What are your thoughts on Sonic Unleashed?

[moonbits]

Always disliked the press x to rush through level design that this game created and the wolf segments were awful.

 

[Sonic Boomer]

I was one of the few people who genuinely loved and enjoyed Sonic Unleashed, but only the PS3/360 version. The Wii one had some awful mandatory mini games after each level that ruined the game for me on that system.

Sonic Unleashed both the werehog and Sonic levels were a lot of fun for me, personally, but where the game truly shines is its art style.

Sonic Team ever since that one Sonic anime in the late 90's and the Dreamcast days has been completely lost on what to do with their own art style. They kept throwing Sonic and friends in anime style worlds and the clash of artstyles just never worked.
Sonic Unleashed is the first Sonic game or well Sonic anything past the 90's cartoons that uses a cartoony artstyle for the human characters that fit the Mobians/animals perfectly and this artstyle would go unused in future games.

Both artistically and as a game, Sonic Unleashed was a lot of fun. It had its issues but it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.

 

[ThatOneLum]

Despite being a big sonic fan, I've not got around to even attempting Unleashed. It came out during a time when I was basically avoiding all 3D Sonic games because I had completely lost faith in the style.

Ended up getting back into it for Generations and then back out of it again because of Forces.
Now that I have a better relationship with the 3D games again (thank you Frontiers/Shadow Generations!) do you guys think it's worth revisiting with the PC recompile?

 

[Ikagura]

Despite being a big sonic fan, I've not got around to even attempting Unleashed. It came out during a time when I was basically avoiding all 3D Sonic games because I had completely lost faith in the style.

Ended up getting back into it for Generations and then back out of it again because of Forces.
Now that I have a better relationship with the 3D games again (thank you Frontiers/Shadow Generations!) do you guys think it's worth revisiting with the PC recompile?

Same, after Heroes I kinda dropped the series until Generations (well, I did enjoy Sonic Rush but handheld entries barely count).

I had a Wii so I could've played Colours or Unwiished but I was less into Sonic and Sega back then.

PS: I eventually got tempted to finally redo other games on emulator like Colours back on Dolphin and Unleashed PS2 on PCSX2 (as well as the other Rush games).

 

[Skeetos]

The best 3D sonic game hands down. No I won't accept any other opinions.

 

[Ikagura]

The best 3D sonic game hands down. No I won't accept any other opinions.

Not even Robo Blast 2?

 

[Yousef]

I think

 

[Karnik 2.0: reboot]

Hmm... .... .... ..... ..... ...... No worthy thoughts....

 

[Skeetos]

Not even Robo Blast 2?

Nah, that game is baller though.

 

[Yousef]

The best 3D sonic game hands down. No I won't accept any other opinions.

I’ll be brutally honest here, I like the werehog. Not tolerate-like, but like-like.

 

[DaxterDotEXE]

It's an absolute banger imo. One of the few 7th gen games I actually liked. Platinumed it long ago and enjoyed every single second of it, also the music is top notch! I quite liked the Werehog sections, despite what you may have heard from your usual Sonic n00b, those were honestly better than about 99.99% of GoW clones from back in the days!

 

[Yousef]

those were honestly better than about 99.99% of GoW clones from back in the days!

Yeah, I liked it same as ghost rider, spawn and that one Dante inferno or castlevania game

 

[Ikagura]

The Unleashed Project (that one Sonic Generations mod) is legitimately one of the best Sonic game made and it's from fans.

Like Robo Blast 2 and Megamix/BtS/AtS.

 

[MegaHiro91]

I love it's more serious story about Sonic not only having to put the freakin' Earth back together after Eggman destroyed it in order to gain access to the power of Dark Gaia, the very essence of the planet, but I also the plot about Sonic having to visit temples in order to restore the power of the emeralds I thought was a cool concept.

I mean these gems have up till now been said to be limitless, but now, after being used to tear the planet apart, you're telling me they are out of juice, meaning such a herculean task did in fact suck them dry? That's such a cool idea! Like, you introduce something that is limitless, but then introduce something else that nullifies said limitlessness, which only serves to elevate the gravity of the predicament!

With that in mind the final showdown of Dark- vs Light Gaia was freakin' epic!!

...oh, and I liked the werehog too. I remember thinking that contrary to when you play as Sonic and just rush through the stages, the slower werehog forced you to actually enjoy the level design and smell the roses.

PS. I had a 2D mobile port of Unleashed on one of my old Sony Ericssons!

 

[Ikagura]

I love it's more serious story about Sonic not only having to put the freakin' Earth back together after Eggman destroyed it in order to gain access to the power of Dark Gaia, the very essence of the planet, but I also the plot about Sonic having to visit temples in order to restore the power of the emeralds I thought was a cool concept.

While it is interesting for a RPG I feel that Sega kinda had the syndrome of turning Sonic into a JRPG with shonen elements where the stakes are getting higher and higher to the point where it's mostly about Sonic fighting a monster of the week with the Chaos Emeralds used at the last moment.

We've had that for Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2, Heroes, Shadow (for him instead of Sonic but still), 2006 and finally this one.

Sonic Colours felt like a big breath of fresh air after Robotnik got betrayed again by a monster of the week (although the DS version had a Super Sonic final boss but it's exclusively a post-game like the other Rush and Advance games).

Generations brought it back but thankfully they didn't make the mistake of having the big monster betray them.

I mean these gems have up till now been said to be limitless, but now, after being used to tear the planet apart, you're telling me they are out of juice, meaning such a herculean task did in fact suck them dry? That's such a cool idea! Like, you introduce something that is limitless, but then introduce something else that nullifies said limitlessness, which only serves to elevate the gravity of the predicament!

Now the thing is that even against Perfect Chaos the Emeralds became black like in the game, is this related or just a nod? Chaos Emeralds are never "out of juice", they were probably just corrupted by Dark Gaia.

I felt that Unleashed soft rebooted the franchise by removing the G.U.N and only having Tails and Amy while for the first time ever Knuckles wasn't shown since his introductory game Sonic 3.

 

[MegaHiro91]

While it is interesting for a RPG I feel that Sega kinda had the syndrome of turning Sonic into a JRPG with shonen elements where the stakes are getting higher and higher to the point where it's mostly about Sonic fighting a monster of the week with the Chaos Emeralds used at the last moment.

We've had that for Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2, Heroes, Shadow (for him instead of Sonic but still), 2006 and finally this one.

Sonic Colours felt like a big breath of fresh air after Robotnik got betrayed again by a monster of the week (although the DS version had a Super Sonic final boss but it's exclusively a post-game like the other Rush and Advance games).

Generations brought it back but thankfully they didn't make the mistake of having the big monster betray them.


Now the thing is that even against Perfect Chaos the Emeralds became black like in the game, is this related or just a nod? Chaos Emeralds are never "out of juice", they were probably just corrupted by Dark Gaia.

I felt that Unleashed soft rebooted the franchise by removing the G.U.N and only having Tails and Amy while for the first time ever Knuckles wasn't shown since his introductory game Sonic 3.

I didn't like Colours much because it was more humorous and too jokey. I don't want Sonic to be angsty and dark mind you, but as you mentioned for Adventure 1 and 2 and Heroes and '06 I want my Sonic games to be, like you said, a serious shounen JRPG. So what we got in those games were a-okay with me.

It's like how I never saw Resident Evil as survival horror but moreso action horror, so when everyone dunked on RE6 for getting too Michael Bay action-y I was like wtf u talkin 'bout? RE was ALWAYS about over-the-top action and cheesy one liners, RE6 just crancked it all up to 11. In my eyes that game was a natural evolution/climax of everything the whole series had built up to. But then 7 just had to ruin my fun and "go back to the roots" of being a "horror" game.

That generally seems to be a thing with me. If I like a series, I seem to like it for WAY different reasons than everyone else, and then get annoyed when that thing gets taken away because of outcry.

Resident Evil: I liked it for its action = action gets taken away.
Sonic: I liked it for its shounen tropes = shounen tropes get taken away in favor of humor and slapstick.
Zelda: I liked it for its dungeons, to hell with exploration, that was just a means for me to get from point A to B = traditional dungeons get taken away in favor of a game that focuses solely on exploration. Am I just not allowed to like anything?

Back on topic: Right, I forgot that Perfect Chaos blackened the emeralds too. Thing is, in that game it is explained that they lost their glow for a hot minute because Chaos drained them of their negative energy. They then spring back to life when Sonic uses the positive energi. But in Unleashed Sonic travels the globe to recharge them.