Posted by Bob Mackey
I know, I know; Sega's been using the marketing ploy of "This time we didn't fuck up!" for over half a decade now. But there's something strangely compelling about this new footage of Sonic Unleashed I recently scrounged up from YouTube. Many of the franchise's problems still exist in Unleashed, but the game play looks refreshingly traditional. Check it out:
The clip starts out with a less-than-promising addition: a new shitty friend for Sonic who goes by the name of Chip. There's also about two minutes of cutscenes, when all we really need are two sentences: "You are Sonic. Go fast." But the game play--which resembles the best parts of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2--looks okay, even if it does feature the same sort of cruise control action that's been attached to Sonic since the Dreamcast days. I've always been under the impression that Sonic needs a complete overhaul; his simple transition from 2D to 3D produced a rather empty series of games that don't require much input from the player. But still, we takes what we can gets, and Sonic Unleashed could be much worse.
Of course, I'm going to hold my tongue until the game actually comes out--I won't exactly be surprised if Unleashed needlessly includes multiple game genres and interminable stories about inter-species love. But at least we know that they've gotten one level right! That's all the congratulation my healthy sense of skepticism will allow.
Related Links:
Sonic Bound: After Three Botched Reboots, Sonic the Hedgehog May Finally Get His 3D Due
The Aberration of Sonic
Sonic's Lost Innocence...Sort Of.
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About Bob Mackey
For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's
Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.
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