Sonic Unleashed?

[FlashTHD]

Not counting Eggmanland, there are 7 Day and Night levels each than are mandatory to complete. There are also optional day and night levels that require more medals than the standard levels in each continent.

Ugh, so I need level 7 to finish the game? I assume it goes up once per set of stages?

Are we talking low-def versions or high-def? In high-def you need to get up to to Sun level 7 and about Night level 5 or 6 to have the path to the end/the whole game open.

[Majestic Joey]

are these levels like actually different levels or just the same levels with some stuff placed differently?

Yeah I still haven't had time to beat the game. I got to the desert level I think it is called adbat. anyways I beat the day stage and chip is all like, "Let's go talk to prof. pickle!"
"ok, sure."
I go there and he is all like, "Sonic there are robots spotted around the area you should go destroy them."
30 mins later I still have no idea where to go or what the hell to do.

That's probably one of the biggest problems with this game is it makes no sense on where to go. First your in spain and you can't play a level then for no reason you fly all the way to china to do a sonic level where you don't even get a chaos emerald or anything. then you fly back to spain to do the level you couldn't do earlier. Who the hell came up with this backtracking in a Sonic game? I just want to go to a new place play act 1 and act 2, fight a boss and just move on. This game for every 3 mins of fun sonic levels there is like an hour of just God Dammit.

[FlashTHD]

Yeah I still haven't had time to beat the game. I got to the desert level I think it is called adbat. anyways I beat the day stage and chip is all like, "Let's go talk to prof. pickle!"
"ok, sure."
I go there and he is all like, "Sonic there are robots spotted around the area you should go destroy them."
30 mins later I still have no idea where to go or what the hell to do.

Prepare for another goddamnit moment: Pay attention more in conversations. If you're playing the high-def version then I believe he wants you to go check out Empire City.

[Locit]

HAY GUYS: for 360/PS3, whenever you can't figure out where to go, look at the world map. You will see sparkles around your next destination.

This is the first time I've ever heard someone refer Crisis Core as a beat-em-up instead of an action RPG.

Heh, slip of the tongue. It's just that until you get into the materia, the X button is pretty much your best friend.

Also you seem to have forgotten about:

--The randomness of the DMW:"when do you level up, what attacks will you unleash, which materia will level up, who knows?"
--Dull missions: Missions consists of the same 6-7 bland dungeons with the same objective--kill the only visible enemy. At least other dungeon crawlers have better level design and mix up the goals.
--Uninteresting new characters: Especially Genesis who is one of the worst characters I've seen in a video game. He's a low-rent Sephiroth who quotes bad poetry.
--Unskippable cutscenes: Why do you do this Square-Enix?! Why have it for this game?

Nope! These weren't really issues for me- I played the game in short bursts, so it never became boring or repetitive. As for the DMW, I didn't really mind it at all since it never penalized you. If it was a constant source of agony I could understand hating it, but seeing it as a source of mid-battle lucky breaks I really can't muster the hatred to complain about it. I thought the story was decent enough since it had a genuinely likeable protagonist, so I didn't really mind the cutscenes. If it was the Genesis and Sephiroth show I might feel differently, but it wasn't, with the exception of one cutscene that takes place in the VR rooms.

Crisis Core isn't a masterpiece. It's just a good, solid portable game. I played it having never completed FFVII (despite multiple attempts) and came away a little more impressed with the game's world than I was by its source material. If they give VII's inevitable remake over to the team that made Crisis Core, I might even consider playing it all the way through.

[FlashTHD]

HAY GUYS: for 360/PS3, whenever you can't figure out where to go, look at the world map. You will see sparkles around your next destination.

Around that point in the game (after the first trip to Empire City) I think multiple destinations start sparkling. Although, that means you can start doing plot-necessary levels from there in any order.

(almost excluding Jungle Joyride 1 Day, unless you go crazy collecting Sun medals)

[Baba O'Riley]

you'd either have to be suffering from some bizarre learning disability that causes you to mix together Roman numerals and Phoenician numerals or a complete tard to pronounce ANYTHING 'ten-two'.

But Ten Two is literally the title of the game, undeniably a gross miscalculation on Squenix's part. The whole retroactive "ecks" thing was just icing on the cake. Stupid, shit-flavoured icing, made by idiots.

I know, I'm just saying the switch to ecks two was inevitable, in much the same way people pronounce Syncecdoche 'Sin Eck Doesh,' despite the fact that it's supposed to be a pun on Schenectady and rabble rabble rabble...

[Locit]

(almost excluding Jungle Joyride 1 Day, unless you go crazy collecting Sun medals)

Yeah, I found this kind of retarded, especially in light of the relatively low requirements throughout the rest of the game.

[j-man]

I know, I'm just saying the switch to ecks two was inevitable, in much the same way people pronounce Syncecdoche 'Sin Eck Doesh,' despite the fact that it's supposed to be a pun on Schenectady and rabble rabble rabble...

Yeah, I get you, man. On that note, the correct pronounciation of Synecdoche eluded me for far too long. I just avoided saying it at all until... well, just now, really.

[Xyton]

Agh. For every good thing about this game there are a dozen bad. (I guess I shouldn't be surprised.) 28 medals short of Jungle Joyride (day). fsdfds. At least I don't need more moon metals to play Eggmanland (right? =_=). I am playing the '360 version, BTW.

[FlashTHD]

Agh. For every good thing about this game there are a dozen bad. (I guess I shouldn't be surprised.) 28 medals short of Jungle Joyride (day). fsdfds. At least I don't need more moon metals to play Eggmanland (right? =_=).

Right. The town stage there is, at most, a formality and a place to put some hilarious NPCs. As soon as you get to Eggmanland, it flows straight into the action stage. Set aside a lot of time before you go there, BTW.

[Xyton]

So having finished this sucker earlier tonight, I think the day stages are easily the best 3D Sonic stages since Dreamcast. The night levels are meh to terrible. The bosses were pretty decent, and I think the QTE thing works well with Sonic. Sadly, it meshes much less well with lives. What I really hated about this game was all the backtracking for metals, which sucks a lot. Hiding doodads around levels for you to find is a nice idea, but shouldn't be required (at least, not in such large numbers) to advance. If they would only make a Sonic game with only day-like stages. (Crazy, I know.)

[Rob-Bert]

I don't mind looking around for stuff in levels so long as the game is built to allow you to do that with ease, which Unleashed certainly didn't.

[j-man]

metals metals metals

For God's sake, man.

Had a dream I was doing Eggmanland last night. Is there a walljump in the game? Because there was a shitload of walljumping in my dream and it pissed me off.

[Xyton]

Don't worry, I'm done complaining about metals now. :P Also, yes, there is a wall jump.

[Delphine]

What kind of metals do you have to find? Brass? Aluminum? (Or Aluminium for our Old Worlders) Iron? Magnesium?

[Xyton]

Awesomite.

[Wombatwarlord777]

Sadly, what nobody knows is that all those metals you collect in the game go towards forging that talking sword in Sonic and the Black Knight.

Also, have any of you guys played both the Wii/PS2 and PS3/X-BOX versions? How do the stages in each compare in your opinions?

[Majestic Joey]

I haven't played the wii version but I finally beat the 360 version and I can't tell you this; the graphics in the 360 game are amazing. I don't know why this game has not won some sort of award for good graphics it's probably one of the best looking games on xbox.

[Xyton]

The load times were reasonable, too. I wonder what else Sega's gonna use the Hedgehog Engine for.

[Owen Axel]

The load times were reasonable, too. I wonder what else Sega's gonna use the Hedgehog Engine for.

I wouldn't mind if they simply made another Sonic Unleashed. Comprised solely of title character gameplay, of course, and learning from the mistakes of level design made in the first game while retaining the good ideas.

Pretty much exactly what Sonic Team have always been physically incapable of; telling the difference between a good innovation and a bad one.

[Dasher]

The question is..can they screw it up again and how? ...Hmm.

I just want Phantasy Star Zero and Mario & Luigi 3.

[hedgepig]

Considering this is (sort of) the current Sonic Team setup's first attempt at a full game I'd say it was an impressive attempt. The key positions are held by people who mainly worked on chao gardens in the past so they obviously bounced ideas off of each other back then.

The game is techinically impressive, artistically pleasing and has charm. Hopefully next time they'll focus less on breakneck speed and more on platforming/exploration; rolling needs to come back too.

[Locit]

The game is techinically impressive, artistically pleasing and has charm. Hopefully next time they'll focus less on breakneck speed and more on platforming/exploration; rolling needs to come back too.

I don't know how likely it is that they'll abandon the current Rush style, though reviews were bafflingly harsh on the 360's Sonic levels. If they produced a game with Mazuri-quality levels that had substantial length enough to qualify as a full-price title in the current market they'd likely recieve a warm welcom from critics bitter over the werehog shenanigans of Unleashed.

That said, length has always been an issue with the Rush games- their gameplay simply makes for quick stages, and it seems like after about twelve or so levels developers just run out of steam, which is a pity. Sonic Rush Adventure used the formula best by introducing new gimmicks in the second act of each level (much like S3&K) to mix things up. Unleashed mostly reused the same level elements from the main act of each area in its extremely short second and third acts. Sonic's odd momentum when slow, similar to Sonic 1 though much harder to control, didn't do any favours for the 2D jump-heavy acts.

[Ngangbius]

My problem with Sonic's controls in this game is that he seemed to move too fast too soon. Combined some loose movement, the game just felt so unnatural that I wouldn't enjoy the game even if it was composed of Sonic levels as much as some people here.

[Majestic Joey]

I think the problem with the game is it doesn't slow the game down right. Like in old Sonic games there were parts where you go really fast but at then afterwards it would get you to a part where you knew you had to slow down and do platforming or choosing a path. too many times in sonic unleashed it has launched my on a ledge after like a huge qte jump and I kill myself because I boost and I did not see a 100 feet in front of me it was supposed to be a slow jumping part. Also a lot of the different paths are way too easy to miss because this game is so fast and you don't have enough reaction time to jump into on of the dash rings when grinding at 300 mph.