Zero Punctuation: Sonic Unleashed

[Radelaide]

Something gives me the impression that Yahtzee doesn't like this game. I made the mistake of buying a Sonic game on the xbox. The one where you have to swtich between characters... Never again. BRING BACK ORIGINAL SONIC!

 

[SuperGoomba64]

And if this wasn't enough I think they're working on ANOTHER ONE, but in this there are...swords...
Oh, and King Arthur is evil and the leader of the Black Knights...yeah...

I figured before too long Sonic's going to pilot mechs and have rechargeable shields.

I wish everyone would shut the hell up about that. It's a sequel to Secret Rings that will supposedly fix the problems of it. It's also the second game in the story book series and it's in midevil times. Just because he has a sword doesn't mean he'll be slow and have to stop and start dueling during it or something. Plus Mario does it all the god damn time and no one cares that he does it...ugh, damn Sonic fandom...it's messing with my logic and reasoning.

Notice I mentioned nothing of slowness or dueling (-_-

Anyways, I'm just saying it seems kinda strange that one day at Sega Headquarters, they'd suddenly decide to give Sonic the ability to become a cross between a werewolf and Mr. Fantastic. Then ship him straight to medievil times to take up swordsmanship (why he even needs a sword is beyond me though, when he can take down skyscraper-sized robots anyways).

Also I'd like to bring up Sega Superstar *Tennis*...do I sense a trend?

Well you have to remember, Mario is guilty of way more of this way before Sonic did it. And if you think about it, how the hell did they come up with a blue spiky humanoid that has red shoes, can run at the speed of sound, has a villain who is a fat evil genius with a big mustache and a hover mobile and takes over the place and builds a bunch of robots use his animal friend inside of them for their power? It's staggering really, especially how it came out to be a hedgehog. Basically I'm saying it's not too fantastic. Maybe he got the idea from Ristar and.....all I can come up with is drugs. I think that's how Sonic came to be too...

Not to mention evil turtles, plants that only grow in pipes, walking mushrooms, along with a fireball shooting plumber...some seriously strange stuff if you think about it.

Anyways I'm not too worried about the trend as long as it doesn't evolve into Master Chief playing soccer with Duke Nukem...

 

[Dr.Doctor]

Wow.........I don't even like Sonic and I feel like I've been physically hurt.

Yathzee that is aLOT of anger you've got there.

 

[Super Racer Z]

... EDIT:^^ Hey buddy, chill out man! I can see you're a Sonic fanboy. Here's my advise, just ignore opinions. If you like the game, fine, more power to ya, but don't start stressing yourself over it...

I'd rather be known as a fan. I know a bad game when I see it, I don't try to get every game, and I play lots of other games. I just like the story and characters and all of that, plus he was one of my first just for fun games (my first was a preschool game on the computer if I remember correctly). That, and I picture fanboys as lifeless crazy people who will blindly buy everything with their idle's name on it and love it no matter what.

P.S. I think it's also my love for speed, as I like car games and cars. But what really makes me think it is that I love karting, and kart racing at 20 mph is as good (better, no, must think equal, as karting cost so god damn much...) as Sonic, although way more freaking expensive...that, and scraping the wall gives you one tough kick (And almost cost me my lead on the last lap. I did two races and won both...hehe).

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I probably shouldn't but I'm gonna ignore the last few pages and just jump right into here before I forget what I was gonna say.

First off, I really enjoyed this review and also noticed that Yahztee seemed unusually angry at the game. However, I actually understand his sentiment, because like him, I think that games which try too hard to be difficult (and often resemble horrible romhacks like he mentioned) just aren't what gaming in general needs. If the hardcore little kiddies wanna get jazzed up about that sorta thing, go play/make another version of Kaizo Mario or Metroid Redesign.

Secondly, I'm curious as to why Yahztee went (yet again) for a Wii version of a game that's on multiple consoles. Didn't his Force Unleashed review teach him to research the games first? I've heard many people talk about how Sonic on the Wii was designed by a different company altogether (the one that makes the horrible GBA and DS ones) and that Sonic Team was involved in the Sony and Microsoft versions.

I'm not sure which version of the game I wanna try. I really don't want anything to do with the Wii Version after Secret Rings scarred me for life on Sonic games for the Wii (I'm still hoping that Black Knight will be better), and so I'm considering getting the PS2 version. Maybe Yahztee just picked the worst version. *shrug*

EDIT: Super Goomba and Super Racer bring up an interesting point. Mario does get away with a lot of shit (I personally can't stand most of his newer games save for the RPGs), and I am not surprised to see that Sega (who used to compete with Nintendo) is trying to mimic some of their old adversary's ideas for their own mascot. And just like Mario, Sonic has been suffering a fair deal the last 6 or 7 years.

 

[John Stalvern]

I liked the monologue at the end.
Maybe it's time I changed my avatar to Mario.

 

[Nick_Bball]

How come he hasn't reviewed any PS3 titles yet? I want to see a Little Big Planet review!
Or at least Resistance 2.

 

[iblis666]

sonic games make me sad i used to love them so much but they just got crappy after a while

now im off to watch Gamedamage

 

[51gunner]

Anyways I'm not too worried about the trend as long as it doesn't evolve into Master Chief playing soccer with Duke Nukem...

That'd mean that Duke Nukem Forever's come out then. Hehehe.

Anyways, about poor Sonic: it's impossible to have a really 'great' game in 3D. Either:
- It's really, really fast, and you hurtle into spike pits/obstacles without a hope in hell of avoiding them.
- It's not that fast, and then gets ragged on hard for not playing like a sonic game 'should', I.E. fast:
- It's not about Sonic running around at all, instead he's... doing something else. So then it gets righteously ripped for an completely unexpected genre change.

The best thing they could do with the inexplicably blue hedgehog at this point is pull the same trick that Bionic Commando: Rearmed did. Take an old game, reskin it to new graphics without messing around in that third dimension, and release it not as it's own $60 package, but more like a $20 download.

Oh yeah, and about this review? Brutal. That's the harshest I've ever seen a ZP get, and I know he's said more favorable things about some truly AWFUL games, so this one must just take the cake of bad.

 

[Cinder Block of Oppression]

I'm surprised. With all the games out there that everyone didn't expect to suck (and don't) that you chose one that gleamed with shit that could be seen from a mile away. Still funny, though.

 

[Tsumi91]

I loved Adventure 2:Battle. I played it for the Cube, I beat the whole thing with all the emblems or whatever it was. I clocked a LOT of hours in it, but it was worth it. Brings back many great memories with playing it with some of my friends.

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

That review was pretty brutal, But I have to agree.

 

[Knightangel121]

one of the funniest videos ever, and its commply true, which in tus makes it even funner, oh sorry i mean more fun.

 

[Aerach]

My brother likes the game a lot (360 version, which I hear is far superior to Wii version), although he is one of those mega sonic obsessives that plays through every level about 50 times in order to get an S rank, then plays through them again.

 

[Proto Cloud]

... EDIT:^^ Hey buddy, chill out man! I can see you're a Sonic fanboy. Here's my advise, just ignore opinions. If you like the game, fine, more power to ya, but don't start stressing yourself over it...

I'd rather be known as a fan. I know a bad game when I see it, I don't try to get every game, and I play lots of other games. I just like the story and characters and all of that, plus he was one of my first just for fun games (my first was a preschool game on the computer if I remember correctly). That, and I picture fanboys as lifeless crazy people who will blindly buy everything with their idle's name on it and love it no matter what.

P.S. I think it's also my love for speed, as I like car games and cars. But what really makes me think it is that I love karting, and kart racing at 20 mph is as good (better, no, must think equal, as karting cost so god damn much...) as Sonic, although way more freaking expensive...that, and scraping the wall gives you one tough kick (And almost cost me my lead on the last lap. I did two races and won both...hehe).

At least we see eye to eye; hey even I used to absolutely love Sonic at one point for most of the same reasons.

 

[crimped]

meh, he hates sonic, wow, ummm, didn't see that one coming. my reason for coming here is fading fast.

 

[Lord_Seth]

I quite liked Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.

Me too...sure, it had some major flaws (like the camera and the gem-hunting levels), but outside of those it was a great game. Heck, even the gem-hunting levels weren't so bad once I got used to them and knew their layout well. And honestly, they improved a lot of things from the first Sonic Adventure. They cut out the HORRIBLE fishing levels and got rid of the annoying "hub world", which were my biggest problems from the original Sonic Adventure.

I'm not sure what I really think of this review. I don't think Yahtzee really went over its flaws as much as he usually does. He just declares the game horrible, lists a few problems, and that's it.

 

[Super Racer Z]

My brother likes the game a lot (360 version, which I hear is far superior to Wii version), although he is one of those mega sonic obsessives that plays through every level about 50 times in order to get an S rank, then plays through them again.

LOL it might just be the fact that the day levels for this game are insanely addicting. I played the 2:40 level in the demo for a total of an hour of gameplay and eventually found tons of shortcuts and also figured out how to sonic drift and boost jump like the spindash jump in SA2 and got 02:04:46 (windmill act 2 I believe). They have for the first time the addictiveness of the classics. I'll give it that.

 

[Xanadu84]

Sonic Rush for the DS proves that there is life in Sonic yet. I have a lot of nostalgia for Sonic, but had given up on the franchise early into there attempts at 3D. But Rush was great. It may be the only good Sonic game this millennium (Havn't played the second Rush game, though apparently it got good reviews). Before you lump this gem into the the rest of the garbage, Sonic Rush was, in fact, a proper, high speed, uncomplicated 2D scroller, and the semi-3d boss battles actually worked. And, I have actually broken out my DS just so I could listen to parts of the soundtrack, broken out the game again entirely for that purpose. Of course, it appears like some other group had more say in the games creation, so I suppose you could just say that the Sonic Team is the problem.