Sonic Unleashed
Sonic Unleashed is a video game that consists of 15 releases
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Overview
After Sonic the Hedgehog tried to re-invent the Sonic Adventure formula and fell flat on its face, Sega decided to take a step back and think more carefully about the next game in the franchise. Borrowing the more successful elements from Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic Rush, Sonic Unleashed frequently shifts between a classic side-scrolling perspective and a behind-the-back 3D perspective in an attempt to provide the best of both worlds.
Gameplay is split up in to three basic modes: Daytime, Nighttime, and Towns. During the day, players control Sonic the Hedgehog, who is equipped with the Sonic Boost, Quick Step, and Drift abilities. The Sonic Boost instantly accelerates Sonic to maximum speed while simultaneously making him invincible to most attacks. Using the Sonic Boost requires ring energy, gained by picking up rings and destroying enemies. The Quick Step allows Sonic to instantly strafe to the left or right in order to avoid oncoming obstacles. Drifting allows Sonic to handle long, winding curves better. Like all Sonic games, the objective of these levels is to get to the end of the level as quickly as possible while collecting as many rings and destroying as many enemies as possible.
At night, you control Sonic the Werehog. The two main gameplay features of The Werehog are hand-to-hand combat, in similar style to God of War, and platforming more comparable to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. To aid this, the Werehog is equipped with long, stretchy arms that allow him to grab platforms and beat up enemies at a distance. After defeating a certain number of enemies, the Werehog can trigger "Unleash" mode, allowing him to move faster and do more damage for a short period of time. Defeating enemies in either day or night yields experience points like an RPG, and at the end of the level, experience points can be alloted to various skills; for Sonic, you can upgrade his Speed and Ring Energy attributes, while the Werehog can upgrade his Combat, Strength, Health, Unleash and Shield abilities. At the beginning of the game, the Werehog only has two basic combos, but by upgrading his Combat attribute, he can learn over 25 different combos.
In between levels, players are required to visit small Villages and Towns. Towns house NPCs which provide players with optional side missions and shops to buy food from, and eating food will give Sonic more experience points. Located within towns are Entrance Stages, which contain portals leading to the next level called Gaia Gates. To access a Gaia Gate, players are required to have a certain number of Sun or Moon Medals, which are hidden in towns and within levels themselves.
When Super Sonic catches up with the fearful Doctor, Eggman suddenly slumps to his knees and begs the hedgehog to spare him. He swears to change, to reform and stop trying to take over the world. Sonic is a little taken aback at the whole situation; Eggman has never asked for mercy before. This was, unfortunately, exactly the reaction Doctor Eggman was looking for. Before Sonic can react, Eggman pushes a button mounted on a nearby console. Large metal prongs raise out of the floor, and suddenly, Super Sonic finds himself trapped. As the machine whirrs to life, Sonic is paralyzed and the seven Chaos Emeralds are forcibly extracted from him, de-energizing his Super Sonic form. Laughing madly, Eggman pushes another button on the console, triggering his stronghold's true function: A massive laser cannon. With the power of the Chaos Emeralds, the cannon fires directly at the planet below, piercing it straight to the core. As the planet shatters in to fragments from the force of the blow, a mysterious, ethereal creature raises from the depths. Luring Sonic here and releasing whatever was trapped inside the planet was part of Eggman's plan all along.
Sonic himself is not doing too good, though. Having never been forced out of Super Sonic like that before, his body transforms in a different way; he grows massive claws, sharp teeth and long, shaggy hair. Before Sonic can truly come to his senses as to what is happening, Eggman gleefully ejects him out of the airlock to the ruined planet below, confident that he has finally won the day. As the transformed Sonic plummets to his death from space, he is struck by a strange being that slows his descent enough to save his life. Now in the country of Apotos, Sonic must solve the mystery of his transformation, figure out what the being was that struck him, and re-unite the planet once again!
Soundtrack
Tomoya Ohtani, one of the soundtrack artists from Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Rush Adventure returns as lead composer on the soundtrack for this game along with Sonic musicial veterans Kenichi Tokoi, Fumie Kumatani, Hideaki Kobayashi, Takahito Eguchi, and Mariko Nanba. Orchestrated tracks for the game were performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. The game contains two vocal tracks:
Hedgehog Engine
Purported to be in development since 2005, Sonic Unleashed's "Hedgehog Engine" is a multi-purpose game engine developed by Sega as an alternative to engines like Unreal Engine 3, idTech5 and The Source Engine. The big feature that separates the Hedgehog Engine from the others is its ability to render Global Illumination. Global Illumination is the act of colored light reflecting off other objects in order to give an environment warmer, more natural lighting. Reportedly, calculating Global Illumination data for one level in Sonic Unleashed would take a rendering farm of 100 PCs an average of 2-3 days.
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Sonic Unleashed Adabat Trailer
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Sonic Unleashed is the latest entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series of platformers. It combines 2D and 3D gameplay, as well as conventional Sonic "speed levels" and slower paced Werehog sections.
Overview
After Sonic the Hedgehog tried to re-invent the Sonic Adventure formula and fell flat on its face, Sega decided to take a step back and think more carefully about the next game in the franchise. Borrowing the more successful elements from Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic Rush, Sonic Unleashed frequently shifts between a classic side-scrolling perspective and a behind-the-back 3D perspective in an attempt to provide the best of both worlds. Gameplay is split up in to three basic modes: Daytime, Nighttime, and Towns. During the day, players control Sonic the Hedgehog, who is equipped with the Sonic Boost, Quick Step, and Drift abilities. The Sonic Boost instantly accelerates Sonic to maximum speed while simultaneously making him invincible to most attacks. Using the Sonic Boost requires ring energy, gained by picking up rings and destroying enemies. The Quick Step allows Sonic to instantly strafe to the left or right in order to avoid oncoming obstacles. Drifting allows Sonic to handle long, winding curves better. Like all Sonic games, the objective of these levels is to get to the end of the level as quickly as possible while collecting as many rings and destroying as many enemies as possible.
At night, you control Sonic the Werehog. The two main gameplay features of The Werehog are hand-to-hand combat, in similar style to God of War, and platforming more comparable to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. To aid this, the Werehog is equipped with long, stretchy arms that allow him to grab platforms and beat up enemies at a distance. After defeating a certain number of enemies, the Werehog can trigger "Unleash" mode, allowing him to move faster and do more damage for a short period of time. Defeating enemies in either day or night yields experience points like an RPG, and at the end of the level, experience points can be alloted to various skills; for Sonic, you can upgrade his Speed and Ring Energy attributes, while the Werehog can upgrade his Combat, Strength, Health, Unleash and Shield abilities. At the beginning of the game, the Werehog only has two basic combos, but by upgrading his Combat attribute, he can learn over 25 different combos.
In between levels, players are required to visit small Villages and Towns. Towns house NPCs which provide players with optional side missions and shops to buy food from, and eating food will give Sonic more experience points. Located within towns are Entrance Stages, which contain portals leading to the next level called Gaia Gates. To access a Gaia Gate, players are required to have a certain number of Sun or Moon Medals, which are hidden in towns and within levels themselves.
Story
It seemed like another routine assault on Doctor Eggman's latest orbital space station: a showdown with a couple hundred robots, and a fight to the death with the Doctor himself in a giant mechanized suit of armor. As Sonic transforms in to his Super Sonic state to finish the job, Eggman flees the scene, retreating to his final stronghold. Routine, right?When Super Sonic catches up with the fearful Doctor, Eggman suddenly slumps to his knees and begs the hedgehog to spare him. He swears to change, to reform and stop trying to take over the world. Sonic is a little taken aback at the whole situation; Eggman has never asked for mercy before. This was, unfortunately, exactly the reaction Doctor Eggman was looking for. Before Sonic can react, Eggman pushes a button mounted on a nearby console. Large metal prongs raise out of the floor, and suddenly, Super Sonic finds himself trapped. As the machine whirrs to life, Sonic is paralyzed and the seven Chaos Emeralds are forcibly extracted from him, de-energizing his Super Sonic form. Laughing madly, Eggman pushes another button on the console, triggering his stronghold's true function: A massive laser cannon. With the power of the Chaos Emeralds, the cannon fires directly at the planet below, piercing it straight to the core. As the planet shatters in to fragments from the force of the blow, a mysterious, ethereal creature raises from the depths. Luring Sonic here and releasing whatever was trapped inside the planet was part of Eggman's plan all along.
Behold... THE WEREHOG!
Locations
- Level: Windmill Isle
- Based on Mykonos, Greece
Apotos
Spagonia
- Level: Rooftop Run
- Based on France and Europe
Mazuri
- Level: Savannah Citadel
- Based on Northern Africa
Chun-Nan
- Level: Dragon Road
- Based on China
Holoska
- Level: Cool Edge
- Based on Alaska and the Artic Circle
Shamar
- Level: Arid Sands
- Based on the ruins of Petra, located in Southeast Asia.
Empire City
- Level: Skyscraper Scamper
- Based on New York City, USA
Abadat
- Level: Jungle Joyride
- Based on Thailand
Soundtrack
Tomoya Ohtani, one of the soundtrack artists from Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Rush Adventure returns as lead composer on the soundtrack for this game along with Sonic musicial veterans Kenichi Tokoi, Fumie Kumatani, Hideaki Kobayashi, Takahito Eguchi, and Mariko Nanba. Orchestrated tracks for the game were performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. The game contains two vocal tracks:- "Endless Possibility" by Tomoya Ohtani, featuring vocals by Jaret Reddick of the band Bowling for Soup
- "Dear My Friend" by Mariko Nanba, performed by Brent Cash, with lyrics by Candie Y
Hedgehog Engine
The Hedgehog Engine features some great scenes.
Trivia
- Early builds of the game called all the levels in the game based on their real-world equivilants. For example, Apotos was listed as Mykonos, Greece.
- The Daytime versions of levels in the Wii version were made by Dimps, the company responsible for the Sonic Rush and Sonic Advance games.
- Though towns are physical locations you explore on-foot in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions, towns in the Wii version are simply a series of static menu screens. Entrance stages are missing entirely.
- The Japanese version of Sonic Unleashed is called "Sonic World Adventure". The game is nearly identical, except for one change: Mazuri's level, "Savannah Citadel" is renamed to "Clay Castle".
- On the North American box for the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed, an icon is listed for "Leaderboards". Sonic Unleashed contains no leaderboards, and all other versions of the game replace this icon with one for "Content Download".
- The music for "Savannah Citadel" during the day is actually a remix of a tune from Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System used during the credits sequence of the game.
- Similarly, the orchestral song titled "The World Adventure" (one of the main theme songs of the game) contains numerous similarities to the music used for Angel Island Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
- In the "Town" for the Final Location in the game (Eggmanland), you can find and talk to three of Dr. Eggman's Guard Robots, the Model Numbers of which are references to various Sonic games throughout the years: EF-MD1991, EF-DC1998 and EF-XB2006. EF-MD1991 is a reference to the release of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive in 1991, EF-DC1998 being a reference to the release of Sonic Adventure on the Sega Dreamcast in 1998, and EF-XB2006 referencing SONIC the Hedgehog on the Xbox 360/PS3 in 2006.
- Once you talk to the three Guard Robots in Eggmanland, their character profiles are added to the game's Encyclopedia. EF-XB2006's character profile describes him as "lacking real world experience", no doubt a reference to SONIC the Hedgehog (2006)'s extremely poor critical reception. In similar fashion, EF-DC1998's description says that he was "Once a model mainstay of the Egg Fighter Force" but he has grown tired of working and now plays hookie to avoid his duties. This is potentially a reference to the fact that, prior to Sonic Unleashed, most 3D Sonic games were heavily based off of the ground work established by Sonic Adventure in 1998.
| Game Name | Sonic Unleashed |
| Platform(s) | |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Developer(s) | |
| Genres |
Add a new genre
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| Themes | |
| Original US Release |
Nov. 18, 2008
need a fuzzy date? |
| Original US Release |
Q4 2008 know the real date? |
| Aliases | |
| OFLC |
OFLC: G
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| CERO |
CERO: A
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| ESRB |
ESRB: E10+
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| PEGI |
PEGI: 7+
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List of Sonic Unleashed Trophies/Achievements
A quick list of all the Trophies and Achievements for Sonic Unleashed
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