Sonic Unleashed

Sonic Unleashed is a multi-format title and was released with great fanfare on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but proved to be something of a disaster, so we weren’t exactly optimistic about Sonic Unleashed on the Wii, especially since Wii ports fare poorly, often having received the least attention in production and suffered from developer’s attempts to shoe-horn ‘innovative’ uses of the Wii controls into a game where they just don’t fit.

For a change, though, the Wii is a perfect home for Sonic Unleashed. Gone are the unnecessary adventure trappings of the Xbox 360 and PS3 editions, these were overly long and boring sections where you wandered around towns having mind-numbing conversations with dull characters. On the Wii it’s much quicker to get into the action. 

You don’t mess about swapping between night and day, either. One of Sonic Unleashed’s gimmicks is the ‘werehog’, an evil werewolf version of Sonic who appears at night, but rather than having to switch to that mode at the right point it just occurs naturally as the game progresses. The werehog sections also benefit from much-improved controls making combat far more enjoyable as you shake the Wii remote and nunchuk to attack. Level design is also far better, having been retooled to suit the camera that stays behind Sonic through the whole game.

So, it’s much better than the Xbox and Playstation iterations, that’s for certain, but Sonic Unleashed isn’t perfect. While the floaty controls are fine for normal running and jumping, there are some occasionally tough sections where Sonic has to be manoeuvred with more precision, and this can prove frustrating. And despite the game having much of its fat cut away, with far less of the talking and much more running and spinning, there’s still a lot of unnecessary bloat, particularly the werehog sections which although improved still feel like a pointless addition.

Verdict 69%

Far better than the other versions, Sonic Unleashed is a fast and furious action platformer that occasionally stumbles into pointless adventure and brawling.