It had so much promise.
Sonic Unleashed definitely had some promise when I got to play the first level of the game, it was fast paced and it was definitely fun. The one thing I did however notice right away was the fact that the cinematic and voice overs were pretty awful. But if you are playing a Sonic game for either of those.. Well then you definitely are lost.
Now after the first level was over I got to play another daytime level which was also fun. This is where things started to really go weird for me. The nighttime levels play like a broken God of war clone with an obsession of breaking purple gems and beating up the same enemies with no variation of moves whatsoever. So I went through the level praying that this would be over soon, and you know the gameplay is bad when you are actually looking forward to getting back to the map screen. So the level ended and I was excited! Well to my horror I had to play 3 more straight levels of this garbage, I mean Sonic Team I know you are excited about this new gameplay mechanic but don't shove it down our throats so hard.
Now the from what I have heard the map in the PS3 and Xbox360 versions are not Text based. I really feel sorry for you if that is true, because the text base is painful enough with all of the useless backtracking through screens with ugly drawn humans. But it gets the job done, I just do not see the point of including this in a Sonic game
The sound is almost what you should come to expect out of a sonic game by now, its not very good anymore but thats what mute is for. The Voice acting is also pretty awful but again, its to be expected. It is at least better than Sonic X.
Over all I did not hate Sonic Unleashed, The Day time levels were a blast to play and I really enjoyed myself. But the Nighttime levels were just awful, and they actually made me want to quit. But the Daytime levels made me keep playing until the very end. Overall I would say rent it if you can find it, because it is definitely not worth the purchase.