It seems that never a month goes by without another Sonic game being released. There is always the danger, even with a character as loved as Sonic, that SEGA might milk the icon one game too far and end up spoiling all the fond memories. With this in mind I approached the latest title with more than a hint of scepticism while leaving just enough room to be pleasantly surprised.

I reviewed the character’s last outing, Sonic Chronicles: the Dark Brotherhood on the DS, and I awarded that a high score because I found it very enjoyable. I didn’t find Unleashed to be as enjoyable but it certainly isn’t down to a lack of trying from the developers who managed to squeeze so much into the game. This game is very much in the style of Sonic Adventure apart from the fact that it’s missing one key element – Chao. If you’re wondering why the distinct lack of Chao is worth mentioning then you, my culture deficient friend, have clearly yet to witness the little creatures in all their glory. Repeat after me – Chao are great! Even with the mighty Sonic Adventure I found myself playing through the bulk of the game in order to collect all the tiny animals so that I could give them to my Chao to hug and absorb their powers. Awesome stuff. I feel I’ve covered the fact that there is a severe lack of Chao in this game.

Something Sonic Unleashed does have is a flying idiot who constantly follows you around and will now and again speak to you in an incredibly grating voice. The annoying voice is bad enough but this is made all the worse when he pops up to suggest things like “we” need to be careful while walking across a beam as falling off may result in death when in actual fact “we” doesn’t factor in this because he then flies off and leaves you to deal with the dangers on your own. Muppet!

Fans of the Sonic series have come to expect a certain level of repetitiveness in each game and this title is no different. Something I noticed very early on which I found frustrating is that the rings you must collect are spread out a little too much and since Sonic runs at such a high speed I found myself running past rings then having to stop and walk around at a much slower pace in order to collect them.

Overall this certainly isn’t a bad effort, it can be frustrating in parts and the array of silly secondary characters can be a pain but the sharp graphics, decent music, and the interesting dark and light aspect of this title just about manages to make this a decent game especially if you’re a fan of the series. This outing shows a lot of promise and is without doubt an improvement over the last 3D game. I look forward to the next Sonic title and hope that the developers will be able to continue in this vain.

7/10

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