What Made Sonic Unleashed So Great

this video was brought to you by nordvpn who's giving my audience an enormous discount a two-year plan plus one month for free by going to nordvpn.com jay's reviews or by using the promo code jay's reviews as seen on screen in case you're unfamiliar with it nordvpn is a virtual private network that encrypts your data like your ip address or internet history giving you more privacy and security when using the internet nordvpn allows users to connect to thousands of different servers in 60 countries and what's great about this is that it allows you to access content that's region locked on streaming services like netflix in the case of video games nordvpn allowed me while using the android emulator bluestacks to easily connect to the taiwanese google play store and download rockmanx dive the mobile mega man x game that was not released in the west maybe someday i'll play enough of it to review it and finally complete the all-inclusive mega man x retrospective i started way back in 2016. like i said i achieved this effortlessly using nordvpn and you guys can get a massive discount on a two-year plan by using the first link in the description or the promo code jay's reviews that's one word all lowercase letters like i said the first link in the description in the pinned comment having said that let's get on with the show depending on your point of view the last main series sonic game i reviewed was either sonic 06 or sonic and the secret rings either way not gonna do a full recap at this point as you can go watch those two videos to get caught up i will say this though by this point the series was facing the unique challenge brought upon itself by sonic 06 and shattered the hedgehog before it it's now a joke but here's the paradox in the late 2000s you could say whatever you wanted about sonic games but that did not stop sonic the hedgehog from still being a massive brand on xbox 360 sonic 06 sold over a million copies and secret rings is even more successful on the wii i can talk more about the success of that game in another video sonic is just a big name when buying games for kids it doesn't really matter what anyone says about the games on the internet so it's pretty easy to see why these games came out in the numbers they did it sold units and that's what makes the world go around after all but bad press is certainly not a good thing so what do you do about that well you've got to stress quality control above all else you can't just release another sonic 06. i talked about this in the secret rings video 06 could have killed sonic and maybe it would have had it coming but it didn't this opportunity does not come around often when discussing making games after a big disaster but thanks to the sales sonic had the chance to bounce back two years after sonico 6 came out we got sonic's next adventure on the xbox 360 2008's sonic unleashed i remember the pre-release of sonic unleashed like it was yesterday i said in the previous video that the first time i had ever really gotten excited for a video game before i ever came out was secret rings but unleashed was like that times ten i mean every trailer for sonic unleashed just look [ __ ] incredible i would drop everything to watch the new trailers as they came out and it showed off a lot too more speed than you've ever seen in a sonic game better graphics ever before the game is going to take you all over the world a bunch of different settings everyone loves a grand adventure and this looked like it was going to deliver november could not come soon enough like dare i say this game almost looks better than sonic the hedgehog and that's my favorite game of all time this is 2008 logic i'm reciting don't get mad but of course there was one elephant in the room [Music] yeah they had a specific gimmick in mind with this one sonic was going to be his normal self during the day but at night he'd transform into sonic the werehog nice luckily nobody has to say that line in the actual game i was afraid of this segment getting in the way of the fun in fact when i first got unleashed i just started a new save file like three times to keep replaying windmill aisle day and to avoid the night stage that followed it but back to the pre-release the werehog didn't deter me from being hyped for this game because sonic games have had other play styles before although come to think of it i had played through five of the six sadx campaigns around unleashed release but i had just never finished it because i couldn't get past the first big stage so it can't be worse than that right and jack transforms into dark jack and jack too and that was fun right point is the night concept was something to be skeptical about but not fully afraid of the werehog's existence also caused this trailer to be made where it's supposed to be like a documentary bigfoot kind of thing it was really memorable never forgot it even now 13 years later over the last six months a nighttime phenomenon has been witnessed across many cities around the world on thursday march 13th at 3 14 a.m loud animal noises and crashing sounds awoke many sleeping citizens investigators discovered traces of blue hair at these locations seriously that's a great trailer in addition to the ones we already had for the gameplay it kind of sounds like brainiac from the dcau voicing it can't be sure it's him corey burton that is but it sounded like him this development was highly improbable i first got sonic 06 back in 2007 and it took me till fall of 2008 to beat it and that's also something i'll never forget i never had guides as a kid so i just had to figure it out my point being that i had played the [ __ ] out of sonico 6 by this point and i was ready for the next game which finally came out on november 14th of 2008. i think most are in agreement that this right here the opening cut scene of sonic unleashed is one of if not the greatest sonic cutscene of all time shadow of the hedgehog had made massive strides in the cg department and then sonico 6 had some hit or miss cg cut scenes but for 2008 standards this feels like actual movies the lighting the detail it's perfect sonic tears through enemies with personality and the usage of slow motion it just looks absolutely fantastic like i said they put in a crap ton of detail here like eggman's mech dropping shells to the ground after the bullets were fired or the animations stretching sonic's limbs to exaggerate motion like never before the first half of this cutscene tells a story almost completely without words and for many that's what makes it so great for me i love this fast-paced action-packed sonic and i just think it's impressive they could convey so much without dialogue eggman's trying to conquer the world because he has a space armada over the planet sonic is cool as hell for busting in with fire behind him he's cocky he's powerful he's fast it's like describe the dynamic of sonic and robotnik in one scene and it's this one as for the plot itself we obviously begin amadeus rest with another sonic and eggman encounter this time sonic already has the seven chaos emeralds and transforms into super sonic to wreck eggman's entire station yet again only this time it was a trap and eggman steals the chaos emeralds from sonic and uses their power to generate his machine a giant laser that blasts into the heart of the planet shattering the world into seven different continents think advanced three but like way more intense eggman did this because he read in a thing called the gaia manuscripts that deep inside the planet resides a power called dark gaia but to awaken it early he had to break open the planet for dark gaia to escape this act completely drained all the life from the chaos emeralds and the evil energy of dark gaia has also transformed sonic himself into this werehog form with all that said and done eggman launches sonic out of the station and he crashes towards the planet sonic unleashed we then get an in-engine cut scene with sonic crash landing on earth because you know sonic characters can breathe in space and survive falls of infinite height when landing sonic realizes he's crash landed on this tiny creature that has no memory but before we can worry about that the sun rises turning sonic back into his normal form after awakening dark gaia couldn't maintain its form so its essence spread across the world but only comes about during the night so during the day everything including sonic is back to normal sonic decides to help the little guy find his memory out of guilt for landing on him giving the name chip as the two run into tales who helps them travel from continent to continent on board the tornado 3. the guys find professor pickle who's an expert on dark gaia informing the group that by traveling to each continent's gaia temple you can restore the power to the chaos emeralds and put the planet back together sonic unleashed is a globe-trotting adventure however the opening act is a bit more linear when the first cut scenes are done you play a level as sonic go to the town then another level as sonic knight hits you get the first warehog stage why does begonia travel to missouri to save professor pickle and then activate the first guy at temple it's at that point when the first act of the game is over and the structure opens up a bit more as multiple areas will be available at once and you can just choose which one you want to play the world map is really well handled each country has its list of levels for you to select and depending on if you want to play a day stage or a night stage you can press a button to turn the sun faster as to change the time of day the world map also shows how close you are to completion as it will show the planet coming back together as you get further and further into the game when discussing how the gameplay actually works we have two styles this time around sonic the hedgehog and sonic the werehog when starting with the day stages you might be thinking you already know what to expect but this is a world after sonic 06 and the adventure formula is going to be left behind alongside it so with this game they wanted to try something much different sonic rush in 2005 made strides to innovate the 2d formula by giving sonic the boost ability with the press of a button sonic could launch himself forward at high speeds and his ability to do that was tied to a gauge at the side of the screen so they brought the boost mechanic into the 3d series starting with sonic unleashed on its face having a mechanic called the boost kinda reinforces the idea that many have surrounding 3d sonic where the gameplay from the genesis games speed being reward for understanding the physics and route memorization was lost after all 3d sonic needs to make loops and other sonic staples something that player watches rather than plays themselves now having a button that makes sonic go fast only makes that look worse i get that but sonic unleashed is far from the kind of game that you press one button to win throughout before getting into the subject of how the mechanics are applied we best cover the basics of how it plays in the secret rings video i mentioned that sonic has started to control more like a car he even came with a break button in sonic unleashed i'd actually say that's the goal the objective of every stage is still to get from one side of the stage to the other by dodging obstacles and blasting through enemies and whatever set pieces each stage has but now you need to boost through enemies and to maintain your boost gauge you need to collect rings which will keep the gauge maxed as you plow through at warp speed since the objective is to go as fast as possible the designers have made boosting where sonic controls the smoothest but on the flip side they have neglected the ground control we've seen this transformation take place over the last several games after the adventure installments each new game has found a new way to fail at replicating the controls from sa 1 and 2. in unleashed this isn't as big of a problem because like i said the boosting forward mechanic works really well it's just worth noting that sonic's ground control when not boosting is really clunky and awkward as you take off really quickly but can barely turn around simply put sonic just doesn't handle that well when not boosting but that rarely ever is a thing in this game so i'll stop hammering on it the parts where the controls in unleash lack in more major areas is how the new moves are integrated to manage sonic traveling at such a high speed by pressing the l1 or r1 buttons sonic will do the quick step where he shifts lanes many times in these stages sonic will be on a pathway with a couple of lanes on it and you'll depress the l1 button to shift left and the r1 button to shift right to dodge obstacles like the barrels and rooftop run or the laser fire and dragon road most of the time this works really well and it's pretty intuitive especially on grind rails shadow of the hedgehog kind of implemented something like this but unleash just fully realized it when on grind rails obstacles like lasers or spikes will be in the way and you'll need to jump to the rails next to it with the l1 button or the r1 button i get it the grinding gameplay of sa2 is completely dead and buried with mechanics as automated as this but i prefer something simpler and more functional than having something with less reliability grinding still is about avoiding obstacles so it's still gameplay unlike the segments of nothing we saw in o6 for example the only issue i have with the quick step mechanics would be the parts where it doesn't send you far enough like this part of skyscraper scamper with the lanes are huge so you don't dodge far enough for the bombs it's weird but far less reliable than the quick step would be the other speed control method the drift by holding down the l2 or r2 buttons at high speed sonic would drift alongside the edge of a tight corner and keep his speed but i think this mechanic was just not fine-tuned enough to work the problem with the drift is that at high speeds it's very likely that the wide arc of the move will just send you flying into the pit you were trying to avoid and at low speeds it still kind of happens pretty regularly performing well on this extra stage of savannah citadel is pretty nightmarish because of it since i don't think the drift works that well i just stopped my forward momentum all together and just run through these parts without boosting which doesn't control well like i said these three negatives i have with how boost sonic handles is entirely understandable though this was the first time the developers tackled something like this and there were some issues that needed to be worked out i'm sure that when developing the drift for example they imagine an experience where sonic's speed never lets up as the player makes turns at high speeds it'd be really exhilarating but the execution of that in sonic unleashed warrants more fine-tuning but the foundation is there for really great gameplay unleashed has several stages set in its many countries windmill isle savannah citadel cool edge rooftop run dragon road eric sands skyscraper scamper and jungle joyride i think every sonic stage in this game is a blast to play there are areas of the controls that need to be improved where the levels themselves are fantastic we can certainly dive deeper into this when talking about the ranking system of sonic unleashed but as of now i can say this has got to be some of the most arcade like sonic level design i've ever played being good at sonic unleashed does require a lot of trial and error because let me tell you these stages are actually pretty difficult do or die decision making like a light dash trail or avoiding a crumbling platformer that's really high speed this sounds like the ground for me to get really pissed off but i think mastering the stages of unleashed is satisfying because while there are moments where you just have to know what to do to get a better route the game provides context clues sometimes like ring trails showing the best angles to jump at or just having an alternative but less fast route to explore if you miss your chance for the fast route in that sense it's similar to the genesis games because knowing that this side path of jungle joyride exists takes much less time than the alternative going at such a fast pace means a lot of players will just miss the alternate routes in sonic unleashed but they definitely are there in abundance as simple as this is i can't not enjoy replaying stages of unleashed because outmaneuvering falling pillars and arid sands before they even had the chance to kill you or making the right turns while running on the water and jungle joyride is a thrill and that's what the developers were going for making the game these levels are a lot of fun it's built on a good foundation the challenge is high but satisfying to overcome the level design provides a lot to replay and look forward to it's just a great set of stages and it's really impressive how much there is to them you can't plot boost sonic in a stage like emerald coast from sonic adventure because the stage would be over before it really got going to design a stage around the boost mechanics requires the devs to create a long stage in terms of sheer ground but the character is going along it at a speed this high so yeah bring on the five or six minute stages i have no objection to that i'm just saying i'm really impressed because that's a lot of stage to construct when the player won't really be able to stop and sniff the roses rooftop run is the perfect stage to capture what makes the levels of sonic unleashed work so well alternate routes that make the stage go faster challenging obstacles to avoid the core mechanics put to good use in several ways and the stage has this great scope to it the levels of unleashed all tell a story like in rooftop run where you start in the midst of the town but you work your way up to the rooftops which gets you closer to the giant clock tower at the center of the city that you platform to the very top of and then get to grind your way down back to the streets which takes you the gaia key that you were looking for or arid sands beginning in the town of shamar but far removed from it by the end but let's slow down the action to get to stages in the first place sonic and ship must explore the towns of each area because of how they were designed in 06 hub worlds have a pretty bad rap in sonic games but these hub worlds are more numerous than but also smaller than the hub worlds of sonic adventure in hindsight sonic 06 didn't really need to have hub worlds so big in all the hub worlds of sonic unleashed it's clear that we're only in a smaller segment of a larger area but the parts we actually explore are much simpler to not waste the player's time if you want to you can just go to the stages or you could talk to people something that's much more interesting than in most of what sonic 06 had to offer you can buy stuff from each town's shop or explore for sun and moon metals when going to the stages there's a secondary hub of every area the various stages bosses and extra levels being scattered across these areas like advanced threes hub worlds here you can mess around with your new abilities in the process of accessing stages like practicing where hog combos you unlocked or using the hedgehog's unlockable abilities like the stomp that presses on switches or the light speed dash which works exactly how it should this time around and the air boost this one should speak for itself as well but also causes the most problems in unleashed the homing attack button has been moved from pressing the jump button multiple times to pressing the square button after jumping this change doesn't end the world on its own but the boost button is also the square button and that is also the air boost button the homing attack still comes with a reticle like in secret rings however if you want to air dash to save yourself while platforming like you could in the previous games or in this game before unlocking the air boost you either need to hope the boost gauge is empty or just die but this does get myself thinking a few moments ago i said you can practice moves you unlock as the werehog but then referred to daytime sonic as the hedgehog i mean it's the same character but divided in two for this game logic would dictate that by calling nighttime sonic the werehog as a short and you could also call daytime sonic the hedgehog as a short but that just sounds weird and dumb i could just call daytime sonic sonic but werehog is also sonic anyway the pacing of sonic unleashes a lot going against it every area has a day stage and a night stage and act 1 and act 2 if you will daytime sonic will fight bosses against eggman mechs following savannah citadel rooftop run and jungle joyride and the werehog will battle against dark gaia creatures after playing dragon road cool edge and arid sands the bosses in this game are a lot of fun to go against just like the hedgehog stages his bosses are all about avoiding obstacles at high speeds and it gets more intense each round it's really satisfying to play especially in the egg beetle fight where the boost will send eggman flying and then you can boost into him again while he's already flailing and prolong that effect it's based af same as ever all bark in no bite [Music] cool for nighttime sonic his bosses are based around you making the boss vulnerable like tossing water canisters of the dark guy at phoenix or pushing blocks into the correct spaces against the dark guardian but the subject of bosses got me off topic but since i already am off topic might as well mention the tornado stages before i forget about them when going from apotos to spagonia and when traveling to the final area sonic will ride on board the tornado 3 and blast enemies as they fly towards you with the buttons that correspond to the controller of the console you're playing these are actually my favorite iteration of the tornado stage this felt like nothing was happening in sonic 2 and sonic adventure 1. here my attention is kept from start to finish as i lose my s rank on xbox 360 because i have playstation buttons ingrained in my memory and not the xbox ones but let's go back to when i was saying i was getting off subject to get back on subject what i was saying two points ago the pacing of sonic unleashed is a problem if you're going to play through this game again every area has two acts but you don't play them together like say classic and modern stages of generations although you could play those out of order if you wanted to but as i was saying in unleashed you might have say dragon road day and cool edge night unlocked at the same time but in between stage unlocks your sorry ass has to go back to pickle's lab and he'll tell you to play these new stages that just opened as you must then travel there and do them it's not a big chunk of time taken up when it happens in fact when his lab is in spagonia you can just do this but over time this can be kind of annoying since you just want to get on with the game and have to sit through like six loading screens and running through the hub world just to unlock new stages for the rooftop run boss fight i went there and it wasn't open but i had to run back to pickle's office just for him to tell me to play that boss fight right now even though i was literally just there but that's something that becomes a bigger bother on repeat playthroughs of sonic unleashed now what is the biggest hurdle for new players are the collectibles in every stage the sun and moon metals many stages will be blocked off via however many sun and moon metals you need to collect to level up on this playthrough i was pretty proud of myself actually i never had to go back to any stages well i couldn't get into arid sands night but skyscraper scampered day was also opened at that time so i didn't have to revisit any stages over it in this playthrough each run of unleashed i have done i've had to repeat less and less stages because of this and therein lies the issue on my first playthrough of unleashed in 2008 i had to go back and collect medals to play like every stage culminating in the final main level of the game jungle joyride day which requires 120 sun medals to play and then i was a whole 42 medals away this was 2009 second grade had just ended and i was hyped to play more unleashed and then i had to spend the entire summer collecting sun medals not unlocking the stage until third grade was about to start but then my 360 red ringed it was a nightmare my 360 red range the first time when i beat the end of the world stage in sonic 06 and saw this cut scene guess the scene is cursed not joking by the way that did happen so yeah on this playthrough of unleashed i was never halted from making progress because of the sun and moon medals but this is my fifth playthrough or so i'm already expecting that and can play around it but it will be the bigger pace breaker for the first time player like i said at the beginning when i was a kid i played pretty much every game without a guide so of course i spent a long time trying to beat sonic 06 because of the meandering between stages and i spent a long time on unleashed because i had to spend forever trying to unlock stages but of course we have yet to address the gaia colossus in the room the werehogs gameplay [Music] in retrospect sonic team had a lot to prove following the disastrous response they got from sonic 06. on that note i don't really know why they thought it was a great idea to transform sonic into sonic the werehog yeah that'll show everybody we haven't jumped the shark from the offset it just looks pretty stupid but how does it actually work well in the playstation 2 era developers had finally figured out how to make combat games work in 3d i've mentioned before that the basic beat em up from say the super nintendo didn't work as well when translating into 3d even on playstation 2 i'd say beat em up type games were fine but if you wanted to do 3d combat action to be best replicating 2001's devil may cry but in particular i'd say sonic the werehog was influenced the most by god of war the ps2 classic that came out towards the start of the seventh generation but was hugely successful i own the god of war hd collection but never really got around to playing much of it even with a minimal amount of god of war exposure it's plainly evident how many ways the werehog was inspired by those games but my point of comparison with the werehog stages would just be my exposure to the devil may cry games when looking at the technical minutia the werehog isn't as good as devil may cry 5 shocking i know when looking at what is here you might expect sonic team's attempt at this kind of gameplay to be terrible if only because of their track record but i don't think that's being entirely fair either big was a failure obviously but i think the shooting mechanics in sonic adventure 1 2 and even shadow of the hedgehog hold up pretty decently but the werehog is far more than just decent if you ask me if it wasn't obvious via that preamble the concept of the werehog stages is that you make it from one side of the stage to another but instead of high speed antics you must battle your way through dark gaia monsters and eggman mechs that tour the streets at night the square button is how the werehog scratches his enemies with his claws and the triangle button will punch them directly giving these action game protagonists reach over their enemies is important just look at how dante has the stinger or later on trickster allowing you to teleport towards the enemies or how nero has the streak and the devil bringer breaker that brings enemies to you the werehog is given the ability to stretch his arms out really far which is given almost no in-universe justification but then lends itself towards the combat really well the biggest difference between a game like devil may cry and sonic unleashed is that the werehog's gameplay is based around hit combos variety is not the most important thing to combat you can if you want to but the main point is killing enemies with as many attacks as possible as quickly as you can think of it like the arkham games in that sense although even scarier to think when sonic unleashed came out arkham asylum was still like a year away i was there for both there are kids who play video games that were born after arkham knight was released is this what it feels like to be old devil may cry's style meter is more demanding of players since variety is now a required part of the combat in addition to the speed of your attacks but ultimately i don't have a preference for how you do it in this example because either or can lead to satisfying combat you start out with some basic combos a shield gauge which shows how much abuse you can take while blocking an unleashed bar which functions like the devil trigger or when ryden turns into jack the ripper and metal gear rising a brief window where your attacks are more powerful when beating enemies in stages sonic is awarded with experience points and these you can spend on either the hedgehog or nighttime sonic has that gotten cursed yet that's what i'm going for as i was saying for daytime sonic you can spend experience points to extend his total boost gauge or increase his top speed when i play this game i extend the boost gauge a little bit but i don't think it's as important as upgrading the werehog's combat because this is how you unlock devastating new moves when you unlock new moves the game doesn't tell you how to do it or give a demonstration when unlocking but this is what the skill list is for dividing attacks in different categories punches swipes aerial moves and special attacks like breaking out of a dodge turning into a powerful counter attack there are a lot of things i really like about the werehog combat a small one being that the timing on the combos is very easy to remember take for example the werehog's uppercut allowing to easily transition into aerial attacks the uppercut is done by pressing the square button or triangle button twice and then the jump button so if you are punching or swiping you can transition into the air the moves you unlock just tear through enemies like the charge punch and span or the cartwheel attack makes crowds of enemies nothing or how you can press the square button four times then triangle and just there are numerous air combos of course there's no dmc enemy step here but the amount of air combos makes up for it like this one where you use the werehog's big spiky cleats to kick the enemies away there are attacks you can do while running attacks you can do from the air after jumping out of a sprint you can grab enemies and spin and smash them into each other and the thing that ties the werehog's gameplay altogether would be the sound design i'm sure this game uses a stock set of sound effects but i don't care smashing up these dark gaia creatures all at once can't not be satisfying and rewarded with these sound effects [Music] the only issues i have with the werehogs combat would make for a small list but still things i don't like exist and i'll list them starting with the sound design the infamous werehog battle music maybe it's a lot to ask for a unique battle theme in every area like it's sly cooper but looking again at devil may cry the games would have one battle theme for the first half of the game like shall never surrender or taste the blood and then maybe when you might be getting sick of that you get a new theme for the back half of the game like lock and load or shoot the works and there i just filled my sly cooper and devil may cry reference quota in one segment if there was going to be one battle theme i just feel like it shouldn't start with the same loud bombastic bit at the beginning it gets really annoying which is a shame because of the fact that this is a piece that's pretty long has a lot of parts to it as it goes on but most players only remember the first couple of seconds the other more pressing issue i take with the werehog combat are the combo finishers when an enemy is reaching the bottom of their health bar you can initiate a quick time event where you press buttons and then a time limit and then finish the enemy with several thousand points as your award everyone knows at this point that numerous 7th gen games relied upon quick time events to make cool things happen devil may cry 4 standing at the top of the pile for not having any instead making cool things happen through skill alone it was pretty [ __ ] based you should play it sometime sometimes i want to do the combo finisher to get more points but you can't start a qte until the enemy has stood back up you could just kill them with the normal attacks but that's worth less points tying this many points to qtes is lame and then this aspect of it isn't that well designed anyway but the werehog isn't the only part of unleashed that uses a lot of qtes the tornado defense game is based entirely around them for pete's sake but sonic's normal stages also rely on qtes during these dash pad bits word of advice you get the most points not for hitting it the fastest but during this little orange sweet spot in the time bar or at least i'm assuming that's worth more points because you get the orange great text on the screen as opposed to the blue cool text the whole challenge of qtes you know hitting the button before time runs out is lost anyway because you can just pause the game and practice the button sequence immediately that's an oversight but beneficial for me especially on the xbox playthrough with all that said i'm still not done with the werehog because combat's only part of the equation they also make use of the werehog stretchy arms to provide the players with some basic platforming to break up the combat i think the warehouse platforming does provide the stages with a great sense of scale take rooftop run and skyscraper scamper for example in the former case the stage takes place on the ground for the most part but when we get to the clock tower that regular sonic climbed the outside of the warehog will be climbing up the tower with the gears in the inside as you have to manipulate the clock to platform further now the streets you started out on are far away in distance in the latter case the whole level suspended over the city as the traffic rushes by gives that natural feeling of vertigo when climbing the stage the biggest talking point relating to the werehog will be the portion of the game taken up by his stages in truth i think all the boost sonic games show off the fact that the daytime mechanics have a hard time carrying an entire game on their own to be fair you could say that adventure 1 and 2 have this problem as well i'd argue less for the other three games because those games basically had the same gameplay for the entire duration of the game with character specific gimmicks attached to each segment anyway when adventure 1 and 2 were made i suppose the games fell victim to how many 3d platformers worked to include multiple playable characters it made the game feel bigger by the time you get to sonic unleashed and looking back on it now it's impossible to not notice that the boosting sonic gameplay has never existed on its own without some other mechanics spicing it up i'd say even sonic colors has this problem before comments speak to the contrary now that's not really the end of the world it's just something to notice the question then becomes what gimmicks do supplement the main gameplay in the case of the werehog this god of war clone routine is so far removed from what anyone really wants out of sonic so therefore people feel like this gameplay patted out the game because they wanted to play these levels i think it's an important thing to point out up front because it colors the rest of the commentary related to the werehog as we have established the werehog is not perfect but i think this is a really fun god of war clone in a sonic game the combat has depth the stages have platforming the spectacle's really high i have fun playing as the werehog rather the attitude of not wanting to play as this version of sonic leads to people to beg for the stages to end but looking at my playthrough i don't really feel like there are any werehog stages that go on longer than a typical level in this genre look at dante's first mission in devil may cry 5. that part lasts over 10 minutes maybe even 15 on every run the only time i can call the werehog stages into question would just be arid sands night where there's a segment at the end with a beginner's trap and annoying enemies that will drag your stay on much longer than it should be on that note the day stages are also pretty meaty like i said in generations a stage lasts like two minutes but on unleashed rooftop run day is like six minutes and i don't mind i just love how much content there is in sonic unleashed werehog is no different now if you think the werehog takes up too much space in this game because you don't like it fundamentally i think that's fine i just came back to it on this run and was surprised it was as fun as it was which seems to be a take i'm seeing a lot more of these days sonic unleashed has two gameplay styles however what is obvious is that they're both sonic technically this game cut back the playable roster by quite a lot the story also keeps the cast of characters pretty small this time around we have sonic tales small appearances from amy eggman is the villain chip and professor pickle i suppose tails is a part of sonic's mission but he barely has a role in the plot i mean he basically disappears from the game once the world map opens up this game also begins many elements of what you might call the modern tales he doesn't really participate in anything going on he just helps from the sidelines and begs for help on the sidelines while he's at it but for a reason i can explain in a moment i don't mind it too much this time around the story shows how sonic feels about being a monster at night by mentioning he hopes nobody sees him like this for cut scenes in and then by bringing back the amy confuses someone for sonic trope only this time it is sonic that's effective however nothing really gets done with that outside of those two cut scenes sonic unleash is a really good example of how to write dr eggman as well he's the reason everything happens in the first place he's evil and he loves being evil this game marked the debut of eggman's assistant orbot who wouldn't be given that name till the next game but hey he makes his only funny appearance this time around i think it's the voice and now the planet's coming back together that doctor is the result of the power of the chaos emeralds which you discarded along with sonic ergo another repercussion of your hasty actions quiet you junkie that was all part of my plan part of the big picture where's the fun in having my plans succeed without any challenge [Music] orbot works really well on unleashed because eggman is constantly having his flaws like arrogance and buffoonery mocked by this robot but he also needs orbot to perform functions he'd rather not do like manage projects and machines that eggman is not like how eggman arrives in missouri to find the temple but gets his ass kicked by sonic and just has orbot control the machines you face going forward the main driving force of unleashed story is the friendship between sonic and ship this is why tails being sidelined is fine for this one pretty much all the games going forward don't have many events in their plot it's more about the characters interacting in an unleashed case sonic and chip have to be executed well for the story to work i can start by saying that the english voice acting isn't doing chip any favors out of the gate he comes off like a scrappy do type character i think it gets better as the game goes along although maybe that's because there are less cut scenes towards the middle of the game but still by the last act i'm not cringing like i was in cutscene 1 that's all the guy who voices him also has an instantly recognizable voice hey those dudes look just like us don't flatter yourselves although on that note i feel like most four kids voice actors tend to not a big deal i just wanted to share an observation i had on the subject of voice acting i think this is where things really improved early four kids era sonic games had vocal performances that were really over enunciated and very stilted now you compare tales from o6 who was a total spaz now he's calm and collected dr eggman having a balance between villain and cartoon character the balance of humor and evil we all know and love rather than the more generic showing in o6 but the biggest win here is jason griffith as sonic if you were to ask me of the english voices which sonic actor was the best i'd say jason griffith in a heartbeat and that's because of this game in black knight where he's everything i love about sonic cool collected friendly adventurous and all that good stuff now just with a really normal sounding voice i love it sonic helping chip being great characterization he just acts and does what's right no questions asked sonic tries to help chip not knowing that he has anything to do with the main plot but because he thought it was right chip turns out to be the opposite of dark gaia light gaia and tries to leave sonic at the end to stop dark gaia alone but i mean there's no reason for you to come along so i should just do i need a reason to want to help out a friend that's sonic right there that's why i love this character in stories like sonic unleashed the post-jungle joyride day cut scenes are why i love the story in a nutshell revealing that sonic's will alone is the only reason he doesn't succumb to dark gaia's influence at night like so many others the duo have seen in the story thus far it's actually pretty subversive since you'd think the monster within trope is what they'd be going for here but sonic doesn't have that problem he just turns into a version of himself with different abilities that first cut scene with chip might make you wince but as it goes along you really start to enjoy the dynamic this adventure between sonic and chip exploring the world gives sonic unleashed a unique identity in this series it's a fun setup what can i say the story feels like it has impact because of all the people sonic and chip interact with humans and sonic games as background characters has been a debate for a while but i think most people agree that sonic unleashed is that trope at its best the cartoony designs just help sell this is supposed to be in the same world as sonic and his cast of characters i just said that the humans add impact to the story which you might find odd given the fact that the whole planet has split apart and nobody cares unless they're possessed by dark gaia at night which you then must save them from however i think this is interesting if you're going to write an apocalyptic scenario the majora's mask approach is probably the best practice that game took place over the course of three days and as it gets closer to the end the people become more and more unnerved by that fact however when looking at how sonic unleashed handles it i think it's charming the people of this world aren't going to stop being themselves because the world is split apart they need to be under the influence to fall victim to fear and anger it's not realistic but like i said i think it's charming kind of like how each area has its own distinct culture cartoony versions of what exists in real life these people don't go to war they don't have to worry about extremism or any of that sort of thing they just have their own customs to make them all different in superficial ways like the food they eat which is something that can be shared between cultures to spice up life your actions as the hero of the story directly contribute to the culture of the game like this girl from shamar who's an apotos when you put the planet back together she can try to find her way home only to find herself all over the globe ending up actually enjoying the atmosphere of atabat or the tribe leader from missouri deciding to travel to chennai after the village is saved the reporter from empire city travels all over the world to get the story on what happened a businessman from empire city is trying to help a girl who lives with her grandmother in spagonia or the boy an apotos whose father is a fisherman who you can find in atom at it's stories like these that make sonic unleashed interesting it gives the game a scale it gives context to your actions and i find that to be absolutely valuable in the sonic unleashed experience something i don't think you could as easily do with anthro characters because it's relatable to the audience when it's humans human roles i think are best fit as human roles is what i think makes this the best use of humans in the series because i don't think you could say that about essay 1 2 shadow or 06. now of course what would a good sonic game be without a great soundtrack well it would be a good sonic game without a great soundtrack but i don't think there has been one yet so yeah with sonic unleashed ranking as my second favorite sonic soundtrack behind o6 you can take what i thought about the o6 music like it feeling more pleasing on the ears and more serious for lack of a better phrase than previous games you can apply that to unleashed here we have a specific gimmick with how the soundtrack is done since this game takes place in all these different countries we have music that feels in place when it comes to instrument choice and such for those areas and cultures but you have to split that philosophy in two one for light speed action day stages and slow platforming night stages and the result is just an unforgettable soundtrack that has exactly what you come to expect in the day stages [Music] [Applause] [Music] with some more inspired variety in the night stages [Music] [Applause] do i also love this main theme from the tokyo philharmonic orchestra called the world adventure this track is the bombastic music you're met with every time you turn the game on and look at the world map that main tune being the foundation the game works with when making the impactful cutscene music the main vocal theme endless possibilities being done by bowling for soup and this track has always been special when thinking back on this game i mean it's nothing like the previous theme since crush 40 had nothing to do with the soundtrack for this game when i was a kid i'd listen to the main themes of sonic games all the time and who am i kidding we're still doing that now as i was saying though this track is a special place in my memory when i first heard it it just sounded so emotional i don't know seeing footage of the new game trying all these new things for the series alongside this really uplifting song about as the name suggests endless possibilities really left an impression on me when thinking about this game now endless possibilities just makes me think of the position the team was in making the game it was what i talked about at the beginning sonic team just released one of the biggest disasters in gaming history and still weren't going to give up trying to make the new game as good as they possibly could anyway that's what this song gets me to think of hell even my sister said it wasn't terrible unlike the rest of the drivel that came out of these sonic games i'd always play sonic team developed a brand new engine to make sonic unleashed with the hedgehog engine with this they were able to produce the caliber of graphics they were in this game i'm afraid while writing this script that the video will look absolutely terrible on youtube because of the compression that youtube applies to 1080p videos is insanely terrible but when you play unleashed the lighting the textures the models and the shading it looks absolutely fantastic however this comes at a trade-off this game must have come from the future because it was not meant to run on the xbox 360 or playstation 3. exo's video goes into a lot more detail on this but you start with the fact that to achieve these great looking graphics the game runs at a substandard resolution and caps the 360 version at 30 frames per second not saying it doesn't go below that because it certainly does jungle joyride day looking at you the ps3 version has an uncapped frame rate and will spend most of your play time bouncing between 30 and 60 fps it basically is a matter of preference as to which you prefer capped 360 gameplay or uncapped ps3 and i completely just used footage to lie i showed ps3 footage while saying 360 and vice versa because to me there really isn't that much of a difference i know i've played both but if you want the potential for 60fps by all means ps3 version although it takes a little longer to load so be afraid of that the 360 version can also be played on the xbox series x and not suffer from the issues it did back in 2008 so there's also that but it's still 30fps i'm of two minds here because i think sonic unleashed looks great but can i please get a pc version on steam i can live with this game's console performance but i just think that this game would feel so much better if it was a perfect 60 fps this is basically my thing with most 7th gen games i tend to think 6th gen games are better played in original hardware because the devs of the remasters might have [ __ ] something up but i think these 30fps 7th gen games look absolutely terrible so yes nathan drake collection dmc definitive edition last of us remastered i'm here for it when using your pc you could mod the unleashed stages into generations and that's a lot of fun but it's not the unleashed experience you know no werehog no hub worlds no story all the great things that make the game truly what it is outside of the boosting stages and if you don't have all that other stuff you just don't have sonic unleashed in my opinion to play the full unleashed on pc you could emulate it with a computer like mine and now here you run into two problems with the 360 emulator xenia you can turn off vsync in the settings and get a perfect 60fps that way but xenia barely works with unleashed and crashes frequently on the other hand you have the ps3 emulator rpcs3 which actually can play unleashed from start to finish but no perfect fps yet to increase performance you can patch the game to turn off things like shadows and the character models that would lighten the load wasn't really doing much for me as you can see on the screen but the point is emulation is far from being the perfect unleashed experience so come on sega please just give us the game on steam and sonic colors as well and sonic heroes and shadow and like all the games you haven't done yet seriously though why did a fan have to properly give a sonic 1 2 remastered on pc and a version of sonic cd with integer scaling it's sonic 1 2 remastered i really don't know why sega would give up that free money but hey more credit to the fan base anyway i can't talk much about this console presentation issue because i don't really care that much exo talked about it to a degree i never could and i agree with his points but i can play unleash just fine on any console but i just really want that damn pc port speaking of something exo covered in depth there's a plethora of post game content unleashed starting with the usual ranking system well i say the usual ranking system but i've never fully s ranked sonic unleashed and if you've seen exo's video you'd probably get an idea why this game pulls no punches when it comes to s ranks in the day stages getting an a should not be too hard just reach the end of the stage without dying but the s requires total mastery of everything the stage has to offer like i alluded to earlier each day stage has multiple shortcuts you must be aware of in order to get an s like this part of arid sands you have to jump off of this loop at the right time and completely skip this platforming segment you have to do the same at this point here to skip to another platforming segment which takes several seconds off of your run you also can't get hit because collecting rings gives you no points in this game instead you get a big point bonus for having more rings by the time the stage is over i've asked ranked every main day stage in this game and that's because i enjoyed the gameplay enough to try but it is hard but honestly in a way that i found kind of endearing i mean dying over and over from stuff you can't see coming slash needing to know things you can't even see is total [ __ ] and going back to sonic adventure 2 we had a great a-rank campaign that didn't need tricks like that but that's just part of the fun for me in unleashed i love how difficult it is because a run that's worthy of an s is what i said when talking about the day stages earlier it's a blast it's a mastery of mechanics that's what should grant players an s a demanding ranking system is part of what makes me love these levels for the werehog coming back to stages after the game was over kind of showed me that this game probably could have used a werehog must die mode because a lot of the stages are completely bent over backwards by a late game werehog [Music] not dying more qte points and hit combo length is basically all it requires to get an s is the werehog but if you do want that higher challenge or just alluded to then sonic unleashes various dlc campaigns should give you something to look forward to literally every stage gets three or four dlc levels as both the hedgehog and nighttime sonic for the werehog you get that more difficult platforming and stronger enemies in the levels exactly what i was saying the main stages lacked in terms of satisfying post-game material for the day stages these dlc levels pull less punches than the main ones already did i mean i'm talking about spikes everywhere real time reaction tests it's horse [ __ ] especially the five lap one from chun nan but like i said this aspect of it is fun to me i don't feel obliged to get all the s ranks so therefore i can laugh at how absurd the challenge is with this they packed these dlc stages to the brand with stuff you could barely see coming and it just makes me laugh like i have fun imagining how much fun they had finding ways to test players in the spot like this now i did rage at the dmc 2 s ranks and that's because it was [ __ ] in a video talking about s-ranking the game i'm just giving my thoughts on sonic unleashed here s ranks that are nightmarish is a valid point it's just not something i'm bothered by i'm just amused by how much i suck at these impossible stages especially when my abysmal run of the five lap chun nan stage grants me with a [ __ ] e rank and the e-rank music if you get an e the game just starts making fun of you with out-of-sync and off-key music [Music] [Applause] yes you do suck you do have to start over that's a lot of fun okay so we talked about the gameplay the world the story the bonus content all that good stuff so now comes the part we talk about the end game of sonic unleashed you know i wrote the word end game with a capital e too used to that being a title not a regular word anyway i've looked at all these sonic end games their own dedicated segment removed from everything else and i think that has been for the benefit of these videos no game makes that more obvious than sonic unleashed because they went all out with this finale while sonic and company have worked to bring the continents back together eggman has harnessed dark guys power and has built his base on top of the final continent but this isn't an ordinary eggman base it's the eggman base it's [ __ ] eggman land the lair of the beast the den of evil the epicenter of ecological destruction if you get the reference i'll heart your comment anyway this is the ultimate amusement park of madness built by the doctor in his own image specifically designed to kill sonic and it's great that the devs did go all out and make this the final area it could just be an eggman base and i suppose it would be the same thing but literally eggman's end goal for the entire series was to build a city that he rules over with statues erected in his image look at sonic cd stardust speedway's bad future has a giant robotnik statue he calls his end goal robotnik land in sonic adventure 1 he splits the world apart in sonic advance 3 so he could build eggman land this eggman land thing has just been his goal the whole time and now we get a final stage dedicated to that he has finally won almost we have to get through this mad house in order to stop him yet again and it's set up in context like that which makes for a great final stage everyone who has finished this game knows how hard this level is take everything about the day stages and ramp it up to 11. qtes you must react to in three seconds obstacles you never saw before like these ones that come out of the wall in 2d sections or my favorite this brief bit where you're going through the square and triangle button panels and the game has used numerous times before but for a brief second you have to quickly press circle on one of them a total gotcha surprise this stage throws everything including the kitchen sink at you and it's absolutely awesome multiple pathways to explore fast-paced set pieces like a roller coaster that flies off the tracks down to another track where sonic has to try not to get smashed pits lasers spikes bombs it's everything including constant reminders that this is eggman's land and climactic music for the day portions yeah i did say day portions numerous times in the states you'll switch to werehog sonic to progress forward and have to deal with elite eggman mechs and tough platforming ending with three giant gaia monsters back to back this is where the whole making it as insanely hard as possible thing can get annoying because the werehog has to do these platforming segments with a pretty terrible camera angle a wonky double jump and not a single drop shadow in sight making the daytime portions annoying on purpose kind of amuses me but the nighttime portions killing me when i don't feel like it's my fault from things like not having a drop shadow when platforming that pisses me off even when the game provides an extra life after the checkpoint that keeps respawning in essence giving you unlimited tries but in that case why does the game even have lives and game overs anyway now you might be thinking how does a stage have time for that much carnage well it makes time this level takes like 20 minutes if you know what you're doing on a lot more if you don't it's insane that's why i enjoy it so much as the last level has some annoying parts but on the whole is a great unforgettable final stage following that we get a multi-part final battle starting off as the werehog against eggman inside the egg dragoon a machine that had his prototype destroyed by super sonic in the opening cut scene here we aren't super sonic it's the werehog who wrecks the [ __ ] out of it anyway this is less of a challenging boss and more of a total smackdown and it's really fun to play this boss and tear its health bar to pieces and reduce parts of this intricate battlemech to scrap with your bare hands cool detail the fact that eggman land is the final plan here isn't just something i get as a fan it's also something you can kind of hear in eggman's dialogue during this boss fight like he wants to kill sonic really badly he's totally done with this rivalry i choose to claim this was intentional because mike pollock's delivery of the lines sounds really desperate and unhinged as eggman more than ever before especially when it's clear he's probably going to lose again at one point asking sonic to just die already with this music backing the moment perfectly especially in the parts where you go through the ground into the planet's core but when eggman is lost again dark guy arises and then betrays him and is the true final boss fight first taking back his power from sonic making it so that sonic can't be the werehog anymore chip using his powers as light gaia brings back all the temples to his position and uses this as armor against dark gaia the gaia colossus dr eggman is yet again not the final boss fight something that has become a well-established trope by this point in the series but if i may i don't think it's so simple as monster of the week as the trope has been reduced to like look at the game where this happens in essay 1 it was a plot twist in and of itself that chaos was the true final boss fight in adventure 2 eggman was the main villain but shadow clearly had his own plan that came about in the last story but he's not the final boss the previous ultimate lifeform iteration is following the orders left behind by the deceased gerald robotnik the context between sa1 and sa2 is totally different in heroes eggman made metal sonic capable of defeats he pulls off and just turns against him in shadow in an o6 it's clear from the beginning that eggman isn't the main villain of the overall story but is a large player hell even in advance 3 eggman directly fights alongside sonic because he knows how powerful these gizzoids are when they have all the emeralds here in unleashed i think that's the closest the games have come towards feeling the same with the climax but once again the context is different dark guy wasn't even a player in the story until eggman brought the final boss straight to him and now we have to finish the job as you control the gaia colossus and move towards dark gaia then playing a sonic one last time to reach dark guy's eyes and hit them with a harming attack i don't know what they were going for with this colossus bit but nothing is happening as you boost towards him and he tosses rocks at you really slowly not challenging not intense not really fun don't like this part sonic's platforming being the exact opposite of that but it's cut up by these monotonous chip parts in between once that's done dark gaia gets more powerful and all hope seems lost until sonic uses the chaos animals to transform into super sonic the true final battle starting at this game it became a tradition for the final boss to take the main vocal theme into an orchestral version of it first happening in sonic 06. even if these instruments don't sound anything like a real orchestra i like this track a lot and i think it really adds to that feeling that you've reached as sonic says the big finale of this massive journey [Music] i love the moment of the final boss but mechanically it's easily the worst one yet in the 3d series this supersonic bit not even being a fight against the monster is taking down the shield when chip does the real fighting ending with the biggest quick time event in the game is sonic blasts right through dark gaia putting him out of commission does everyone like how climactic it is when i play the result screen after essentially beating the game and beginning to wind the review down i know i do which is why i had to play this 10 minute final fight for a second time because you don't get ranked until your second run of the boss because that makes sense anyway ending time dark and light guy have been doing this battle every couple of centuries now that it's over again the two must go back to sleep inside the core but in his final moments chip saves sonic from the inside of the core meanwhile the people of the places we've been to celebrate the day being saved these scenes are the highlight of unleashed cutscene music for me and we also get our first eggman epilogue scene in this series this one probably being the most entertaining you can simply begin your plans i knew even if all of your efforts this last time were utterly wasted even if it was a complete and utter humiliating loss even the most pathetic loser [Music] the ending of the story being one of my favorites in the series ending exactly where it began only sonic is left with chip's ring which he wears to remember his friend by someone he spent the whole game with and will never see again not saying much throughout this whole scene it's just a new day and so begins a new adventure whatever that may be ending sonic unleashed during the credits we get to hear endless possibilities the world adventure and the closing vocal dear my friend performed by brent cash this one actually being kind of sad when played at the end of this game i feel like all these four kids era games are about sonic and some new character having a friendship that inevitably ends and that gets a sad song about it in the credits but i like this one i just hope you like the filtered vocals that's not going anywhere anytime soon now what do i think of sonic unleashed well i think it's great maybe i sounded critical at certain points of this game but on the whole i think this script really shows how i feel about sonic unleashed with each and every run of unleashed i do the game just gets better every time it's a full campaign with unforgettable moments great cutscenes and story that show how improvements over previous games in direction and shots and animation it just really feels like a big budget sonic game it stands out from the crowd with these really challenging stages and a very good replication of the god of war gameplay with the werehog unleashed isn't perfect bad console performance new mechanics needing ironing out some of the padding is annoying but unleashes a really unique experience in the series is catalog and that makes it fun to revisit every time i play it again it's one of my favorites in the series i know a lot of people are expressing how they feel the same way and i think its unique qualities are why that is it leaves an impact on people who play it and again that's what i love about it which is why i think it should get modern day ports i think this game should not be left behind i think more people should be able to play it and that's my take on unleashed now i know many people who didn't finish the video have commented about my thoughts on the port this game got to the wii and that'll be for next time but in the meantime i've got nothing else to add here so thanks everyone for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: J's Reviews

Views: 409,352

Keywords: sonic unleashed, sonic unleashed review, review, sonic, sonic the hedgehog, sonic review, sonic unleashed gameplay, sonic team, sonic unleashed good, sonic unleashed music, why i love sonic unleashed, sonic the werehog, sonic generations, sonic forces, sonic unleashed pc, sonic unleashed hd, sonic unleashed great

Id: EY1H0C5-lGo

Length: 57min 34sec (3454 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Kirbyuut]

Ah a man of culture as well

[u/[deleted]]

Oooh I binged his Mega Man X reviews this should be fun!!