Sonic Unleashed?

[Radrappy]

This sorta feels like Sonic 360 again. All we're missing is having a GHZ forumer play a demo and report that the controls are awful and the levels take half an hour to load.

I wish to see the Wii version! Though I doubt it's any better. Just a different flavor of suck.

EDIT: NOW I remember what the town stages remind me of: Sonic R. Remember how easy it was to explore what's around you in that game?

What, dude how so? There are barely any load times to speak of and the town hub was very linear and small. How can you complain about what was basically a nice looking narrow strip and compare it to the nauseatingly confusing and dull looking hubs of the last game? As for the gameplay, it looks like at its worst, a step up from Secret Rings in terms of playability. I think you need to (play/watch some videos) of Sonic 06 and remind yourself just how wretched the thing actually was.

[Dasher]

Right, SWA actually looks playable and its like a mixture of Rush and the Adventure games.

Well, this game WAS Sonic Adventure 3.

[Baba O'Riley]

Right, SWA actually looks playable and its like a mixture of Rush and the Adventure games.

Well, this game WAS Sonic Adventure 3.

Do not be fooled by the wicked temptress of an opening scene that SEGA is selling to you.

[Protodude]

Chip is that monster thing from the opening

[Locit]

Chip is that monster thing from the opening

We know.

Also, this game looks pretty good.

[Hybrid]

I'm actually rather impressed by that video. It looks like Sonic's control has been tightened up significantly, at least to the point where you can run around slight bends without crashing into the walls. The levels themselves hark back to the days of Sonic Adventure and early stages of SA2, where it felt like you were traversing an environment rather than a specially built obstacle course. Having said that, it did appear rather barren.

This certainly doesn't look anywhere near as horrible as Sonic 06 did, at the very least. I'm still waiting for the day when you can fluently control Sonic around S-bends, but this looks like a step in the right direction. Now I'm just hoping the werehog sections aren't awful!

[Dasher]

Sonic Unleashed's opening scene and actual footage of the DEMO tittle screen was leaked today at youtube!! I was one of the lucky ones to see it and let me tell you, it was phenomenal!!!

I saw it at my aunt's house, unfortunately when I came home to see it again and read the subtitles (yes it was playing in Japanese WITH English subtitles!) Sega of Europe took it down! Ugh..well here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/browse?&ytsessio ... f4hNurEqJA

It was awesome and beautiful CG animation! Eggman looked fantastic, the best part of it was that The machine that he is using, the one he grabs Sonic with is actually a machine on top of his Eggmobile! when Sonic turns Super He destroys the machine and Eggman is trying Escape Super Sonic WITH THE EGGMOBILE (it looked like the Sonic 1 or Sonic 3 version)! it was awesome! dang! I wanted to see it again!

[Dasher]

Never mind! Its on Game Trailers! Watch it if you don't care about spoiling it!

enjoy!

PS. It seems that is footage of the actual game? 360 version.

[Neo]

What, dude how so? There are barely any load times to speak of and the town hub was very linear and small. How can you complain about what was basically a nice looking narrow strip and compare it to the nauseatingly confusing and dull looking hubs of the last game? As for the gameplay, it looks like at its worst, a step up from Secret Rings in terms of playability. I think you need to (play/watch some videos) of Sonic 06 and remind yourself just how wretched the thing actually was.

I'm talking about before the release of the game. Before we had ever seen the town stages and only saw montages of the game's levels (much like up until now with Unleashed!). Before we got the 360 demo hands-on and noticed the awful control and loading times.

And how do you know the town stage is "very linear and small"? Didn't you notice the video was spliced up (two times, if I recall correctly), during the town part? And the player only explored a very small part of it! Doesn't it have to link to all the stages? (Or maybe there's seven unique town stages this time?)

Regardless, it doesn't have me interested. It looks average at the very most. Maybe they should start making feature-long CG films. At least those always look good.

[Hybrid]

Sonic Unleashed's opening scene and actual footage of the DEMO tittle screen was leaked today at youtube!! I was one of the lucky ones to see it and let me tell you, it was phenomenal!!!

You're a page late.

[Locit]

Before we got the 360 demo hands-on and noticed the awful control and loading times.

I was pretty much skeptical of 06 from the start, and never really got into it. It was pretty obvious from the extremely death-prone videos from every single outlet that the controls were bunk, but Unleashed footage has been pretty good so far. You also actually see the loading times during the video of Mykonos. They're not terrible.

And how do you know the town stage is "very linear and small"? Didn't you notice the video was spliced up (two times, if I recall correctly), during the town part? And the player only explored a very small part of it! Doesn't it have to link to all the stages?

They've been pretty upfront about the towns. You don't really have to pay attention to them, and I don't see how the one in the video being small is a bad thing. The splices, which I only recall as happening during gameplay, didn't actually cut between levels for loading if that's what you're thinking- we've seen most of that stage a hojillion times now, and all of that video came from the same level.

(Or maybe there's seven unique town stages this time?)

There are, they've said as much and shown one for the Africa-alike area.

[Locit]

Plus, here's a link to the original Korean page that has the hub world/gameplay video. It's slow, but it works!

EDIT: fast loading, super secret youtube version.

[Dasher]

Wow....Just...Wow.

[Locit]

First 18 minutes of the game, including intro cinema, second cinema, intro level, load times, uninterrupted hub world footage, and the entirety of the first Mykonos stage. One pit death, looked pretty reasonable.

[DackAttac]

Oh my God, Homing Attack is a different button from jump? Why?! I mean, I'm kind of excited since that explains a lot of the people sucking at the demo, but I'm not looking forward to unlearning the last decade of Sonic-related reflexes.

[Dasher]

Well, Homing attacks did steal lives some times, specially when jumping from rail to rail. At least it is on a convenient button near the jump button so I think it wont be THAT bad. We had it worst in Sonic06 where normal jumps didn't kill enemies.

[DackAttac]

Speaking of enemies, am I the only one who finds it odd that enemies don't seem to harm you? Sonic runs right into them a few times, no harm done. It's like they're just walking breakable blocks who don't post a threat.

[Delphine]

First 18 minutes of the game, including intro cinema, second cinema, intro level, load times, uninterrupted hub world footage, and the entirety of the first Mykonos stage. One pit death, looked pretty reasonable.

I honestly couldn't care less about this game, so I haven't looked into anything about it at all. I started watching this video because I was bored, and I continued watching to see how long it took to get to actual gameplay. Over nine minutes. Half of this video is cutscene. Absurd.

[DackAttac]

I can't remember the last time a Sonic game made a cutscene unskippable.

[Zeta]

Sweetie, these days 10 minutes for an opening cutscene is pretty conservative.

[Radrappy]

I take back what I said about the loading times. They're absolutely foul in this first 18 min video.

[Delphine]

Sweetie, these days 10 minutes for an opening cutscene is pretty conservative.

In, say, RPG's, sure. It's not only expected but welcomed, because ridiculous drama amuses me. Platformers are not on my list of games that are allowed ridiculous cut scenes.

[Zeta]

The annoying thing is that there are some pretty easy design choices they could have made to get around that. Look at Mario Galaxy. You get to fool around with Mario for a bit before the opening cutscene. Instead of watching Sonic do all that cool stuff in Eggman's space station, you should be controlling that in a very simple obstacle course/tutorial and early miniboss. It'd be relatively simple to pull off.

[FlashTHD]

I can't remember the last time a Sonic game made a cutscene unskippable.

Sonic Shuffle I believe.

The annoying thing is that there are some pretty easy design choices they could have made to get around that. Look at Mario Galaxy. You get to fool around with Mario for a bit before the opening cutscene. Instead of watching Sonic do all that cool stuff in Eggman's space station, you should be controlling that in a very simple obstacle course/tutorial and early miniboss. It'd be relatively simple to pull off.

Thank you, i've been thinking exactly this since we first saw assorted clips of that intro. But with obviously daft developers with too much mismanaged budget and too much obsession (for any reason) with launching on the exact same god damn date repeatedly (Nov. 18th was Sonic 06's first drop too), i'm not entirely suprised they couldn't/wouldn't.

Concerning the loading, are these counts from Sonic CulT about correct? This sounds unbelieveably worse than 06:

1st: Loading Model Rendered cut scene AND entire level took 30 seconds. Impressive was the quick transition to the game play level. I was totally expecting a loading screen, but a swoosh and it was on the READY screen.

2nd: 18 seconds roughly to load another model rendered cut scene then a 3 second load to the world map. Not bad, an improvement on StH'06.

3rd loading screen was again 30 seconds roughly for the entire Act 2 of Windmill Isle.

[BlazeHedgehog]

So judging by the responses I've gotten on other forums, I'm pretty much the only person who has noticed and/or cares that the "Rings as a Lifebar" stuff is basically how things are probably always going to function forever and ever? It started in Shadow, continued in Secret Rings, and is now found its way in to a mainline Sonic title with Unleashed.