow pathways; you're forced to walk because running will result in you losing your balance and falling off.
I could dedicate this next paragraph to the boss battles, but I'll just say that they were "meh" and move on. With special note to Eggman during one fight, where he constantly shouted "You little...you little!" which started annoying, got more annoying, and then somehow trespassed the annoyance level into sheer awesomeness. Bravo, Eggman.
Want to know how badly Sega screwed this game up? They couldn't even get the MENUS of the game right. In order to access a level, first you have to go to that level's world, which is just a point-and click map where you talk to various people. Except they aren't fun to talk to. And there's no point to it; you just click on every single spot until somebody gives you the key to that world's stage. And even then, you have to go to a "temple" and insert the key, which involves nothing more than walking in a straight line up to the doorway. Hey Sega:
So a couple of weeks ago, I rented Sonic Unleashed. Partially because I was interested in the game, and partially because I bought Sonic and the Secret Rings and discovered that I flushed 50 dollars in the toilet. So at least I only wasted $10 instead this time. Let me give you an idea of what it was like to be a Sonic fan a couple of months ago, when Unleashed was first revealed. The trailer showed an absolutely gorgeous environment, and had music that was beautiful and contained zero lyrics (unlike every other Sonic game released in the past 5 years). Sonic was zipping through the level at high speed, and it looked fan-freaking-tastic. But then...the werewolf was revealed.
Why was Sonic a werewolf? No, we weren't wondering how Sonic got to be that way, we wondered who the hell thought it was a good idea to turn Sonic into a werewolf. However...we stayed interested. If the daylight levels played as excellent as they looked, perhaps the werewolf levels would be designed just as well. E3 passes, we get some impressions...hey look, the game sounds fun! Though the guy at Gamespot did irk me a bit when he said that Sonic being a werewolf was a really awesome idea. Ugh.
Then...reviews come in. Wii version was average, 360 version was crap. Well good thing I'm a Wii owner. I decide to rent the game. A few hours later, I realized that Sonic's latest adventure was a turd.
What's wrong with it? While I'd like to go "everything", that isn't true. In fact, that's what's most frustrating about the game: there are parts of this game that are really, really fun, well designed, and clever. But the rest of the game is a god-awful, horribly designed mess. We should have known better back when we learned Sonic was turned into a werewolf, but we were so amazed by beautiful stages and great music that we suspended our disbelief.
So what's wrong with it? I'll start with Sonic's annoying little sidekick in this game, Chip. When you meet Chip, he's lost his memory. But he doesn't seem to care. What? Sonic offers to help him get his memory back...what? Not only is this a really awkwardly worded scene, but I can't even understand why Sonic would go so far to help some little creature, especially when the world has been cracked, or, you know, YOU'RE A WEREWOLF. And the worst part is that, from what I played, Chip was completely irrelevant to the storyline. Tails and Amy were there trying to help and figure out what to do, talking to a professor (who has dialogue that's supposed to be funny but just comes across as juvenile), and generally advancing the plot. What does Chip do? He flies around in the back of cutscenes eating ice cream. He has no point to being there. On top of that, he has an annoying voice, poor dialogue, and is a poor helper.
A poor helper is putting it mildly. Not only is Sega forcing this worthless character down our throats, but they make his dialogue unskippable. After a lengthy intro in which Sonic fights Eggman, gets turned into a werewolf, and falls down to earth, he gets into another portion of lengthy dialogue trying to explain his situation to Chip, which is completely pointless, since WE ALREADY SAW WHAT HAPPENED. After that, there's like 5 tutorial levels that last about 10 seconds each in order to teach you the ropes of how to run and jump and such. Hey Sega, remember Sonic Adventure 2?
http://www.youtube.com/wat
http://www.youtube.com/wat
HOLY SHIT SONIC JUST RIPPED A PIECE OF METAL OFF A HELICOPTER AND HE'S USING IT TO SKATEBOARD DOWN CITY STREETS
*ahem*
But still, look at that! There's no pointless exposition; you're given a brief indication to what's going on, and then the game lets loose with a high-speed chase, letting you figure out everything for yourself. City Escape is, in my opinion, the best opening level of any game ever made. Even including the cheesy lyrics, the stage is perfectly crafted to be nice to beginners while still giving you the sense of excitement a Sonic game needs. By comparison, Sonic Unleashed gives you annoying tutorial levels before actually releasing you into the first stage. By this point your attention span is killed and it takes you a moment before you realizing you're actually playing the game you paid money for.
And...it's actually really fun. The daylight stages of this game actually are well-designed, giving you lots of different paths to take while (generally) avoiding cheap deaths. The music is well-composed, the stages are fantastic-looking, and the whole experience is a lot of fun. Then you finish the level and then...
Oh god. The werewolf stages. These stages compose the worst about Sega today. Not only are you given ANOTHER series of tutorial levels before you can actually play, but even those are annoying. During one level, I saw a ledge with a bar over the gap, and another ledge on the end. Naturally, I know what to do. So I get a running start, and right before I jump...Chip freezes the game to tell me what the jump button is. I hate you. He unpauses and I fall off the ledge due to a lack of timing.
What the hell kind of game design is that, Sega? If you want to give me a tutorial, make it optional. In Sonic Adventure 2 we had Omochao, who had no part in the story and only activated if you touched him. And even if he did piss you off, you still had the option to pick him up and throw him off a cliff (seriously).
Anyway, even more problems with the werehog stages. For one, Sonic has these stupid stretchy limbs that don't make any sense. But whatever, I'll deal with it. But what's more annoying is that when you use them to grab ledges, it takes about half a second before the game realizes your button input, so the controls feel strange and unresponsive. The first time I got to one of those ledges, I kept messing up because I didn't know that it took so long for my limbs to respond, and I kept thinking I was doing it wrong. But nope, the game just sucks like that. And what's the point of the stretchy arms if I don't get freedom to use it? In one of the cutscenes, Sonic stretches his arm from building to building and leaps across that way, Monkey D. Luffy-style. But in the actual game, his arms can only grab specific ledges with a certain colored tag on it. Try to do it with other ledges? You just fall and die. That's horribly, horribly annoying.
And the combat. Oh god, the combat. It's like God of War with everything fun taken out of the game. To fight you have to wave the Wiimote and nunchuk around wildly, and there's no skill or strategy involved with the fighting at all. You just walk up to an enemy and wave your arms around until it's dead. Sure, on occasion you have to jump to reach an enemy or maybe you're given the option to pick up enemies and throw them around, but wild shaking is the quickest way to dispatch enemies, so why bother with any other options? It doesn't help that while running, Sonic the Werehog is slippery for some reason. No explanation is given; he's just slippery. This is especially annoying on narrow pathways; you're forced to walk because running will result in you losing your balance and falling off.
I could dedicate this next paragraph to the boss battles, but I'll just say that they were "meh" and move on. With special note to Eggman during one fight, where he constantly shouted "You little...you little!" which started annoying, got more annoying, and then somehow trespassed the annoyance level into sheer awesomeness. Bravo, Eggman.
Want to know how badly Sega screwed this game up? They couldn't even get the MENUS of the game right. In order to access a level, first you have to go to that level's world, which is just a point-and click map where you talk to various people. Except they aren't fun to talk to. And there's no point to it; you just click on every single spot until somebody gives you the key to that world's stage. And even then, you have to go to a "temple" and insert the key, which involves nothing more than walking in a straight line up to the doorway. Hey Sega:
Is this really such a hard concept to follow?
Fortunately, I'm done ragging on the game itself. Sadly, I can't even say just to avoid it, because those daylight levels are really, really fun. Not only that, but even some of the cutscenes are legitimately funny and amusing; Eggman's new sidekick robot is much more entertaining than Chip is. I also find it curious that Amy Rose is actually not annoying in this game.
So what else is left to say? Well, I can always direct you to a blog entry that a guy at Sega did:
http://blogs.ign.com/SEGA_
"Normally, in Sonic games, we have added new characters to introduce new moves. Tails for flying and gliding, and climbing walls for Knuckles and so on. It's good that we have more members in the Sonic family as a result. But in time some people started saying… "Hey, Tails is a lot of fun. He can fly!" Or "You know, Knuckles is more useful because he can climb on walls and stuff." And if you go back to Sonic again, he hasn't changed much. Since he already has his trademark "speed", it's hard to add new abilities to him. Of course, losing his speed as a result of adding new features was the last thing we wanted.
But I started to think that "Maybe it's time he jumped in on something new." And that was when Hashimoto and Kawamura told me about their idea of the "Werehog". I wasn't expecting this and I was taken by surprise when I first heard this. Although I always wanted Sonic to do something new, a long experience must have been blindfolding me with the idea of "old-school, proper Sonic". "
Does Sega even pay attention to what the game critics say? All I hear about is "I want a game with the old-school, proper Sonic". With classic Sonic gameplay, refined for 3D. Tails and Knuckles there to expand on the basic idea, and maybe Amy Rose too, if they can make her a character with legitimately funny dialogue.
But it doesn't seem like Sega is interested in what its fans want. No, they have to milk the Sonic franchise for all its worth. It's like they still think they're competing with Nintendo; they see how many spin-offs the Mario franchise has, and try to keep up with that number. They see how popular Mario Kart is, and then make Sonic Riders, a lame racing game. They see how popular the Mario sports games are, so they give Sonic and other Sega mascots tennis rackets and see how they do. Hell, just look at the fact that they finally put Sonic in an RPG, not too unlike Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi. They don't have time to slow down and polish his games because they're too busying pumping out as many as they can. And sadly...it's working. People keep buying these games, and Sega keeps making them. I don't necessarily think Sonic is done for, but he definitely needs a break. Give the blue guy a few years off, Sega. What do you say?
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