Sonic Unleashed Review (PS3)

It's just a shame about the rest of the game.

Mandatory medal-hunts. Awful God Of War-ripped sub-gameplay. Terrible voice acting. Drawn-out level design. Just a few of the reasons that Sonic Unleashed is not quite the game you'd expect it to be. Which is a shame because in the moments when the game is all about Sonic speeding to the end of an action stage, it's awesome. It's just a shame that such gameplay is not around enough to tell the tale.

Sonic Unleashed is another Sonic game with another cast of unnecessary characters and a too-cool-for-school attitude. For some reason probably explained in the convoluted plot, Sonic gets infected by some kind of Werehog based disease, that sees him turn into a cutesy rip-off of Kratos at night. Thus starts the split in Sonic Unleashed's appeal - it's awesome when played in the day-time stages — these mimick traditional style Sonic gameplay — but terrible when played at night time — these stages are clunky God Of War clones. You'll constantly find yourself gritting your teeth through the Werehog stages just to get another taste of how Sonic games should be made with the excellent day-time stages.

The frustration is capped by a level progress system that requires you to backtrack and search for hundreds of medals that grant access to further action stages. Compound that with slow loading times and some really drawn out stages and you should understand why Sonic Unleashed is more irritation than anything else.