Sonic Team snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
Graphics
This game is a huge step up over Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. The games worlds look absolutely beautiful even when you barreling along at mach 1. The character models are brilliant and cartoony and even the human inhabiting the hub worlds don't look out of place.
Gameplay:
As I explaned earlier, Sonic Unleased features three types of gameplay. speedy daytime levels, slower platform nightime levels and adventure fields. The daytime levels are really fun. The level design is better than in previous 3D Sonic games, and the camera for the most part stays where its supposed to be. The games switching between 2D and 3D works well as it doesn't confuse the controls. However there are still a few small flaws the control is still pretty loose, and sometime trying to make Sonic jump accurately can be pretty frustrating, also he does turn very and can sometime go flying off of platforms which don't have edges, the Sonic drift move which is supposed to help doesn't work very well either. The warehog sections are much worse, simply put they are repetitive and pretty boring. The levels also feature a pretty bad camera which can make the jumping sections infuriating. The game also ask you to navigate the Warehog along thin beams, more often than not you will fall to you doom because of the loose controls. The brawling section of the levels are extremely repetitive, most of the time you are just bashing buttons, also when there are many enemies on the screen there is slowdown. However the worst sections of the game are the Adventure Fields, these are just simply padding. You have to go around talking to people with not alot to say, it is really annoying that Sonic Team keeps insisting on shoving these things down our throat. Another gripe with this game is having to find Sun and Moon medals, I spent an hour and a half one evening going through different hub worlds and warehog levels trying to find 20 Sun Medals to progress to the next Sonic stage. It got so frustrating I had to switch the game off.
Overall:
With Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Team has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They have finally nailed down how to make Sonic speed work in 3D, but the game features so much padding and yet another rubbish gameplay type. If they had done away with the hub worlds, and not even bothered with the stupid warehog idea this game would have been worth a 8 at least.