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Looks like a faithful port.

Geez, not even the worst aspects of the Advanced series look as bad as this mobile game. It's the G Sonic of our times, I tell you!

It seems decidedly unpleasant to play through.

Wombatwarlord777 wrote:Geez, not even the worst aspects of the Advanced series look as bad as this mobile game.

That depends, does it have the Sonic Advance 3 "wet sack 'o leaves" physics?

Rented the Xbox360 version, I'm actually really enjoying it - even the werehog parts. Feel like they should have gotten their own game. Only real complaints so far are the slow crap in the werehog stages (lugging around boxes and keys) and the atrocious Tails stages - of which I think you're only forced to play once, thank god.

Feel like they should have gotten their own game.

Could've said the same thing about the Tails/Eggman parts in SA2 and the Silver parts in Sonic '06.

Zeta wrote:and the atrocious Tails stages - of which I think you're only forced to play once, thank god.

Twice, but it's the exact same level all over again with a different background and a slight increase in targets. Yes, even the boss at the end gets repeated.


Don't know if it's been mentioned already, but the crew who marathoned Sonic 06 blind are currently doing the same with Sonic Unleashed:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... genumber=1
It's not quite as entertaining as the previous one, since the game isn't so morbidly unplayable this time, but still good.

Rob-Bert wrote:

Feel like they should have gotten their own game.

Could've said the same thing about the Tails/Eggman parts in SA2 and the Silver parts in Sonic '06.

I'm pretty sure people were saying that Tails/Eggman gameplay should be its own game when SA2 first came out.

gr4yJ4Y wrote:

Rob-Bert wrote:

Feel like they should have gotten their own game.

Could've said the same thing about the Tails/Eggman parts in SA2 and the Silver parts in Sonic '06.

I'm pretty sure people were saying that Tails/Eggman gameplay should be its own game when SA2 first came out.

Too bad they never said 'just make it play normal' instead.

But Sonic fans are special. :]

Thoughts on the game, now that I've got two more levels and 7 more medals to go:

* I just realized, that if Super Sonic is Super Saiyan, Werehog is Oozaru.

* This game is 90% Werehog, 10% Sonic. Seriously, there are only 7 "true" Sonic stages in the entire game, and each can be finished in ten minutes. There are two secondary Sonic stages, usually gimmicky jumping crap that last about 2 minutes each and are unecessary and worthless. There are 2 Werehog stages in each country. Each one, to finish completely (meaning you get the medals you need) takes about 30 minutes, and that's without dying. This is fucking ridiculous. It's too much work to design a Sonic game on a next gen platform? Funny, because I'm pretty sure Sonic Rush 1+2 could fit fine on an Xbox 360 with a graphical overhaul and play perfectly fine - and that's all you'd really need.

* There's no point in leveling up any of Sonic's skills at all. Level his speed up too much, and he'll be uncontrollable. Unlike Secret Rings, which you could use to customize performance, it's nothing but lighting a fire under Sonic's ass.

* The Sonic levels in general are longer but less interesting than Secret Ring's. Most of the variety Secret Rings is absent. The gimmicks have been replaced mostly with shitty and annoying quicktime events.

* Sonic's controls are bizarre. At low enough speeds, it plays like Sonic Adventure and is fairly responsive. Go fast enough and you basically "mode change" into Secret Rings mode.

* Werehog is awesome and sucky at the same time. I feel like I'm playing Kingdom Hearts in the combat. This is a GOOD thing. There's lots of fun things and powerful crap you can do. Also good. You feel powerful and agile, great. You move in an interesting way. But you look like absolute shit. If you looked like an actual werewolf and this was a game called "Wendigo Rage" or "Path of the Werewolf" and had an actually good design, it would be cool. Everytime you get a glimpse of Sonic's face, it's revolting, though. Also, Empire City werehog is a bitch.

* OK, so final thoughts:
** Sega should seriously just farm out a total 2D platformer for Sonic out to Dimps.
** If they wanted to do the Werehog, they should have mixed up the platforming stages more. See, Sonic has always been missing transformations/ridable animals that so many other platformers have, and is the corner stone of Mario and various other games. If they wanted to do a game where Sonic had a number of transformations based on time or item pickups or something like Kameo - fine, that'd be a cool idea. All Werehog all the time is just monotonous, though.
** SEGA are lazy asses. If they didn't want to design so many stages, why not just use the Mission System like in Secret Rings and have a variety of fun objectives for each level? They could have done more 2-D levels, more Sonic missions, or both - and it would have actually FELT like a Sonic game without significantly more work. Also, slowing Sonic the fuck down might help. He's just plain too fucking fast 100% of the time in this game, so none of the clever platforming using stomping or breaks like in Secret Rings is there.
** Werehog was fun, but it needed it's own game and to be expanded upon by itself. I kept on thinking that this would be even better if I was Cornell and this was Castelvania Werewolf for the Xbox and I was mowing through Dracula's minions and actually looked like a proper monster.

In conclusion, this is 90% of a clever but not too inventive werewolf game occasionally guest-starring Sonic the Hedgehog - sometimes. But not often. Seriously, Sonic Advance 1-3, and Sonic Rush 1 and 2, and Secret Rings all have more Sonic in each of their games than this game. Really, come to think of it, you spend more time playing Sonic in the games where you have all his shitty friends along than you do in Sonic Unleashed, where he's supposed to be the only playable character. It blows my mind. For every ten minutes of Sonic, you get an HOUR of Werehog, at LEAST.

Werehog plays slower, so it takes longer. With Sonic you have a lot more replayability (seperate paths) and it is more fun.

I think the main problems are: too fast, too holey, too QTEy.

Werehog plays slower, so it takes longer. With Sonic you have a lot more replayability (seperate paths) and it is more fun.

The art is lovely, but I thought that the stages themselves were inferior to Sonic Adventure 1+2, Rush 1+2, and Secret Rings. Too many quick-time events, too much running around in the sky, too many rails, and the controls during the 3-D sections were really off. I liked the Secret Rings sections because it felt like you were playing through an amusement park ride where you had fun surprises, but the Unleashed Sonic stages just make me feel like I'm on a rollercoaster where suddenly there will be a sharp turn and missing it will instantly kill you. The difficulty randomly slots up from too easy (hold down left or forward) to too hard (hit the buttons in split seconds or you instantly die).

Using real-world esque locations as part of the game was a bit of brilliant theming, though.

The biggest problem with that is that you can't even stop to check out the scenery like in other Sonic games though. The game punishes you for slowing down, to the point where I felt it was actually harder to control Sonic when he wasn't moving at full speed.

Zeta wrote:

Werehog plays slower, so it takes longer. With Sonic you have a lot more replayability (seperate paths) and it is more fun.

The art is lovely, but I thought that the stages themselves were inferior to Sonic Adventure 1+2, Rush 1+2, and Secret Rings. Too many quick-time events, too much running around in the sky, too many rails, and the controls during the 3-D sections were really off. I liked the Secret Rings sections because it felt like you were playing through an amusement park ride where you had fun surprises, but the Unleashed Sonic stages just make me feel like I'm on a rollercoaster where suddenly there will be a sharp turn and missing it will instantly kill you. The difficulty randomly slots up from too easy (hold down left or forward) to too hard (hit the buttons in split seconds or you instantly die).

Using real-world esque locations as part of the game was a bit of brilliant theming, though.

Well the levels are mixed quality. I feel some of them are just as good as Adventure, 2 (Sonic stuff only), and Rush Adventure. Levels like Adabat and Eggmanland are just terrible. I feel the best ones are the ones that are not too long and do not have holes everywhere, like Mazuri and Apotos. Too bad the whole game never followed this formula for the Sonic levels.

Stuff like Empire City and the Italian level are like what you said... just going really fast until you fly off the screen in a second. Like it could be fun, but it gets ruined.

And personally, I hated the setting for the game. Normal level - generic city - generic city - normal level - generic city - normal level with lag - generic city, et cetera... Where is stuff like Marble Zone or Flying Battery Zone?

Also 'happy, progessive guitar music' can go eat a dick. I hate whoever is in charge of the music now, it has no variety.

Kogen wrote:Also 'happy, progessive guitar music' can go eat a dick. I hate whoever is in charge of the music now, it has no variety.

Don't worry, they seem to be mixing it up recently with "occasional clichéd breakbeat pattern". That's true variety!

Oh how I wish we could just go back to memorable pop melodies. Things were so much better before games were capable of using actual instruments for their music.

I give up. I don't want to put myself through finishing the Adabat boss, which is literally one huge quicktime event and if you move too slow you instantly die. If Sonic Next Gen didn't have 22 minutes of loading for every level, it'd be a better game than this. The Sonic sections in this game simply awful. The first three stages are fun, but after that - nothing but quicktime event after quicktime event. There's no skill required - just rote memorization to parrot back to the game exactly what it wants to so you can make the story go. If I wanted that, I'd play fucking Dragon's Lair.

Crowbar wrote:Things were so much better before games were capable of using actual instruments for their music.

I could facepalm at this but i'll just leave it at one offhand statement:

http://web8.orcaserver.de/ecco/music/dotf/index.php

I give up. I don't want to put myself through finishing the Adabat boss, which is literally one huge quicktime event and if you move too slow you instantly die.

If you mess up the QTE segment you can home in on the springs below... though i'm thinking you'll really lose it trying to clear Eggmanland, much less Dark Gaia, so never mind.

If you mess up the QTE segment you can home in on the springs below... though i'm thinking you'll really lose it trying to clear Eggmanland so never mind.

It's the wall-running section that does me in. It makes you play a shooter except Sonic has no projectile weapons, can't dodge easily, and if you jump or slow down you fall off the wall and die. That to me, is a quicktime event, even without the buttons flashing on the screen. Worse, actually, since it's disguised as real gameplay.

Zeta wrote:

If you mess up the QTE segment you can home in on the springs below... though i'm thinking you'll really lose it trying to clear Eggmanland so never mind.

It's the wall-running section that does me in. It makes you play a shooter except Sonic has no projectile weapons, can't dodge easily, and if you jump or slow down you fall off the wall and die. That to me, is a quicktime event, even without the buttons flashing on the screen. Worse, actually, since it's disguised as real gameplay.

ahh, what the hell Other than finding out what happens if you jump there, this part hasn't given me much trouble. Never heard about falling if you slow down though, that part of it's on autopilot isn't it?

Never heard about falling if you slow down though, that part of it's on autopilot isn't it?

I can assure you, that it isn't. When I try to dodge by breaking, I fall off the wall and die. Not trying to dodge leads me to get hit and loose all my rings. Attempting to jump over the many many incoming projectiles causes you to fall off the wall and die. It's pretty awful.

Zeta wrote:

Never heard about falling if you slow down though, that part of it's on autopilot isn't it?

I can assure you, that it isn't. When I try to dodge by breaking, I fall off the wall and die. Not trying to dodge leads me to get hit and loose all my rings. Attempting to jump over the many many incoming projectiles causes you to fall off the wall and die. It's pretty awful.

I forget how it's even possible to brake with the camera overhead of you unless you're sliding, or you mean braking is going left... but alright, here's everything you should try on the wall:

On the first pass
- Stay in the middle and you should only have to do two quick steps to dodge the lasers (and remember that the boost draws in nearby rings)
- When between the two beams, wait to line up with his weak point and boost into it

When he's in "condition yellow"
- Just move up and down a little to dodge the laser rows, you get lots of room
- Each part of the "wall" of bombs only moves toward you when you're lined up with it. Let a bomb get close enough to open a decent gap behind it, then go around it (this doesn't always work if you're not careful, but if you've got rings, just take the hit)

"Condition red"
- The cylinder of lasers targets where you're about to be, so you can trick it into firing one place and quick step a few times to slip by
- Stay inbetween the bombs, don't boost unless you get a really clear shot, you prolly won't get hit, but it's not too big a deal

The game is a lot funner after you get passed the story stuff. Once you are just trying to do missions and S Ranks, some of the levels are really fun.

And as you guessed, generally it is the earlier levels that are not fustrating to play.

Plus the last Eggman boss is worth playing.

Crowbar wrote:

Kogen wrote:Also 'happy, progessive guitar music' can go eat a dick. I hate whoever is in charge of the music now, it has no variety.

Don't worry, they seem to be mixing it up recently with "occasional clichéd breakbeat pattern". That's true variety!

Oh how I wish we could just go back to memorable pop melodies. Things were so much better before games were capable of using actual instruments for their music.

No, SEGA CD music sounds fine. It is just due to widespread autism.

How dare you take my oversimplified blanket statement at face value!

I don't actually think there's anything wrong with real instruments in videogame music. It's just that over the years I feel like it's led to less of an emphasis on the strong melodies that make the music from, for example, the classic Mega Man games so memorable.

I am underinformed and prejudiced, though.

No, no, it's true. These days, games in general seem to be trying their damnedest to meet the film industry halfway, and the music is no exception. Problem there is, movie soundtracks only ever strive to suit the setting and events, and they seem to deliberately avoid any sort of distinctive melodies, probably for fear of drawing attention away from the onscreen action or something, I don't know. It's all atmosphere over substance. This is clearly unacceptable and it needs to stop.