If you've been gaming for a while, than chances are you've heard of Sonic the Hedgehog. You know, blue guy with spiky hair, runs real fast, got his start on the sega genesis. If you've been gaming recently you'll know that he hasn't been on top of the world lately."Sonic Unleashed" aims to change that.
There are three parts to Unleashed: day levels, night levels, and towns. Day levels are what you'd expect from sonic, it's fast, there's loops all over the place, but mostly it's fun. Night levels are a big change of pace, gone are the loops, bummpers, and speed. What's here is a weird mix of "Crash Bandicoot" platforming, and "God of War" combat. Sonic uses his new stretchy arms to swing on polls and beat up bad guys. It's not horrible, but once again we have something less about Sonic and more about something else. Last up are the towns, similar to what we saw in "Sonic Adventure" and Sonic 06. You wander around asking towns people questions about where to go and how to get there. Towns range from Greece to Africa and from New York to Alaska. They look nice, but are an otherwise pointless edition.
The big thing that brought this game down are the sun and moon medals. You need a set amount before you enter a level. So you'll spend half the game replaying night levels to find these stupid things. You have to do night levels too, because day one only contain a couple. There's nothing worse than having to replay a level you don't like, in order to unlock a level you don't want.
In conclusion, "Sonic Unleashed " takes two steps forward with some of the best speed levels in recent memory, and one step back with tacked on combat and item hunting. Maybe one day we'll see a Sonic game that's all about speed, but for now you'll have to sit through the bad to get to the good.