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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land There’s little doubt, Sonic Unleashed is looking a lot better than Sonic Team’s other recent outing most of us are still trying to forget. In fact, any Sonic game without a blue hedgehog’s desire to trade saliva with a Homo sapien appeals to me. Speaking of Unleashed, we got some new screenshots from what looks like the Wii version. Apparently the Xbox 360 and PS3 version of the game will use Sonic Team’s “Hedgehog Engine,” which has been in development since 2005.
Expect the game on PS3, Xbox 360, PS2 and Wii November 18th.
Sega has just announced their line up for Games Convention 2008 in Leipzig, Germany next week, with Sonic the Hedgehog and the public debut of Samba De Amigo at the forefront of their presentation, though both could be upstaged by the super-secret world premier hinted at in Headstrong’s pre-convention postcard. Along with the world premier of a new title, Sega will be parading about Sonic in both Unleashed and Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood flavours, with Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games thrown in for good measure. Rounding out their booth presence will be the game of the TV show Dinosaur King, and Gas Powered Games’ Space Siege.
The company’s presence in the Business Centre closely mirrors that of E3, with Alpha Protocol, the new RTS Stormrise, and PlatinumGames titles Bayonetta and MadWorld on display, along with Empire: Total War, Golden Axe, and Valkyria Chronicles. Between the titles we know about and the one we hope we know about, it should be a very exciting GC for Sega indeed.
Oooo, so very close. I sat in on a presentation of Sonic Unleashed at the Sega booth today, and things look pretty much as I feared when I first heard about the game. On one hand you have the daylight gameplay, which features Sonic racing across levels inspired by real-world locations such as Greece and China, alterating between the 3D platforming we know from Sonic Adventure and the 2D perspective from classic Sonic titles.
The sense of speed in the daylight sections is completely amazing. The Sega rep informed us that once Sonic fills up his ring power and boosts he can reach the real-world equivalent of 300 miles per hour. Watching Sonic speed through the levels made my hands ache to get my hands on the controller.
Then the evening comes.
Oh Sega. Here we were, getting all optimistic about Sonic Unleashed, to the point where we’d even dropped the long-necessary “oh, but it’s Sega, it’s Sonic, it’ll suck” mantra. And then you go and release this. It’s not the gameplay we’re worried about (since the trailer doesn’t feature any), but the tone. We thought it had been made explicitly clear that there were to be no more humans!
Why do the civil engineers in the Sonic universe feel the need to construct boost pads, spring loaded bumpers and twisting rails that connect to nothing? They’re everywhere! And who’s putting those gold rings all over the place? I realise we’re discussing a game in which a giant blue hedgehog who wears shoes battles robots at high speeds and occasionally gets freaky with human beings, but c’mon. Sure, Sonic Unleashed looks good — better than any Sonic the Hedgehog effort we’ve seen in a long time — but when Sega’s mascot gets all real world on us, we have to question this stuff.
This much crisper look at the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version is also available in impressive high definition.
Sonic Unleashed Trailer [GameTrailers]
Seventeen years ago to this day, Sonic spirited onto the Genesis/Mega Drive. And he did it with ‘tude. That’s right! SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog was released in North America and Europe on June 23, 1991. The game came out a month later in Japan. In his heyday, the blue hedgehog gave Mario as run for his money during the 16 bit generation. While SEGA seemed to have lost the plot in the last few years (human kissing anyone?), recent Sonic titles like the Sonic Team and Dimps developed Sonic Unleashed show promise of a return to form. And that is probably the best birthday present Sonic could ask for.
Sonic’s Birthday [Sega Nerds]
It does! I mean, look at this thing. It looks amazing. Absolutely amazing. Speed, bright colours, Sega music, speed, blue skies…oh man. And yet…it’s a Sega game. A Sega Sonic game. Made after 1992. Part of me wants to give myself over to the excitement, while the other part is afraid. Afraid they’ll find some way to balls this up.
Coming this holiday, Sonic Unleashed is the first Sega title built on the Sonic-loving “Hedgehog Engine,” a next-gen platform in development since 2005. Perhaps to show off the new engine’s muscle, Sonic Unleashed will take place in real world settings on a fractured Earth and feature both 3D third-person and 2D side-scrolling action. I caught a glimpse of the first level set in Greece and the fourth set in an unnamed European city during Sega’s recent Gamer’s Day.
The multiplayer-free game has Sonic travelling through the fractured chunks of an Earth recently shattered by Dr. Eggman, collecting Chaos Emeralds in an attempt to return the planet to its former state. The game will include stylised humans, but likely no hot hedgehog-on-female action.
The developers said one version of Sonic Unleashed is being developed for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and another for the PS2 and Wii. The Wii version of the game will allow you to use the remote and nunchuk or the classic Gamecube controller.
The developers showing off the game to media said that, while the engine was designed to “work well with Sonic titles,” it can be used for other games.
In case you missed it, Sonic jumps the shark becomes a werewolf version of himself in Sega’s upcoming Sonic Unleashed, giving them an excuse to slow him down and deliver some sure-to-be thrilling 3D combat. This will effectively cut the classic 2D gameplay everyone is excited about, making sure no one overdoses on the good stuff. If they’d done a better job of distributing the information about the game, we’d all be driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out what this means right now. As it stands, werewolf. Ayep.
