I enjoy video games a great deal. I grew up playing them on the SNES, the Game Boy (the big, grey, uses 4 AA batteries, black and green screen classic) the Game Gear, and a few others. I know what I like, what I don't, and usually why.

When looking back at the games that got us hooked on them as gamers, it's usually mixed with childhood nostalgia, and we love and treasure those games- but memory isn't always as perfect as we remember.

That being said, I'll get to the point: I have a shiny copy of Sonic Unleashed for the Wii, and have been playing it for the past few days.

And my feelings for it are similar to most of the newer Sonic games- it leaves me with a strong urge to go to SEGA of America or SEGA of Japan, track down every member of Sonic Team, and give them a piece of my mind.

Sonic Unleashed could have been AWESOME. As it is, it has enough high points to merit my keeping it, playing it to completion, and probably replaying the better parts.

The overall graphical prettiness of this game is very nice. Now, the Wii doesn't have as much visual processing power as the 360 or PS3, but the game looked very nice on the standard definiton enormous-screen TV we have at the house, set aside specifically for gaming.

The levels are split into two categories: Day and Night. Day levels have you running around at high speed as Sonic. The night levels have you beating the living tar out of enemies as Werehog Sonic.

The Day levels... My god. The game thankfully has you play these first, and aside from a few 15-second intro levels that teach you how to control Sonic properly, they play BEAUTIFULLY. I've gotten to the final area- you know that always-mechanical, Eggman's-fortress kinda level they always have at the end of almost every sonic game? (Not that this is a bad thing, I'm just trying to make sure everyone knows where I'm talking about.) Suffice to say that despite the fact that the level keeps kicking my behind to the curb (and as such, raised my record for Number of Consecutive Game Overs on a Single Level) I keep coming back, because it plays BEAUTIFULLY.

All the Day stages do. it's like Sonic Team finally figured out what they did right with the previous 3D Sonic games, distilled that down, and then smeared it liberally over every single daytime level they made. THIS, in my opinion, is how they should have made levels for all the Sonic Games they made since Sonic 3 for the Genesis.

The night stages, though... Oie. Fail. Horribly. It's like the concept and development team saw how much cash Sony was raking in with the God of War franchise, or at Capcom with Devil May Cry, and even though the games have been out for years now, they go 'Hey! That's good money! We want a piece of that action!'

The night levels are a reskinned God of War. Sonic is slow but powerful, and his arms stretch to allow him to flail them wildly about himself in chained combo attacks that cause more and more damage to the enemies around him.

Hmm... doesn't Kratos do that with those chained wrist blade things he wields? Oh, right. He does. Ooops.

There's also the fact that instead of the standard 'You take a hit and rings fly everywhere' hit system (used during the day), Sonic has a health bar, filled with green. Attached to it is the 'unleashed' bar, filled with blue. 'Unleashed Mode' gradually drains the Unleashed bar and allows him to take less damage, for his attacks to do more damage, and to be able to attack more often. When triggered, Unleashed stays till the bar is drained and empty.

Sounds kinda like the Rage of the Titans ability to me. (I think. I haven't played any but the first God of War, and that was ages ago. I watched more than I played after that.)

Rings replenish health- this is good, since they're still kinda commonplace. But defeating enemies has them drop colord orbs. Green ones heal you, blue ones fill the Unleashed bar, and there's also red ones, which acccumulate experience and are used automatically (at the end of the level) to upgrade Sonic's abilities in Werehog form. And you can also get them by smashing random breakables scattered throughout the level.

Hey, wait. God of War has orb things- Green for health, blue for magic, and red for leveling up weapons and armor and stuff. 

I'm not saying this is bad. If they want to make a game with these features, go ahead. I just don't think it has any place in a Sonic game. Hell, combat gameplay would be more up Knuckles' alley anyway, in my opinion. Skip the werehog bit, and have Knuckles do the punching, hitting, and other stuff.

There's also the between-level sequences. This part irks me the most. You pick a place on the planet, go there, and enter the 'village' area, then pick any of the locations available to have a brief conversation with someone. Just text, and the person's a static image, as is the background. Then exit back to the village and go somehwere else. Repeat this until you've visited everywhere, then someone will have either a good, a somewhat decent, or a very flimsy excuse to give you the next item you need to continue your quest.

This is needless backtracking and time-wasting. Use a cinematic for these parts, and do it between levels, or after every boss fight, or henever. Heck, have the game engine do it! Just dont have the player go traipsing all over the place.

There's also the 'See the world' bit that kinda irritates me. I don't mind being exposed to a huge, thriving game world. Look at the Jak & Daxter trilogy; the world you saw was a vibrant, beautiful, well-detailed place. Heck, look at Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast (and later, the Gamecube)- you had a basic overworld area split into sections, and you could talk to people or go places to advance the plot, which then led you to more levels. Simple, fun AND IT WORKED. Show the world in cinematics and such, don't go to the trouble of advertising that the game takes you to 'challenging locations around the world.'

1) It's a video game, and it will therefore be challenging to play; that's what makes it fun.
2) Either use real world locations and real names, or make up ones of your own that don't blatantly mirror the real life ones in a pathetic manner.

Example: One of the places you go looks like it could be in Italy. The way the people are dressed, the architecture, the ambient music for the village area. It's called- prepare yourself- Spagonia. Presumably the Spaghetti Capital Of The World. Ugh.

Then you have the voice acting. Yet again, Sega's gotten new voices for Sonic and Eggman. Sonic's voice actor actually does a good job giving voice to the spiky, cobalt-toned hero. Eggman's voice actor is almost right... but DAMN, he does a fantastic job of bringing the character to life, making him sound evil, crazy, megalomaniacal- and he does the classic, 16/32-bit era 'Oooohohohohohohoho!' Eggman laugh I remember from Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic CD. I heartily approve.

Tails' voice actor has changed too, but we only hear him a bit and he sounds off to me as well. There's no sign of Knuckles, but Amy Rose is here, and she doesn't sound too different to me.

But in terms of getting a decent voice acting team... ugh. One cinematic- fairly early on, right before your first boss fight (which was a blast to play) has Eggman threatening a group of villagers whose location, manner of dress, and look probably meant they were supposed to be African, or the rough analog for Sonic's world. So they start yelling in anger at Eggman... and they all sound like Americans, and a few like New Yorkers. Not african, or 'generic tribal indigenous population.' Really, Sega? Was it that hard to find SOMEONE who can passably fake an accent?

It's little things like that that totally kill the immersion of a good game.

Then we have the music. Dark, haunting, and moody stuff for night levels. Fast-paced, toe-tapping and energetic tunes for the day levels. The night level music doesn't really leave me with an impression, it's just kinda there. But the day level stuff is fantastic, and feels perfect- it goes with the level theme for the area you're in, and meshes beautifully with that part of the experience.

The 'village' music tends to match the kind of area that village represents- African, Italian, and so forth.

The gameplay is pretty solid on the Day side. Sonic moves very fast, and the more rings you have, the faster you go. Collecting rings also adds to your boost meter, and when used a boost lets Sonic suddenly speed up and plow through enemies and obstacles like they don't exist. He still has the air dash and homing attack, and the speed pads, springs, and bumpers are all here. Also here are the floating red and rainbow toned rings from Sonic heroes.
New to the mix is the Quickstep, which allows sonic to almost instantly dodge to one side or another while still maintaining his high-speed pace. This is especially effective for his boss battles, since they are almost always running ones.

He also can't turn well at high speed any more, and as such, can drift around corners while losing almost no speed. Tapping the drift button while going forwards also lets him do a short slide, to duck under obstacles on the course that would otherwise stop him.

Sections of the day levels will also consist of the camera rotating 90 degrees to one side of the course, and for that segment, gameplay is very much like the old 2-D genesis days. Run fast, jump, and keep moving forwards, and the execution of this is very well done. When you finish a 3-D section, Sonic keeps moving but you have no control, and the camera swings into position, and then you resume control.

The night sections are pretty much your standard platformer. Move into an area, the exits are closed off, enemies pop out to try and hurt you, you kill them, the exits open, and you continue through the level. There's some platforming, and ledge-grabbing, and pole-climbing and such, but it's pretty vanilla.

One thing I do take issue with for the speed levels is this: You play through the speed level as normal- get the the end in the shortest time possible, with the most rings possible. Then you do a couple of sections in that same level, with different objectives. Collect the indicated number of rings in the shortest time possible- and, oh yeah, the timer counts DOWN. Or go through the section as fast as possible- again with a timer counting down instead of up- and avoid breaking any of the breakable obstacles- crates, clay jars, what have you- along the way.

The night levels, actually, avoid this. They have a level layout that I normally associate with Sonic games of old. You go through one level, get to the goal ring (and stop, even though the path continues forwards) and the next level to load has you at the post where the goal ring was; it's just that now it's the start for a new level. Act1, Act2, Act3, Boss, then a new Zone. That's how it was done, and that's more or less how the night stages work. Gameplay-wise, it still behaves like a brawler that took one too many blows to the head and is a bit confused.

I think the doing bits of levels in the day stages is a holdover from the 'missions' bit from Sonic Adventure 1, 2, and Sonic Heroes. In those games, you played through each level once, and played through the story until it all ended. Later you could access those levels again through the main menu, and play through the level with a different goal at the end. These kinds of things are aimed more towards completionists; they don't really affect things as far as beating the final boss is concerned.

But the overall feel of the game, it's lacking something. That little... 'something' that the original Sonic games had. I do realize that I'm looking at this through 'nostalgia goggles', but the sensation is there.