Is Sonic Unleashed the most passionate misfire in gaming?

[PeakPointMatrix]

After the Sonic 06 debacle, I've never seen a studio so wholeheartedly double down their efforts to course correct on a franchise like the follow-up that was Unleashed. The sheer AAA budget slapped down for this title was absurd. An entirely new engine built from scratch, with baked-in GI as the cornerstone, producing some of the most cutting edge visuals on the 360/PS3. An entirely separate Wii version. A full, high-quality CG short. This was only two years after 06 crashed and burned, many fearing the death of the franchise.

The art direction was appealing, charming, bright and charming. Did I mention charming? The music varied, catchy and amazing, as expected from ST's sound team. Clearly there was a mountain of passion, love and effort poured into this follow-up.

One of the most impressive CG openings in a game:



Night of the Werehog CG-Short




Top notch music of all styles:






Charming, vibrant visuals and art direction:

But yet, it also managed to miss the mark and squander a lot of the good it tried to do. The Werehog at best was a God of War-lite. Functional, but out of place. Gatekeeping the stages with the tedious Sun/Moon medal collecting also majorly hurt all momentum players may have had. Some unfortunate performance issues also plagued both HD twin versions of the game, especially on PS3. It's still one my favorite games of the 7th generation of consoles, warts and all, but is this the most passionate misfire in gaming?

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

I'm so confused on why they can't seem to hit this level of quality again just with some better gameplay decisions for 3d sonic
Like few gameplay tweaks here and there most of what you touched on already and this game would've been a goat sonic game... well imo of course

 

[RockmanBN]

Those human designs were so charming. Sucks that we now have these Toon Town NPC's from Forces.

 

[Deleted member 62561]

on the contrary, the werehog parts seem an obvious influence of some weird focus testing.

 

[Annabel]

Flawed as it was, it truly felt like the last time Sonic Team really gave a damn.

 

[Deleted member 224]

Yeah, Unleashed has the highest highs of any HD Sonic game and it was the last time a game in the franchise felt AAA. It's honestly been so long that I feel we'll never get something that ambitious again.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

I have a hunch the question is rhetorical, but for me the 'passionate misfire' award goes to Zero Time Dilemma, a sequel of a sequel to a visual novel made almost solely thanks to Western adoration of the series (like its predecessor) and thanks to almost 2 years of fan campaigning... And it crashed and burned, killed the fanbase and probably buried the series forever.

 

[Theswweet]

Those human designs were so charming. Sucks that we now have these Toon Town NPC's from Forces.

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That's insulting to Toontown Online, take it back!

 

[JaredTaco]

Sonic Unleashed is far from perfect, but I do think the major gaming sites judged it a bit too harshly.

Gamespot gave it a 3.5 out of 10. IGN gave it a 45.

 

[Annabel]

I have a hunch the question is rhetorical, but for me the 'passionate misfire' award goes to Zero Time Dilemma, a sequel of a sequel to a visual novel made almost solely thanks to Western adoration of the series (like its predecessor) and thanks to almost 2 years of fan campaigning... And it crashed and burned, killed the fanbase and probably buried the series forever.

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Eh, wasn't ZTD always intended to be the end? Even if it flopped hard, it at least was meant to be the ending.

And Uchikoshi is still making games, good games too judging by the reception Ai has been getting.

 

[Kapryov]

It really was a beautiful looking (and sounding) game.

It had a lot of issues though, both with the overall design (locking levels behind collectables) and the awful over reliance on the Werehog - which by itself is one of the worst misfires of the series.
Why yes, please replace this lovely Night music with this repetitive battle theme again... and again... and, why are the Night stages so long??

It's like they listened to fans that only wanted to play as Sonic (not his friends), but proceeded to make Sonic transform into a shitty friend so they could still force slow unfun gameplay into the game.

The mod for Generations on PC is great.

 

[Giga Man]

The music is my favorite thing about it, so much variety. The cartoony humans look close to how I would imagine humans inhabiting Sonic's world look like.

The Wii version also had an awesome final boss fight with a Punch-Out!! parody. It's infinitely better than the slog that was PS360's final boss.

 

[WillyFive]

It's a creative peak Sonic Team has not been able to match since, despite the same chronic ST issues with quality control.

But hey, we got Super Mario Odyssey from them afterwards.

 

[Ghos]

But hey, we got Super Mario Odyssey from them afterwards.

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wait what

 

[Cordy]

I thought it was alright for what it was. It came out during a weird time but with that said it did have some nice spots in it. I wasn't even taken back by the werehog parts because that felt like old school previous gen stuff. Overall it was a game that felt like it needed a few more years in the oven. Had they done that then it would have been much better.

 

[Hexa]

I want another game like Unleashed but without the werehog.

Eh, wasn't ZTD always intended to be the end? Even if it flopped hard, it at least was meant to be the ending.

And Uchikoshi is still making games, good games too judging by the reception Ai has been getting.

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Even if it was supposed to be the end, it doesn't feel like an end at all. The only major problem I had with ZTDs story was that the ending felt like sequel bait for a sequel that the developers knew was never going to happen and hence everything just feels unfinished.

 

[Aaronrules380]

It really was a beautiful looking (and sounding) game.

It had a lot of issues though, both with the overall design (locking levels behind collectables) and the awful over reliance on the Werehog - which by itself is one of the worst misfires of the series.
Why yes, please replace this lovely Night music with this repetitive battle theme again... and again... and, why are the Night stages so long??

It's like they listened to fans that only wanted to play as Sonic (not his friends), but proceeded to make Sonic transform into a shitty friend so they could still force slow unfun gameplay into the game.

The mod for Generations on PC is great.

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3D Sonic basically runs into the issue that to maintain the sense of speed they need to create really big detailed levels that are ultimately over very quickly which means each of the 3D levels costs of a lot of money but only gives a few minutes of game time to complete. It's a huge money sink so they tried to make up for that by padding the game with an alternative gameplay style that could reuse the assets so that the game doesn't finish in like 2-3 hours. I feel like they're trying to circumvent this in newer games by involving remixes of the levels as extra content with different goals and such, but even so they're still clearly having a hard time given that according to how long to beat the median playtime for the story in Generations is under 6 hours and forces is even worse in that regard

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

I want another game like Unleashed but without the werehog.

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Wasn't that basically Colors, Generations and uhh Forces I guess?

 

[Unknownlight]

wait what

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Nintendo snatched up a lot of the people who developed Sonic Unleashed. You can see a lot of similar names in the credits for Unleashed and Odyssey.

 

[Aaron]

wait what

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A ton of people who worked at Sonic Team in 08 moved over to EAD Tokyo by the time Odyssey came out, so there's a lot of overlap among the rank-and-file.

And yes, Sonic Unleashed is badass. It is probably the "worst" game I will always stan for. I agree earlier that IGN and GameSpot went too hard in on it, they didn't even like the day levels. Ironically Matt Casamassina enjoyed the Wii version, he gave it a 7.2 and said it would have been more like an 8.5 if it were only day levels.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Nintendo snatched up a lot of the people who developed Sonic Unleashed. You can see a lot of similar names in the credits for Unleashed and Odyssey.

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This is also why Forces was as uninspired as it was. Nintendo basically syphoned out all the emerging talent Sonic Team inherited in the aftermath of the 06 shakeup.

 

[Rob]

Unleashed had a lot of decent ideas, and while the Werehog levels were fine, they did get a little long in the tooth.

 

[Deleted member 224]

I'm surprised that the consensus is/was that the Wii/ps2 version was better than the HD version. I played though both shortly after release and iirc the werehog sections were dramatically longer in the Wii/ps2 version.

 

[fontguy]

Sonic Unleashed is far from perfect, but I do think the major gaming sites judged it a bit too harshly.

Gamespot gave it a 3.5 out of 10. IGN gave it a 45.

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I mean you spend the overwhelming majority of your time in that game playing the most tedious button mashing beat em up of all time. It is all so slow, so brain dead, and so monotonous. The "stop making us play as other characters in Sonic games" has been a very common complaint since the Adventure games. And they technically didn't, here, but I think they missed the spirit of the complaint. It's still bewildering that anyone would greenlight that.

During preview events, Sega reps said the reasoning was that if they didn't include some bullshit to pad the game out, the game would wind up being very short since Sonic goes so damn fast. So instead of releasing a shorter game or, y'know, just not making Sonic go 10x the speed of light at all times, they shanked their review scores right between the ribs.

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

It is. Unleashed is not a good game. It has a lot of unnecessary padding. The werehog gameplay goes from ok I guess to oh god make it stop the further you get. The medal collecting is absolutely awful. The side acts are so badly designed it isn't funny and worse still because of the medal system you're required to play those garbage side acts to get enough medals to progress. The game tortures you more and more as you progress, with Eggmanland being the ultimate test of how much pain you can endure.

But you know what? Sonic Team fucking tried with this game and I respect that. It had a lot of problems, but it had ambition, it was unique and hey when the game was good it was gooooood. This was the last Sonic game that truly felt AAA. Unleashed is a horrible game to play on a new save file, but it's also a pretty cool one go go back to on a complete save file. The main daytime stages are fun to master like the Sonic Rush games.

It's sad we'll never see a Sonic game with this ambition ever again. I miss the Sonic Team that would fall flat on their faces but did it with pride and style. Now Sonic Team doesn't even try.

 

[Syril]

Werehog is dumb, he's really dumb, but I kinda love his design. Mainly when he's not trying to appear threatening and looks more like an awkward cartoon monster.

 

[RKasa]

Interesting to read complaints about the PS3/360 version of Unleashed here. I only played the Wii version and have long been considering picking up the other one due to certain differences.

Flawed as it was, it truly felt like the last time Sonic Team really gave a damn.

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It's a creative peak Sonic Team has not been able to match since, despite the same chronic ST issues with quality control.

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Nah, that's Sonic Colors. It's Unleashed without the Werehog and chocoholic sidekick and with better stages. IMHO, it's the best Sonic game ever made.

Unleashed, Colors, and Generations are the best 3D Sonic games Sega's ever produced, and it saddens me that the series has gone downhill since then. Unleashed is definitely the weakest of the three, but the things it does right are rather enjoyable.

 

[Aaron]

Interesting to read complaints about the PS3/360 version of Unleashed here. I only played the Wii version and have long been considering picking up the other one due to certain differences.



Nah, that's Sonic Colors. It's Unleashed without the Werehog and chocoholic sidekick and with better stages. IMHO, it's the best Sonic game ever made.

Unleashed, Colors, and Generations are the best 3D Sonic games Sega's ever produced, and it saddens me that the series has gone downhill since then. Unleashed is definitely the weakest of the three, but the things it does right are rather enjoyable.

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The PS360 version of Unleashed is way better than the Wii version. Day stages are better and you'll spend less time as the Werehog.

 

[Secretofmateria]

I'm so confused on why they can't seem to hit this level of quality again just with some better gameplay decisions for 3d sonic
Like few gameplay tweaks here and there most of what you touched on already and this game would've been a goat sonic game... well imo of course

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budget i imagine is why

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

The PS360 version of Unleashed is way better than the Wii version. Day stages are better and you'll spend less time as the Werehog.

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HD Unleashed is better, but it's also a lot worse. Higher highs but lower and more frequent lows. It's a much more frustrating game to play. Unleashed Wii is more easily digestible. So much of it just comes down to the god awful medal system. Take that out and my opinion of Unleashed would be so much higher.

 

[Annabel]

Interesting to read complaints about the PS3/360 version of Unleashed here. I only played the Wii version and have long been considering picking up the other one due to certain differences.


Nah, that's Sonic Colors. It's Unleashed without the Werehog and chocoholic sidekick and with better stages. IMHO, it's the best Sonic game ever made.

Unleashed, Colors, and Generations are the best 3D Sonic games Sega's ever produced, and it saddens me that the series has gone downhill since then. Unleashed is definitely the weakest of the three, but the things it does right are rather enjoyable.

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I respectfully disagree.

I personally don't like how the level design in Colors heavily favored 2D over 3D, mostly because of how clunky Colors Sonic feels in 2D (and most modern games really), and I found the wisps to be more obnoxious than anything else. I also far preferred the writing and plotline of Unleashed, it struck a really nice balance between serious and lighthearted that I feel 3D Sonic games are always fumbling with.

Generations on the other hand, that one was great, but it did start the awful trend of SEGA overly relying on Sonic's legacy to coast by. That and the Act 1 levels and bosses didnt set the world on fire either. But as an anniversary game it did its job well.

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

Just gonna drop this in here. This is the GOAT vocal Sonic track for me. So underrated.

 

[Deleted member 3294]

Nintendo snatched up a lot of the people who developed Sonic Unleashed. You can see a lot of similar names in the credits for Unleashed and Odyssey.

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So I looked into that back when someone on this forum made this claim, and couldn't actually find that much truth to it. There are some people who worked on Sonic Team games and later also worked on Nintendo games, but not to the extent of that you could say Nintendo deliberately snatched up people who worked at Sonic Team.

 

[Unknownlight]

So I looked into that back when someone on this forum made this claim, and couldn't actually find that much truth to it. There are some people who worked on Sonic Team games and later also worked on Nintendo games, but not to the extent of that you could say Nintendo deliberately snatched up people who worked at Sonic Team.

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"Snatched up" was admittedly meant to be a (provocative) figure of speech. I strongly doubt that Nintendo went out of their way to hire Sonic Team members, but I do think that anyone working at Sonic Team at the time would have seen the writing on the wall and would have tried to get a job at Nintendo instead.

 

[Man God]

Unleashed Wii has longer werehog but also better Sanic stages. The bad parts of PS360 outweigh the bad parts of Wii. There's one pretty solid 3D game there.

Colors is the unmitigated hit of the 3D Sonic games from that generation in my opinion. It's the only one I enjoy playing anymore.

 

[Deleted member 3294]

"Snatched up" was admittedly meant to be a (provocative) figure of speech. I strongly doubt that Nintendo went out of their way to hire Sonic Team members, but I do think that anyone working at Sonic Team at the time would have seen the writing on the wall and would have tried to get a job at Nintendo instead.

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That is assuming those developers were full time employees. Those developers could very well just have been contract workers.

 

[Unknownlight]

That is assuming those developers were full time employees. Those developers could very well just have been contract workers.

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Good point, I hadn't considered that.

 

[Prof Bathtub]

wait what

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Nintendo snatched up a lot of the people who developed Sonic Unleashed. You can see a lot of similar names in the credits for Unleashed and Odyssey.

Click to shrink...

So I looked into that back when someone on this forum made this claim, and couldn't actually find that much truth to it. There are some people who worked on Sonic Team games and later also worked on Nintendo games, but not to the extent of that you could say Nintendo deliberately snatched up people who worked at Sonic Team.

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I guess most people are referring to Makoto Yonezu, who was credited as the Lead Field Artist on Unleashed (having worked on a variety of Sonic games since SA2), then began working on Nintendo titles starting with Galaxy 2. On Breath of the Wild he is credited as the Senior Lead Landscape Artist, and for Field Art on Odyssey.

Makoto Yonezu - MobyGames

Game credits, biography, portraits and other game industry information for Makoto Yonezu - MobyGames

www.mobygames.com

 

[Hexa]

Wasn't that basically Colors, Generations and uhh Forces I guess?

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Colors and Forces share being based on the boost formula, but it feels like the mentality behind their design beyond that is really different. Generations is the same as Unleashed just better so that qualifies too in terms of game play. I want the same style to the world and such as Unleashed too though which none of them have.

 

[Gevurztraminer]

Definitely agree OP. I listen to the OST all the time still, such variety and atmosphere in them. I haven't played many 3D Sonic games though, really only spent significant time with Generations (it counts) and Unleashed actually, but everything after Unleashed really didn't seem to have any true effort behind it.

 

[Overflow]

It was honestly such a delight to play and experience as a kid after being dumbfouded by '06. Unleashed cemented my love for the Sonic franchise. You're right OP, you can tell there was a lot of heart and soul poured into this game - even with such a short dev time.

 

[Deleted member 71]

I guess most people are referring to Makoto Yonezu, who was credited as the Lead Field Artist on Unleashed (having worked on a variety of Sonic games since SA2), then began working on Nintendo titles starting with Galaxy 2. On Breath of the Wild he is credited as the Senior Lead Landscape Artist, and for Field Art on Odyssey.

Makoto Yonezu - MobyGames

Game credits, biography, portraits and other game industry information for Makoto Yonezu - MobyGames

www.mobygames.com

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Actually found a post when googling that lists seven employees during the Unleashed era who now work at Nintendo:

The reason is simple. Sonic Team lost most of their talent and has to rely to on contract work and new staff.
People who are praising Super Mario Odyssey and Galaxy 2 are by extension praising Sonic Team.

Just some examples of Sonic Unleashed / Generations staff that in time jumped ship to Nintendo:

Tetsuya Kobayashi (Production Manager Sonic Unleashed - Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Course Design)
Makoto Yonezu (lead field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Planet designer on Galaxy 2 - lead landscape artist on Zelda BOTW)
Daisuke Amakawa (field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Character modeling for Zelda BOTW)
Hideaki Hakozaki (field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Producer Xenoblade Chronicles X)
Keihan Fujii (field artist Sonic Unleashed - Landscape Modeling Zelda BOTW)
Ryoichi Yamagishi (field artist Sonic Generations - Course Design Mario Kart 8: Deluxe)
Masahiro Ukai (Programmer Sonic Generations - Programmer Xenoblade Chronicles 2)


There's a clear pattern here as well. It usually goes like:
-> Sonic game -> Mario & Sonic Olympics -> Nintendo
-> Sonic game -> random contract work -> Nintendo

SEGA doesn't seem to always have large scale Sonic projects in production so staff moves on after finishing the game. Usually within the company itself (say from Sonic to Yakuza or from Sonic on console to a mobile Sonic game or Puyo Puyo).
I imagine that for projects like the new Valkyria Chronicles they also pick the best staff from the different teams to form a new project team.
As Nintendo is heavily expanding and investing (and between Nintendo EPD, Nintendo EPD Tokyo and Monolith Software has dozens of large scale projects in production at any given time) people simply move on to work on Mario and Zelda games.

So if you think a planet in Galaxy 2 or a challenge in Super Mario Odyssey is inspired by Sonic gameplay it's probably because former Sonic team members have worked on it.
It seems like Sonic Team staff working with Nintendo on Mario & Sonic games has also accelerated this trend in recent years.

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Anyone feel as though the past few 3D Sonic games have lost their soul?

Sonic Mania is a GOTY contender imo. It also wasn't made by Sonic Team lol

www.resetera.com

 

[maximumzero]

For what it's worth, I think is Sonic Unleashed probably objectively the best 3D Sonic game to date.

Sonic Colors is a good time, but there's so much "sidescroller level" padding, and Sonic Generations is fine as well but it's quite literally a rehash of the series' greatest hits.

 

[Prof Bathtub]

Actually found a post when googling that lists seven employees during the Unleashed era who now work at Nintendo:

Anyone feel as though the past few 3D Sonic games have lost their soul?

Sonic Mania is a GOTY contender imo. It also wasn't made by Sonic Team lol

www.resetera.com

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Thanks for the list, I only had familiarity with Yonezu since he was interviewed in the BotW art book.

 

[Mit-]

Just gonna drop this in here. This is the GOAT vocal Sonic track for me. So underrated.

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A lot of talk about Odyssey/Unleashed... This sounds like the Odyssey ending vocal theme lol. At least in the sense of inspiring, anime OP music:



Also yes, Unleashed rules and remains one of my favorite Sonic games, and like, top 2 soundtrack in the series for me.

 

[Chumunga64]

Nintendo snatched up a lot of the people who developed Sonic Unleashed. You can see a lot of similar names in the credits for Unleashed and Odyssey.

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holy shit, I knew forces had zero people working on it but can you provide proof that nintendo took talent from unleashed? not doubting you, I just want to see it for myself

 

[Deleted member 71]

Thanks for the list, I only had familiarity with Yonezu since he was interviewed in the BotW art book.

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No worries! I was curious myself as I knew nothing about it until I read this thread.

 

[Deleted member 224]

Unleashed Wii has longer werehog but also better Sanic stages. The bad parts of PS360 outweigh the bad parts of Wii. There's one pretty solid 3D game there.

Colors is the unmitigated hit of the 3D Sonic games from that generation in my opinion. It's the only one I enjoy playing anymore.

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Nah, day stages in the Wii version are just boring. The Wii/Ps2 version also lacks a ton of the heart and charm of the HD version. Worse animations, multiple cut stages, no hub world ( fine in and of itself, but replacing them with static images and text...).

The only thing the Wii version has on the HD version is that there's no medals to collect. But the 2 largest issues are longer werehog stages and multiple high quality stages from the HD version being cut. The second issue is made worse by the fact that the missing stages are referenced in the Wii version.

 

[Ouroboros]

I loved loved loved Sonic Unleashed. I still play it (both types of gameplay) from time to time.

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

Nah, day stages in the Wii version are just boring. The Wii/Ps2 version also lacks a ton of the heart and charm of the HD version. Worse animations, multiple cut stages, no hub world ( fine in and of itself, but replacing them with static images and text...).

The only thing the Wii version has on the HD version is that there's no medals to collect. But the 2 largest issues are longer werehog stages and multiple high quality stages from the HD version were cut.

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My jaw dropped in disbelief when I realised there was no Empire City stage. So disappointing I loved that in the HD version. Especially because of that goddamn music.

Can we just talk about how amazing the soundtrack in Unleashed is?