I Played Sonic Unleashed and I Don't Know Why

by wickedcestus

Sometimes, I feel like devoting an entire night to one game. Often, this is because I have nothing scheduled for the next day and think it might be funny to feel terrible about myself the next morning. Earlier this year, I did this with Spiderman: Web of Shadows, and ended up having a very good time. This time, I had a couple of choices. The most immediate and obvious choice in my mind was Tales of Symphonia, which I have been trying to play some recently. But, I really just don't like that game enough to play it for even one hour straight, let alone a whole night.

Now, after reading the title, you are probably wondering why I chose Sonic Unleashed, an arguably worse game instead. Well, the answer is simple: I don't have to pay attention when I play Sonic. With Tales, I'd need to be listening to the dialogue and reading the excruciating amount of text the whole time. With Sonic, I can turn the volume off, put the Bombcast in my ear, and just run really fast. Playing it this way actually makes Sonic Unleashed surprisingly fun. I mean that, this game's pretty cool.

The game's intro cinematic is probably one of the best parts. God, that sound back-handed. The main reason I started playing this game was probably the Quick Look for Sonic Colours (yeah, I spell that with an extra "u"). This quick look made me think, "Man, I'm definitely not buying this game", and completely unsold me on a game I had forgotten about the existence of. But part of it must have stuck with me. The quick look reminded me of the fact that they have all the Japanese voice acting in the NA releases of Sonic games, and being a person learning Japanese, I thought that sounded cool. This was obviously before the bit where I said, "Screw this," and turned the sound off. So, when I sat down to play a game all night, this game immediately came to mind. Oh, and also points.

So, I played Sonic Unleashed for three hours last night. You know what, that game's not as bad as I remember it being. It's not brilliant, but I'd say it's more mediocre than it is bad. Obviously, the worst part is the Werehog sequences. These kind of suck. But, at least they're really easy, so I can blow through them quickly. This is one of those games where tapping X and Y a lot seems to be the answer to most of the "combat puzzles" presented to you. Then, there's the actual running bits. These are a ton of fun. I'm not even kidding, I really enjoyed these parts of the game. You just run real fast, and then you jump, and then you run along the back of a giant whale, and then you ride a sled, and at the end you jump into a giant ring and go YEAH. Even though they're not necessarily that interactive, they're still really damn cool!

Then I encountered the problem that most reviewers faced, forcing them to not like the game that much. The part where you need to get out of the way collectibles just in order to continue the story. This is one of those game design decisions that some might call "dumb". So, I had to go somewhere to progress the story, found out I didn't have enough random coins, so I took the game out of my Xbox and put it back on the shelf and went to bed. I guess there's a reason why I never beat Sonic Unleashed.