Sonic Unleashed

E3 2008 Preview

In attempt to return the Sonic franchise back to its former glory, the Sonic Team at Sega are now more focused than ever in delivering a quality experience.

The story unfolds around Eggman trapping Sonic with a new ray weapon which corrupts the Chaos Emeralds Sonic used to go Super Sonic and transforms him into a werehog at night. Although it may be a new idea for the Sonic franchise, the Sonic Team is attempting to slow down the gameplay in portions to allow Sonic to be an action-platformer in particular instances.

Sonic’s quest in Sonic Unleashed is to return the world to normal by finding all the Chaos Emeralds and fixing them. When Sonic transforms into the werehog at night, he’ll lose his speed and agility, but will gain strength and elasticity.

The werehog portions of the game were slowed down dramatically. Sonic is able to smash his enemies and the environment around him to advance through the level. Sonic can also stretch his arms to about five to eight feet to grab a hold of a ledge when he’s in werehog form.

Luckily, the morning gameplay of Sonic Unleashed will primarily consist of two modes: 2D side-scrolling and third-person stages that follow behind Sonic. The 2D side-scrolling have been rendered with 3D graphics and are gorgeous when they are in play. The third-person perspective parts aren’t as near entertaining as the 2D side-scrolling portions, but at least they do look better than recent Sonic titles that have failed to recapture the essence of the game.

In particular, the speed has been retained during the morning stages which should please fans that are iffy on the incorporation of platforming night stages. When running through the levels, Sonic blazes through with elegance and will have to attack enemies that are set before him on his path to the end of the level.

There’ll be nine levels in the game which happen to be based on real-world locations. One location they showed towards the end of the demonstration was a level that had Sonic running across the Great Wall of China. The level was magnificent looking with color and beauty that other platformers should be jealous of.

Returning characters include Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Amy Rose, Doctor Eggman and others from Sonic’s cast of friends and foes.

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