Adventures in Sonic Unleashed Part 1 of ?

 So after finishing my session (not the game) of Sonic Adventure 2, I decided to give another try to Sonic Unleashed, called Sonic World Adventure in Japan.

I remembering preordering this game for my Wii back in the day, purely because it came with a Sonic the Werehog action figure.  When I picked it up, the staff told me I was the only person to preorder. ha ha ha.

The game at the time was fine, I remember that the Sonic day time levels were quite something and I was pretty impressed with the speed, but the Night-time Werehog levels were kinda boring, long and a bit of a drag.  

Since I've been looking back at older Sonic games, I had discovered that the PS3 version is deemed better than the Wii version and that the Werehog levels were different.  So here we go.  SA2 down, no inclination to take on Sonic '06 (seriously, I've tried like 8 times), how do I go with Sonic Unleashed?

Well it starts pretty well with an amazing opening scene.  Seriously it's good and manages to set up both Sonic's and Eggman's characters perfectly.  

Then an in game graphics cut scene that maybe runs a bit jerky which introduce Chip, oh god chip, his voice is so annoying, I might have to switch to the Japanese for this game; his voice sounds just like the annoying voices in the ESL text books they use in Japan.  You then walk around the Greek-looking city talking to folks, it feels a lot like the city areas of Sonic Adventure, so far things are all right.

First day time Sonic level.

What a blast! Literally, Sonic barrels along at a ridiculous pace, I've very little idea whats going on and don't particularly feel in control, but it's pretty fun!  I bet that once I get the hang of it, it'll be a rush.  I have seen some very cool play throughs on youtube.

Followed up by a little world city talk again and another day time level, also a lot of fun.

Then night-time comes and the inhabitants get depressed, Sonic gets werehoggy and you can go to the first werehog level.

Werehog levels

play a lot like the PS2 era God of war games. Sonic has stretchy arms and a variety of moves borne from a combo of light and heavy attacks.  It's all right.  There is also some critical attack you can do which is a type of finisher on certain bad guys which requires a short quick time button press to do.

They're not bad levels, but the enemies are kinda bland Sonic Team blobby characters without charm and there are a lot of them. They explode into various experience/health orb thingies so there is a lot of bright colours and shenanigans on screen at once.  

It's a bit of a mess to be honest.

A lot of the time I was only vaguely aware of where Sonic was and most of the time unaware I was taking damage.  The sad thing is that didn't really matter as I made it through the level fine and even grabbed an A ranking, despite taking about 10 minutes to finish.

10 minutes felt a bit too long.

There is also a levelling up system too, so you can give Sonic extra attack power, etc etc.  Overall the experience wasn't terrible and the combat options were surprisingly broad.   I do like thtta you can grab and enemy and repeatedly smash them left and right in a comic style.  That was fun.

So far it hasn't been too bad, I advanced the story and 

a flight game popped up.

Oh cool, it'll be a bit like Panzer Dragoon and the section from Sonic Adventure 1 (Sky Chase Act 1, which I kind of enjoyed) I happily thought to myself

And it is very very very slightly.

Tails changed the Tornado into an X-wing type plane, but that's where the similarity ends.  The rest of the level consists of pressing the propmpted butto to shoot down enemy missiles and planes.

One plane will show and will be marked with an X, press the X button, behind it, one with a square, press the square button.  This went on for a while, until Eggman shows up in his Egg Cauldron.  I died.

It was not fun.

What were they thinking when they made this bit, it is so passive, slow paced and TEDIOUS.  When I got to the boss, I didn't care anymore and just wanted it to be over.  The terrifying thought that that section might pop up every time I go to a new area depresses me

Naturally I stopped this session here.  I do wonder if I will gate back to it, because I did enjoy the Day/Night levels in some respect, but that flight section was absolutely bloody awful on a scale that requires a stronger expletive than bloody, but I don't want to use it.

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I just discovered the Japanese website is still kicking.  I'll have to have a wee look see at this for shits n giggles.

SEGA | ソニック ワールドアドベンチャー

Some interviews:

SEGA|『ソニック ワールドアドベンチャー』ディレクターブログ (sonicteam.com)