The Review of Unleashed -PS3 vr-
Alright so it took me like....almost a month and a half to beat this game.
I did ran into a few cliffs, skydived to my doom and drowned a lot.......>_> almost every time really orz||||
So here's the summary of my thoughts and opinion on Unleashed on the PS3.
I'll input a small comparison of the Wii vs PS3 just for comparison purposes.
There will be a bits and pieces of spoilers here and there so just a warning before you click on the individual LJ cut sections to read it.
-Also images with spoiler images from the game-
Sonic the Hedgehog in Unleashed:
Fastest thing alive? You betcha. And now he go much faster with the Hedgehog Engine. Alright so Day Time stages like everyone says, is honestly THE BEST PART of a Sonic game. Who doesn't like to once fill up the Ring and Speed guage and press the Boost button to go super fast using the power of the Hedgehog Engine? I know I did but there is a downside of all that speed. The downside is you can't really speed run through most stages blindly without knowing what you're getting at. Since most of it you can only see so far. So watch out where you're speeding through otherwise fly off not to your next adventure but to your doom.
Sonic the Werehog in Unleashed: Er...slowest hog on two but a bit faster on four??? ^^; Weird. Freaky. A bit of both? Well, yea. So I heard you all liek mudkip from everyone, complained like a soiled baby without a clean lotion butt and diaper. Too bad for you guys but I actually had a lot fun playing as Werehog Sonic for his night time stages. Yeah so Sonic turns into his other forms, loses his trademark Sonic speed. But instead to make up the lost of speed he gains power and stretchy limbs. Sure the controls, on both Wii and PS3 took a bit to get used to but the end result of maximizing the Werehog's ability is purely a shear powerhouse of awesomeness. If you can understand Street Fighter or fighting games combo than it should be a piece of cake to initiate them. Sides.....it's only for this one game only so stop complaining you cry babies.
World:
The World menu is the same for both PS3 and Wii. In the Wii vr, you an access your collections easily while on the PS3, you HAVE to go to Prof. Pickles' lab on Spagonia or at Shamar.
Stages:
We all admit it. The scenic stages are amazing and beautiful for Sonic games. Now only if Sega can emphasize on both scene and better gameplay instead of one and not the other. Okay so compare to the Wii vr from my short outline of the game before, the stages are different in the PS3 vr. In the Wii, you can initiate the Spin Dash once the count down hits 3. So far for the PS3, haven't been able to initiate it.
Hub World:
Luckily there are less people in this game and thank god they are stationed to the ground. I hate running into them and the area isn't that quite big either so it's easy run away compare to Sonic 2k6. While on the Wii, you just move your Wii mote around to talk and into the stages. Also to note, the Wii version have each individual temples while the PS3 don't.
Side Missions are the Challenges:
They're short missions and long ones but in the end of it all it's also VERY frustrating and challenging too. Short side missions tends to be in stages you been before; like ACT 1. But you're placed mostly at a different checkpoint of the stages and the game developers adds a few things in the stage to make it challenging and of course frustrating. There are also Townsfolk asking to do simple missions for them. While the Chili Hotdog stand which ARE longer missions have different set trials for both Sonic and his Werehog form; from Time Attack Trials (Sonic and Werehog), Rings Gathering Trials, Enemy Trials and No Healing Trials (Werehog only). In most cases, it's highly suggested to try to run through the stages a few times to get the gist of it before doing any of the Hot Dog stand trials. There are easy ones from the beginning point of the game but as you proceeds to other continents, the trials gets harder. In my case, I just give up for now and continue it later, much later.......kind of at a point where I don't remember the controls. XD;
Power up Experience Points.
There is also the power-ups just like Sonic and the Secret Rings vr for both Wii and the PS3. You basically have to beat up enemies, getting the floating yellow diamonds from Dark Gaia's minions or Eggman's bots to level up both Sonic's Speed Gauge and Ring Energy along with Werehog's Unleashed, life, shield, skills and a few others to the max. You also need to know HOW to share among both Sonic and his Werehog forms. Imo, Sonic's two levels are easy to power up while Werehog takes a while more time to level up.
Comparably to the Wii, Sonic for his day time stages doesn't need level ups but while the Werehog form you do. In the Wii, it does it for you automatically so you don't need to share it w/ Sonic's Hedgehog form. You pick up the necessary skills along the way and each skills comes with a tutorial stage for you to practice on.
The PS3 vr, you just pick it up as you travel from one continent to the next and read the tutorial Chip provides after receiving the upgrades. Simple as that. That's only for Sonic. The Werehog vr doesn't have tutorials stages so you have to go to the menu option to see the list of different set of combos you just learn after leveling up or forgotten.
While hopping from one Continent to the next, you can also buy food to also gain experience points (which again you share among your two forms) and also give food to Chip ( the little flying chocolate eating Chihuahua with a mo-hawk) to gain the BFFs status trohpy and recieve silly yet sometime hilarious comments about the food, on Sonic, Eggman, Townsfolk's, and the place you're at.
C-C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!!!
LOL~ always wanted to say that but I'm not always given the best opportunity to use it. There are a list of combos for the Werehog if you know how to initiate them. Some people have harder times while some don't. >_> I don't. I'm known to be the random button smasher in my house so that doesn't apply to me nor do I care if I didn't initiate it right. As long I beat the enemy fast that's all it matter. Although playing as Sonic, the most excruciating and crucial part of the game if you need to get to the other side of the ACT level. The button combo consist of pressing square, triangle, circle, R1, L1 & X in any of the random orders it displays on screen. If you don't pay attention and press the wrong button, you fall to your doom resulting to a restart or a Game Over if you were on your last lives. The most button combos that's initiated is on the final stage: Eggman Land. I think it was about like 4 - 6 different times button combos were initiated in that stage for Sonic alone while a few for the Werehog while up against The Egg Dragoon.
Boss Fights:
Some are easy. Some are hard. In system-wise, the hardest is the PS3 vr. while I had a lot more fun time beating the final boss in the Wii vr.
The final boss on the PS3; Dark Gaia vs Gaia Colossus is really....the hardest and a pain in the rear. And I think it was totally unnecessary. You have to boost your way to get to Dark Gaia and the boost is ridiculously slow.....even a turtle can crawl faster than Gaia Colossus' boost. Like my friend Ray said to me earlier: It's like driving a 50 ton pile of brick. Dark Gaia, provided A LOT of challenges; dodging volcanic rocks being thrown at you while avoiding DG's charged laser which was honestly close to impossible to dodge. He follows you while charging so no matter how you calculate the timing you will still get hit nonetheless. Finally hitting the milestone for the perfect form of Perfect Dark Gaia he was actually a lot easy. You would kind of expect it to be harder than Dark Gaia's form but it's actually the opposite. I died a few times only because I keep ramming into rocks and stupid PDG charged a laser at me and again hurling rocks while I try to destroy the shield created by the snakes that surrounds him.
While on the Wii for the first boss fight, you initiate something similar to the Nintendo Punch Out game and punch your way til you deplete a good portion of DG's life. Than after, you take control of Sonic and while in similarity to the PS3, you run through the stages to hit DG's eyes but the slight difference is that the PS3 vr is TIMED. I have 15 seconds each for 3 eyes. The Wii doesn't.
Final Fight on the Wii: Gaia Colossus doesn't join in the final fight against PDG like in the PS3 vr does other than Super Sonic collecting rings to stay alive going up, down left, right and avoid PDG's slash by staying in the middle. It's pretty trifled cause it's difficult to maneuver S.Sonic using the Wii mote while on the PS3 I had a more easier time to move Sonic around. Once you got a homing on one of Dark Gaia's eyes depending on whether you're on his left or right you jerk the Wii-mote and S.Sonic will make a dash boost toward one of the eye. While you try to make the attack you also have to worry about avoiding any flying rocks toward you. If you get hit you lose rings and have to restart over. Plus, after you get hit, rings deplete pretty fast if you don't hurry to replenish it.
On the PS3, you gather the rings while you (as S.Sonic) make the boost toward DPG and after that, you're stuck with whatever rings you have. Tip: I learned that using boost near the Rings will help gather rings faster and also help fill up your health bar since you pretty much start with only 40% of HP. So you will need to get at least 95 - 85% of HP if you know you'll bound to be running into floating boulders and lasered by PDG.
Glitches? & Frame Rate problem?
I've actually encountered a few glitches while playing on the PS3 vr of Unleashed but none for the Wii. There was a few times which I think only happen a lot of time playing Chun Nan level and Eggman Land where after I've (yet again) fallen or spiked to my death (spiked myself mostly in Eggmanland) the music would not play the level's theme music while I get just only the SFX or it wouldn't play unless I was boosting. And yes, I had to die in order to get the music running normal again.
Another which only happened twice was the console freezing in the middle of the game. >_> thanx goodness it wasn't one of the important Acts or boss' levels. I would cry if it did. I don't want to restart over if I'm half way to the goal. But once it did, it resulted me into restarting the system and game altogether. Although I saw a youtube video from a 360 owner for the Unleashed, Sonic was glitched into one of the bridge in Chun Nan. He wasn't able to get out so he had to restart the game. ^^; boy do I feel sorry for him.
As for the frame rate, I had some frame rate lagging problem in Eggman Land. And this only happened AFTER beating the game where I can just walk into Eggman Land to purchase Eggman Land's variety of nasty food, videos, souvenirs, and do the Hot Dog stand mission. Other than the frame rate lagging problem and turned off level theme music, everything else is fine.
Game Collections:
Art book: Gotta collect or buy the illustrations just to see the beautiful art that Sega art team did.
Wii vr: It fills the entire screen
PS3 vr: It fills about 75% est of the screen.
On the PS3 vr of Unleashed, I had a much better time in collecting the artbooks and other items than on the Wii. I probably collected about less than 50% in items compared to the PS3 vr where I collected all Souvenirs and missed a few tracks and illustrations. So I pretty much had about 85% 55% into the collections.
Music Trax:
No rock music this time around so just like Sonic 2k6 everything is instrumented by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. A lot of the music do make me feel I'm in Sunny Italy, Oasis Malaysia, Jazzy New York City, Savannah Africa, Chilly Alaska or North or South Pole, Romance in France, and Festive China village. XD Eggman Land not included, it just reminds me of Eggman Land itself. As not everyone knows, Sonic World Adventure: Planetary Pieces Soundtracks have recently been released in Japan and is out for ordering.
Audio Dub:
Well I'm glad that I was able to hear the Japanese dub for this compare to the Wii version. So most likely, the bigger consoles are the ones to carry both audio dub while the smaller one can't. Although.....I do wished that Chip didn't sound like an old man, couldn't they get a female cast or a kid to voice Chip? Since in the Japanese dub, Chip was portray more like a child anyway than an old man.
Final Thought:
There's a lot of mix feeling for this game. I enjoying Sonic Day Stages as well the Werehog Night Stages but sometimes both can be hated and liked. I mean sure Sega got a few things patted down. But all I'm hearing from fans is that there are added gimmick this and that. Too bad for the lot of the complainers, I don't care. It's not cause I'm a huge Sonic fan like everyone knows that I am but people aren't seeing it as whole new experience of game play. Fast doesn't mean anything if you can't slow down. Heck....have anyone even taken the stride of looking at the graphics in each stage? LoL too bad I'm one of those people. In spite of it all, Sega is still learning or re-learning and they're working on reclaiming old fans and respect of a gaming company. I'm not hoping Sonic to die anytime soon. I'm nearly as psyched for the next game; Sonic and the Black Knight . Hopefully it'll do better than Secret Rings.
-THIS IS A PUBLIC LJ ENTRY-
~Feel free to voice your opinion~
I did ran into a few cliffs, skydived to my doom and drowned a lot.......>_> almost every time really orz||||
So here's the summary of my thoughts and opinion on Unleashed on the PS3.
I'll input a small comparison of the Wii vs PS3 just for comparison purposes.
There will be a bits and pieces of spoilers here and there so just a warning before you click on the individual LJ cut sections to read it.
-Also images with spoiler images from the game-
Sonic the Hedgehog in Unleashed:
Fastest thing alive? You betcha. And now he go much faster with the Hedgehog Engine. Alright so Day Time stages like everyone says, is honestly THE BEST PART of a Sonic game. Who doesn't like to once fill up the Ring and Speed guage and press the Boost button to go super fast using the power of the Hedgehog Engine? I know I did but there is a downside of all that speed. The downside is you can't really speed run through most stages blindly without knowing what you're getting at. Since most of it you can only see so far. So watch out where you're speeding through otherwise fly off not to your next adventure but to your doom.
Sonic the Werehog in Unleashed: Er...slowest hog on two but a bit faster on four??? ^^; Weird. Freaky. A bit of both? Well, yea. So I heard you all liek mudkip from everyone, complained like a soiled baby without a clean lotion butt and diaper. Too bad for you guys but I actually had a lot fun playing as Werehog Sonic for his night time stages. Yeah so Sonic turns into his other forms, loses his trademark Sonic speed. But instead to make up the lost of speed he gains power and stretchy limbs. Sure the controls, on both Wii and PS3 took a bit to get used to but the end result of maximizing the Werehog's ability is purely a shear powerhouse of awesomeness. If you can understand Street Fighter or fighting games combo than it should be a piece of cake to initiate them. Sides.....it's only for this one game only so stop complaining you cry babies.
World:
The World menu is the same for both PS3 and Wii. In the Wii vr, you an access your collections easily while on the PS3, you HAVE to go to Prof. Pickles' lab on Spagonia or at Shamar.
Stages:
We all admit it. The scenic stages are amazing and beautiful for Sonic games. Now only if Sega can emphasize on both scene and better gameplay instead of one and not the other. Okay so compare to the Wii vr from my short outline of the game before, the stages are different in the PS3 vr. In the Wii, you can initiate the Spin Dash once the count down hits 3. So far for the PS3, haven't been able to initiate it.
Hub World:
Luckily there are less people in this game and thank god they are stationed to the ground. I hate running into them and the area isn't that quite big either so it's easy run away compare to Sonic 2k6. While on the Wii, you just move your Wii mote around to talk and into the stages. Also to note, the Wii version have each individual temples while the PS3 don't.
Side Missions are the Challenges:
They're short missions and long ones but in the end of it all it's also VERY frustrating and challenging too. Short side missions tends to be in stages you been before; like ACT 1. But you're placed mostly at a different checkpoint of the stages and the game developers adds a few things in the stage to make it challenging and of course frustrating. There are also Townsfolk asking to do simple missions for them. While the Chili Hotdog stand which ARE longer missions have different set trials for both Sonic and his Werehog form; from Time Attack Trials (Sonic and Werehog), Rings Gathering Trials, Enemy Trials and No Healing Trials (Werehog only). In most cases, it's highly suggested to try to run through the stages a few times to get the gist of it before doing any of the Hot Dog stand trials. There are easy ones from the beginning point of the game but as you proceeds to other continents, the trials gets harder. In my case, I just give up for now and continue it later, much later.......kind of at a point where I don't remember the controls. XD;
Power up Experience Points.
There is also the power-ups just like Sonic and the Secret Rings vr for both Wii and the PS3. You basically have to beat up enemies, getting the floating yellow diamonds from Dark Gaia's minions or Eggman's bots to level up both Sonic's Speed Gauge and Ring Energy along with Werehog's Unleashed, life, shield, skills and a few others to the max. You also need to know HOW to share among both Sonic and his Werehog forms. Imo, Sonic's two levels are easy to power up while Werehog takes a while more time to level up.
Comparably to the Wii, Sonic for his day time stages doesn't need level ups but while the Werehog form you do. In the Wii, it does it for you automatically so you don't need to share it w/ Sonic's Hedgehog form. You pick up the necessary skills along the way and each skills comes with a tutorial stage for you to practice on.
The PS3 vr, you just pick it up as you travel from one continent to the next and read the tutorial Chip provides after receiving the upgrades. Simple as that. That's only for Sonic. The Werehog vr doesn't have tutorials stages so you have to go to the menu option to see the list of different set of combos you just learn after leveling up or forgotten.
While hopping from one Continent to the next, you can also buy food to also gain experience points (which again you share among your two forms) and also give food to Chip ( the little flying chocolate eating Chihuahua with a mo-hawk) to gain the BFFs status trohpy and recieve silly yet sometime hilarious comments about the food, on Sonic, Eggman, Townsfolk's, and the place you're at.
C-C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!!!
LOL~ always wanted to say that but I'm not always given the best opportunity to use it. There are a list of combos for the Werehog if you know how to initiate them. Some people have harder times while some don't. >_> I don't. I'm known to be the random button smasher in my house so that doesn't apply to me nor do I care if I didn't initiate it right. As long I beat the enemy fast that's all it matter. Although playing as Sonic, the most excruciating and crucial part of the game if you need to get to the other side of the ACT level. The button combo consist of pressing square, triangle, circle, R1, L1 & X in any of the random orders it displays on screen. If you don't pay attention and press the wrong button, you fall to your doom resulting to a restart or a Game Over if you were on your last lives. The most button combos that's initiated is on the final stage: Eggman Land. I think it was about like 4 - 6 different times button combos were initiated in that stage for Sonic alone while a few for the Werehog while up against The Egg Dragoon.
Boss Fights:
Some are easy. Some are hard. In system-wise, the hardest is the PS3 vr. while I had a lot more fun time beating the final boss in the Wii vr.
The final boss on the PS3; Dark Gaia vs Gaia Colossus is really....the hardest and a pain in the rear. And I think it was totally unnecessary. You have to boost your way to get to Dark Gaia and the boost is ridiculously slow.....even a turtle can crawl faster than Gaia Colossus' boost. Like my friend Ray said to me earlier: It's like driving a 50 ton pile of brick. Dark Gaia, provided A LOT of challenges; dodging volcanic rocks being thrown at you while avoiding DG's charged laser which was honestly close to impossible to dodge. He follows you while charging so no matter how you calculate the timing you will still get hit nonetheless. Finally hitting the milestone for the perfect form of Perfect Dark Gaia he was actually a lot easy. You would kind of expect it to be harder than Dark Gaia's form but it's actually the opposite. I died a few times only because I keep ramming into rocks and stupid PDG charged a laser at me and again hurling rocks while I try to destroy the shield created by the snakes that surrounds him.
While on the Wii for the first boss fight, you initiate something similar to the Nintendo Punch Out game and punch your way til you deplete a good portion of DG's life. Than after, you take control of Sonic and while in similarity to the PS3, you run through the stages to hit DG's eyes but the slight difference is that the PS3 vr is TIMED. I have 15 seconds each for 3 eyes. The Wii doesn't.
Final Fight on the Wii: Gaia Colossus doesn't join in the final fight against PDG like in the PS3 vr does other than Super Sonic collecting rings to stay alive going up, down left, right and avoid PDG's slash by staying in the middle. It's pretty trifled cause it's difficult to maneuver S.Sonic using the Wii mote while on the PS3 I had a more easier time to move Sonic around. Once you got a homing on one of Dark Gaia's eyes depending on whether you're on his left or right you jerk the Wii-mote and S.Sonic will make a dash boost toward one of the eye. While you try to make the attack you also have to worry about avoiding any flying rocks toward you. If you get hit you lose rings and have to restart over. Plus, after you get hit, rings deplete pretty fast if you don't hurry to replenish it.
On the PS3, you gather the rings while you (as S.Sonic) make the boost toward DPG and after that, you're stuck with whatever rings you have. Tip: I learned that using boost near the Rings will help gather rings faster and also help fill up your health bar since you pretty much start with only 40% of HP. So you will need to get at least 95 - 85% of HP if you know you'll bound to be running into floating boulders and lasered by PDG.
Glitches? & Frame Rate problem?
I've actually encountered a few glitches while playing on the PS3 vr of Unleashed but none for the Wii. There was a few times which I think only happen a lot of time playing Chun Nan level and Eggman Land where after I've (yet again) fallen or spiked to my death (spiked myself mostly in Eggmanland) the music would not play the level's theme music while I get just only the SFX or it wouldn't play unless I was boosting. And yes, I had to die in order to get the music running normal again.
Another which only happened twice was the console freezing in the middle of the game. >_> thanx goodness it wasn't one of the important Acts or boss' levels. I would cry if it did. I don't want to restart over if I'm half way to the goal. But once it did, it resulted me into restarting the system and game altogether. Although I saw a youtube video from a 360 owner for the Unleashed, Sonic was glitched into one of the bridge in Chun Nan. He wasn't able to get out so he had to restart the game. ^^; boy do I feel sorry for him.
As for the frame rate, I had some frame rate lagging problem in Eggman Land. And this only happened AFTER beating the game where I can just walk into Eggman Land to purchase Eggman Land's variety of nasty food, videos, souvenirs, and do the Hot Dog stand mission. Other than the frame rate lagging problem and turned off level theme music, everything else is fine.
Game Collections:
Art book: Gotta collect or buy the illustrations just to see the beautiful art that Sega art team did.
Wii vr: It fills the entire screen
PS3 vr: It fills about 75% est of the screen.
On the PS3 vr of Unleashed, I had a much better time in collecting the artbooks and other items than on the Wii. I probably collected about less than 50% in items compared to the PS3 vr where I collected all Souvenirs and missed a few tracks and illustrations. So I pretty much had about 85% 55% into the collections.
Music Trax:
No rock music this time around so just like Sonic 2k6 everything is instrumented by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. A lot of the music do make me feel I'm in Sunny Italy, Oasis Malaysia, Jazzy New York City, Savannah Africa, Chilly Alaska or North or South Pole, Romance in France, and Festive China village. XD Eggman Land not included, it just reminds me of Eggman Land itself. As not everyone knows, Sonic World Adventure: Planetary Pieces Soundtracks have recently been released in Japan and is out for ordering.
Audio Dub:
Well I'm glad that I was able to hear the Japanese dub for this compare to the Wii version. So most likely, the bigger consoles are the ones to carry both audio dub while the smaller one can't. Although.....I do wished that Chip didn't sound like an old man, couldn't they get a female cast or a kid to voice Chip? Since in the Japanese dub, Chip was portray more like a child anyway than an old man.
Final Thought:
There's a lot of mix feeling for this game. I enjoying Sonic Day Stages as well the Werehog Night Stages but sometimes both can be hated and liked. I mean sure Sega got a few things patted down. But all I'm hearing from fans is that there are added gimmick this and that. Too bad for the lot of the complainers, I don't care. It's not cause I'm a huge Sonic fan like everyone knows that I am but people aren't seeing it as whole new experience of game play. Fast doesn't mean anything if you can't slow down. Heck....have anyone even taken the stride of looking at the graphics in each stage? LoL too bad I'm one of those people. In spite of it all, Sega is still learning or re-learning and they're working on reclaiming old fans and respect of a gaming company. I'm not hoping Sonic to die anytime soon. I'm nearly as psyched for the next game; Sonic and the Black Knight . Hopefully it'll do better than Secret Rings.
-THIS IS A PUBLIC LJ ENTRY-
~Feel free to voice your opinion~