Lukewarm Response to Unleashed's Unveiling

Though most of the Sonic community already knew there was something down the pipeline from the leaked screen grabs and video of many days ago (Hell, we even had a commentary on it before the official announcement), activity on prominent message boards spiked today in light of Sega’s official word on the matter.

Many members of prominent Sonic centric message boards expressed hope at the pending release. Still, there is some concern about the role of Sonic’s alter ego, commonly dubbed Were-Sonic, and that wasn’t addressed specifically in Sega’s press release today.
The Sonic Fan Games HQ board had some colorful comments. Shadowgoten wrote:

I’m going to stay on the fence on this one until I see more, this 2D camera intrigues me, for now it seems like it doesn’t show enough for how fast sonic is moving, I could be wrong, It’d be nice if there was maybe an indicator on what was coming up ahead or something, but it’s looking to be a good idea.

Also there, SonicProject wrote:

I hope they really ironed out a lot of the bugs on this engine they have supposedly been working on for three years. Though, you’ve got to wonder if this engine was built from scratch or if they’ve been building off the same stuff they used for Sonic 2006 and S&TSR. The camera system certainly seems to be inspired by S&TSR…

This isn’t to say there’s some real concern out there about how Unleashed will pan out. The SFGHQ board also has these comments from Serephim:

There have been enough 3D games now for Sonic Team to EFFICIENTLY recreate the 3D sonic engine to be able to recreate the 2D genesis momentum-based movement and gameplay. There is no reason Super Mario 64 should still have a more solid gameplay grasping feel than the current Sonic Games do.
Sonic Team needs to hire a GOOD lead programmer and a GOOD designer and a GOOD writer and rework everything they are doing, because I’m not impressed with their new engine from the sheer looks of it. Its like every mechanic they have created has been simplified to the point of not working anymore.
Take Grinding for example. It has went from being a Gimmick to an every level necessity, ALSO simplified beyond reason. In SA2, it was a very neat gimmick and although was kind of wonky, it definitely felt more involved in gameplay. You at least actually had to CREATE SPEED and hit a grind before using the rail. In heroes they simplified it, and took out the need to stay balanced, and they also took out the need to create speed before jumping on, since you could create it when you were grinding. Shadow the Hedgehog completely destroyed everything except jumping on and spamming the action button to reach sound-speed from absolutely nowhere. Sonic 2k6 and SatSR just Fist-fucked the entire gimmick, gifting you with invisible free velocity just by jumping on the damn thing.
I don’t see any evolution of anything. Rush was neat for what it was, and i enjoyed it, but i don’t want to see that in a game trying to go back to “classical gameplay”, because Classical Gameplay did not involve holding Right + Dash button and running through all the enemies, loops, springs and “gimmicks” in your path.

Over on the Sonic Stadium message board, Colonel Arioch expressed some different concerns:

I wished they would show some vids of Wolf Sonic. That way, I’ll be able to throw in my two cents to see how Wolf Sonic will play out in the game. On the other note, I just want to see how Knuckles, and Tails are going to play out in this as well. I don’t want them to be background characters.

And on the Green Hill Zone boards, DarcAttack noted:

This game looks like either you have to memorize every cue point meticulously (with a real slim margin for error) or you just hold right and watch Sonic do cool (expletive).
I’m also not sure I like this Rush-gauge thing. It almost feels like these obstacles that made sense in the games as ways to control Sonic’s unruly speed and strike balance in the gameplay are now given a quick and easy fix so you can dash to the goal ring with nary a flinch. Granted, they’ll infuriate us with cheap deathtraps towards the end of the game, but I’ll bet anyone would be able to sleepwalk through whatever the first level is. I’m liking the 3D stretches I see, but they’re not played the way I’d want to play them. And I know. It’s a free country. I can forego the dashing if I want. But we all know in order to get the A ranks to see the “true ending”, I’ll need to blast through those spike balls instead of dodging them agilely, like I would in the classics.

What do you think? We have a comments box below. We’d love to hear from you.