So immediately the werehog, hubworlds, and QTEs don't work since they don't really do that.Ĭritics also complain the story doesn't know what kind of tone it wants to be and general annoyance towards Chip. Any gameplay style that doesn't give that sense of speed is treated as an issue. Not so much my cup of tea, but I get it.Įver since around Sonic 06, most critics who play Sonic just want go fast.
It's the sort of game you can tell was the devs dream game, something they'd make with or without a budget and time, and Unleashed got both. The story with believable, serious characters and narrative stakes, the fully realized world and setting, the high energy gameplay, gorgeous visuals. Sonic Unleashed is almost everything I could ask for in the boost games, minus some control and level design tweaks that get made in Generations. I have my criticisms, and I've pulled my punches here (I don't think even the best boost game holds a candle to the worst, non-Sonic 4, momentum game), I can't say I don't see where the love comes from. Gorgeous visuals and art direction, beautiful animation, gameplay that makes you feel the power of Sonic's speed and tests your reflexes (or your memory if you've played through levels enough). It's not what I'm into Sonic for but I can totally see why people love this game. People are pinning hopes on this to be Sonic's big return and even small disappointments stand out harshly, and for many, these aren't small disappointments.Īnd I've been pretty critical of Unleashed here, but for people whose favorite it IS, I get it. In the context of its release, all the negative qualities stand out more harshly and the positives get overshadowed. So Unleashed comes out and all the scrutiny it gets is harsher than it would've been, there's not the goodwill of the older games to cushion the reception. This is the period where the term "Dark age" came about for Sonic, where after the high points of the older games, pre-Shadow and 06, there was a long period where Sonic was nothing but straight up bad.
#Sonic unleashed ps2 review series
Sonic Unleashed was the first major release following the disaster of Sonic 06, people were viewing the series with a harshly critical eye after that and the storybook games. But there are other factors as well, besides the qualities of Unleashed itself. My feelings on the game aside (I like it, but I don't love it, see above, though I have more reasons than that), there just isn't much reason for them to try giving the game a real chance. Sonic fans have had a lot more time with the game to appreciate its nuances, and there are the people who grew up with it as their first Sonic game, or one of their firsts.
How it's a repetitive slog of a beat'em up, how the stretchy armed werehog is a ridiculous concept that's out of place for Sonic, how Chip is kind of an annoying character. This is something that applies to all the boost games, even Generations, which I have similar muted feelings about.Ĭritics though? Not me but critics overall? They're gonna focus on the Werehog. They're a shallower, more repetitive replacement for the deeper movement mechanics of older games, which enable creative use of your abilities. They're slightly more complex than an endless runner game, with the challenge being to react to incoming obstacles rather than freer, more expressive use of the given movement mechanics.
They're these mechanically shallow reaction challenges with basically zero depth. My criticisms of the day stages are my biggest criticisms of the game. The Werehog is a poorly thought out concept that is poorly executed with repetitive gameplay, overly long, puzzle focused stages, the one song you hear for most of the runtime because it replaces the stage themes for every battle, which occur constantly.īut that's not the part that'll have this brushed off as biased from huge fans of the game. I could give a number of reasons, almost all of which would be brushed off as biased or overly critical.
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