This game disappoints me a lot. It's still a really good game nontheless, but there are elements of it that are top notch. The combat is the best and most varied it's ever been, the enemy variety is through the roof, Stealth is as great as ever, but the game is bogged down with repeated tank sections courtesy of the Batmobile, boring puzzles requiring your car, and an open world that just doesn't feel as interesting to travel through as the other games were. A lot of side missions that are really good end way too abruptly, and the other missions are super lazy in execution like the copy pasted enemy base assaults or road barricades. It's still fun, but is bogged down too much by too many different things.

By far the best DMC game I have played and this time I can actually say that with positivity. Almost all the enemies are fun to fight, the levels are straightforward, not time wasting and get you directly to the fights, action is as energetic and full of variety as ever, it's like all my previous complaints about the franchise prior were straight up fixed. My only big issue is V. I'm glad the game doesn't force you to play as him much but his combat is pretty uninteresting and gets far too button mashy, but aside from that I love Nero and Dante, and pretty much every single boss in this game is a winner. Play this if you haven't already, it's really really good

I've seen way too many people give this game a pass because of the development, but unfortunately I am not one of those people. This game is one of the laziest hastily thrown together games I have ever played. Combat is kinda fun but it doesn't excuse some of the worst enemy and level design the series or the genre as a whole has to offer. Nothing is really fun to fight unless it's the basic grunt enemies, bosses just kinda sit around and let you wail on them unless it's credo which is the only good boss, the rest is flaming garbage, and when it isn't wasting your time with the bad enemies, it's wasting your time with the horrid level gimmicks and recycled content. You have the terrible platforming and god awful spinning tops and dice game in the castle, boring as shit laser sections later on in the game, and when there isn't a bad gimmick the levels are DMC2 levels of empty and full of nothing, not to mention that you need to not only backtrack through these awful levels in reverse as Dante, but you also fight the same bland bosses 3 TIMES. The blatant padding and filler is rampant throughout this game and it never gets any better from there.

I thought I would potentially like this more if I took the time to master Dante's arsenal and guard fly everywhere but that didn't do a single thing to further my enjoyment on this game. If anything it only reinforced how much of a chore fighting these enemies are. The other playable characters aren't fun to mess around with either. Only worth playing through if you're wanting to do bloody palace and basically nothing else. Next

This game is by far my favorite game of all time. There's just so much that I love about it - the fantastic level design, the tight controls, the incredibly vibrant visuals, the amazing music, etc. Modern and Classic Sonic are so much fun to play, the levels are so much fun to go through, the bosses are all incredibly fun (with a lone exception), the entire game oozes charm and is a great love letter to the entire history of the series, genuinely this game is something I can go back to over and over again and never get tired of it. I hope one day Sonic Team puts together an original game that has as much thought and love put into it as this game did.

This is by far the most unique and interesting horror game I have ever experienced. It's criminally underrated, tough as nails, and best of all, it's genuinely scary. Easily the best horror title I've played yet.

The permadeath system is fantastic. I love that when you get bitten, there is no coming back. All of the weapon skills you have obtained, and your survivor score are completely reset, which creates huge tension when you want to avoid failure. It makes death actually mean something, and it makes even the most common grunt zombies a legitimate threat, something I don't think any horror game has done before or since. With the combat, you're capable of dealing damage and getting the job done, but you aren't superhuman. The combat system makes you feel vulnerable, but not to the point where combat becomes a repetitive mind numbing slog like in Silent Hill 2. This ties into the survival part of survival horror: you need to plan ahead, take it slow, and use the resources you have wisely because they're very scarce, and I think this is ingenious design coupled with all the other mechanics I mentioned. Not to mention, when you die, you need to track down your previous now infected survivor to get your stuff back, which is a really cool and interesting fresh spin on these typical zombie games, almost like a roguelite esc take on survival horror.

The Wii U gamepad is what really sells this however. You need to constantly glance down at the gamepad screen to do a whole myriad of tasks: check radar, scan for potential loot, inventory management, picking locks and hacking doors, and so on. The thing is when you do this, the game itself doesn't pause, so the infected can easily have a chance to sneak up behind you and try to kill you, forcing you to multitask different things at once. This adds huge amounts of tension to the game, as while you're doing anything with the gamepad you're vulnerable at all times. It really does feel like an experience you can only get on Wii U.

As for the rest of the game, the atmosphere is top notch, and really sells the feeling of complete ruin and isolation. The fog penetrating certain areas, the crows flapping all over, the screams echoed in the distance of far off infected, the grunge of the decaying London subway system and sewer tunnels, it's all handled wonderfully, and areas that take it one step further (such as Buckingham Palace and The Nursery) are done even better. The music is surprisingly very well made as well, more of a somber soundtrack with a few instances of heavy tense techno. On top of the main campaign, there's also a fun multiplayer mode that has the gamepad user control a hoard of zombies, spawning them and leveling up and gaining new perks as the match continues, while the pro controller player plays a survivor, killing the infected in a variety of game modes.

However, I do still have some issues even with a game as great as this. The game is a tad on the short side (only about 10-15 hours for a single campaign), the loading times can be frequent and pretty bad, and the game visually could stand to be improved even though I think it looks great as is. Regardless, please consider checking this game out on Wii U, it is an extremely underappreciated gem.

(updated review, October 2, 2021)

I wrote a review of this game a long while back and truth be told I wasn't entirely satisfied with how it was written. Too short, blunt, non descriptive, kind of awkward, so now I'm wanting to go more in depth with my thoughts on this game because hoo boy do I have a lot to say about this...experience.

The game is split into 2 distinct playstyles. Day stages are where Sonic Team first attempted the boost formula in a 3D environment, and it works...alright. Like for their first attempt it's honestly pretty impressive how influential this game is, but on its own it's woefully lacking in many areas. The level design can range from kinda fun to kinda dull, the game favors high speed and automation with reaction based obstacles at every turn, leaving very little in the room for platforming or basic exploration. Levels can be extremely linear and hallway ridden in 3D, which I guess works well with how Unleashed wants to be structured, a high speed obstacle course and when it focuses squarely on that it's actually kind of enjoyable even with the limited level design. When the game does feature any platforming however, it's pretty pace breaking and EXTREMELY basic. Like, I'm talking more basic than Sonic Colors basic, the most uninspired blocks and slow moving platforms you've ever encountered in your life kind of basic. The 2D sections in particular just kind of drag with how much the game sort of funnels you through them relatively quickly without you doing much of anything at all, they genuinely feel like filler at times. I'm not a Sonic fan who thinks "2D is evil and must never be included in 3D Sonic ever grrr" but like, at the very least if you put them in I would prefer that they be substantial in what they offered. Empire City Shamar and Adabat were the best that the 2D sections ever got for me, everything else was just kind of...there. The game also LOVES locking you into so many quickstep sections. I'm fine with quickstep sections as a one off thing every now and then, but having so many back to back feels so incredibly repetitious.

Sonic's control itself I don't feel is up to snuff either. And yeah I can likely chock this up to being their first time experimenting with the boost formula in 3D, but man aside from the light speed dash being pretty decent everything just feels off. His movement is way too sluggish and slippery, jumping suffers from slight input delay, the drift is EXTREMELY overpowered with how easy it is to instantly gain top speed and just boost on water forever. The game also maps the homing attack to the X button on Xbox which is just bad design. It flat out removes a ton of freedom or experimentation. Say you see a chain of spinners and you want to airboost past them to cut down on time, NOPE, too bad, you're forced to lock on and homing attack every single one of them, it's just limiting.

And before I get any mentions of how "bruh u just suck at dis game lel geet gud", I would like to bring up that I actively speedrun this game and I have S ranked every single day stage in the entire game, DLC included (because I'm a masochist), so I don't wanna hear it. Guess what, you can be good at the game and still not like the controls or level design, it's not a mutually exclusive issue.

In general I think overall the day stages in Sonic Unleashed are...fine. They get that dopamine level rising well enough, some stages even have some fun shortcuts, and they're definitely the best part of the entire game, but if I'm gonna play any boost game out of all of them, it's gonna be Sonic Colors and ESPECIALLY Sonic Generations by a country wide margin. Generations especially I feel not only improved on Unleashed's controls and handling but also crafted some of the best level design 3D Sonic has to offer, seamlessly blending platforming and speed in a natural way, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Alas, it's time to talk about the other half of the equation: The Werehog. Sonic Team's kneejerk reaction to the rising trend of hack and slash/beat em up games.

I think it's no secret that I really, really, REALLY do not like the Werehog. I personally find it to be one of the worst alternate playstyles Sonic Team has ever put out, right up there with SA2 mechs and 06 amigos.

The first problem Werehog has is that the combat just isn't fun in the slightest. It lacks any sort of depth or intricate mechanics or variety to keep it interesting. You can't seamlessly chain combos into each other with how delayed and slow everything is, his defensive options are laughable (you have a sluggish shield and a really awful dodge roll aaaaand that's it), and there just isn't much to his moveset. Every Werehog fan under the sun will argue "USE THE COMBOS HE HAS SO MANY!!!" but will neglect to inform you that 95% of his moveset is completely superfluous and interchangeable. There's not really any reason or incentive to use different attacks (he has like 3 launching moves for example and 2 of them are literally the exact same, the other is also very similar but has a slight variation to it. He also has 3 different piledrive moves that are all exactly the same because...reasons?), for a large variety of reasons that I'll get into shortly. Usually in games like this each and every attack you're presented has some sort of purpose to it, whether it be good damage but slow to execute and therefore risky, attacks that have different launching properties, attacks that can break guard or stun, attacks that provide good general movement, attacks that are deigned to take care of smaller pests, you get the idea. The problem here is that Werehog's combos don't really have any differing properties. There are some exceptions, the drill rush move is used for general movement and he has 2 different "slow but powerful" charging attacks, but other than that a majority of combos simply boil down to "use this button combination and watch as Sonic flails his arms around and kills everything”. Even the simple premise of separating combos and strikes (y is a straight punch that lacks range, x is a claw swipe that lacks damage) doesn't even work either because both of these attack methods are huge and hit everything in the werehog's vicinity anyway so at the end of the day what's the point of trying to give differing traits to begin with if they both basically do the same thing. All his general damage combos all feel the exact same to pull off and just sort of blend together. It also doesn't help that the moves feel bad to use, just the simple act of launching an enemy and transitioning into an aerial combo feels sluggish and slow, like you're constantly being restrained. On top of that, Werehog lacks any depth or intricate mechanics to use. No jump canceling, no lock on system, no counterattack mechanics, he has like one point in all of this with shield canceling but that's only ever useful to get rid of the horrific endlag at the end of every single combo, so you're basically required to spam shield cancel on every single move in order to get a move on. Good combat systems allow you to be flexible as well, balance defense as well as offense, but Werehog's combat is so simplistic and limited that you're only ever rewarded for going offensive all the time. The ranking system could encourage skill and replayability, but the ranking system here is garbage. It doesn't reward you for mixing up attacks or including variety in your combos, it instead tracks only the amount of hits you deal in a combo. Therefore, you're basically rewarded by spamming the combo that deals the most hits over and over again, either that or you could also just...spam the QTE finishers over and over again for an easy S rank as well.

But hey, even a middle of the road (and that's being generous here) combat system can be kinda fun if the enemies are interesting and challenging right? Here's where Unleashed drops the ball again. The enemies you fight in Sonic Unleashed are, well, to put it quite frankly, braindead. They're fodder to the Nth degree, never even putting up a slight hint of challenge. First off, the variety just isn't here. There's like 6 different enemy types that are almost all identical and you see them all within the first 3 stages of the game. There's not really any intricate strategy either, their attacks are so easily telegraphed and slow it's almost laughable, and every one, and I really mean EVERY SINGLE ENEMY aside from the giant titan enemies get stunlocked. This ties in to what I said about your moveset being superfluous and interchangeable, it doesn't matter what move or combo you use, the enemy will be stunned by any and every attack you hit, meaning they often don't even GET the chance to attack you anyway. Not that they even want to attack, most of the time they just kinda stand around and just look at you waiting to be wailed on. It doesn't matter what combo you use, why bother using a launching attack to an aerial combo, why bother using werewheel or werehammer, why bother at all? It's not like you're encouraged to use anything because the game never provides you with any real challenge, and thus zero incentive to experiment with your moveset. They...kiiiiiinda try to do this with the shielded Eggpawn. Quite a few options get blocked by it so you look at the moveset and look for high damage guard breaking combos, like the donkey kick. You use it and find out, it works! Finally an incentive to use different combos! Except...oh...it turns out that every single straight punch combo will break this guy's shield, not just that specific combo. And...oh...if you level up strength, it turns out that EVERY combo can now break his shield...great...there went that I guess. The minibosses are very similar and are an utter bore. Titan boss is just "jump over his easily telegraphed shockwave and hit him a bunch" and the mother...well you don't even need to jump over anything, just walk slightly out of the way of her attack and she's literally the exact same. The most varied Unleashed's enemies get is where you need to pick up a water barrel to throw water on a wizard that's on fire and that's it. This combined with the awful combat system leads to such a draining boring experience. Nothing puts up a challenge, nothing is interesting to fight, nothing encourages skill or mechanical mastery (if there even is any with this playstyle), everything just kind of dies. But hey, maybe they really WEREN'T trying to make a complex game and just threw together a playstyle where you just mashed buttons and it looked cool and gave serotonin. Even though I don't really like those kinds of games, I wouldn't mind that much if the game had like, anything else to offer, but it doesn't.

The platforming is like...Rise of Lyric tier levels of basic. Jump on big floating platforms here, pull a switch here, swing on a pole here, it's very bland and mundane. The grapnel pull mechanic puts it a step above the Wii version I guess, it has that going for it. The puzzles are all LEGO game tier stuff full of such wonderous sequences as "drag this stone all the way into this pedestal. Now go back and do the same with this other stone." It's all just so tiring, between the bad ranking system, awful combat with zero variety depth or flow, braindead enemy AI and limited enemy variety, baby platforming and puzzle solving, I'm sorry these parts of the game are just insufferable. And no I don't find speedrunning these stages to be enjoyable either, a lot of it just consists of spamming the drill rush move over and over again. I also made the mistake of leveling up only combo instead of health or damage or shields because I thought it would give me more of a challenge...it did not. What it instead did was make the levels drag out even LONGER because all of the enemies are bullet sponges now so you gotta spend much more time wailing on them than you usually would. Don't actually attempt this, it's not worth it.

The bosses are an extremely mixed bag. Daytime bosses are all relatively samey but are actually really fun and evoke the boss design I'm looking for in a Sonic game, while the Werehog bosses are all absolute garbage. Shoutout in particular to Dark Guardian where you...slowly push boxes...to beat him...y-yaaaay? Dark Gaia would've been a cool boss too if the Gaia Colossus sections weren't absolutely painful.

There are also hub world areas to roam around and talk with the different townspeople within. I don't really care about hubs or the townspeople stuff but thankfully these hubs are relatively small so you can always just brute force your way to...the secondary hub area where you have to platform in order to reach the next stage (yeah I really don't get the point of these at all). Worse still is the fact that you need to talk to professor Pickle every single time you have to enter a new stage. Thanks for the mandatory back and forth game, really appreciate it

The Tornado sections are kind of laughable to be honest, being 2 minute long QTE snoozefests. Thankfully there's only 2 of them in the entire game. The sun and moon medal system is pointless and ends up being forced backtracking and replayability if you happen to miss any. They add literally nothing to the game, further cemented by the fact that they immediately lose all value once you've already beaten the game.

As for story, gotta say I'm not a fan. Nothing much happens for a good 3/4 of the game's plot and I wouldn't be opposed to a "slice of life road tribe" vibe if chip was at all an interesting character but he just...isn't. And his relationship with Sonic isn't interesting either, not until the very end where he actually gets character development. So for a good chunk the story ends up being really boring and forgettable. The presentation is also pretty rough. The art style and general aesthetic look pretty great but the game is a technical disaster, a horribly optimized mess with a blurry resolution, muddy low res textures, giant jagged staircase shadows, horrific performance and framerate, and with pop in so frequent it's borderline ridiculous. This isn't "technically demanding" at all, the 360 frequently output games that could (and later did) do much more impressively visually.

All in all I think I've said way too much. This leaves me with a dilemma then. Half of the game is an utter slog that has practically no redeeming qualities outside of the music, and the other half is relatively solid, even fun at times, but I would rather play other similar games in the franchise without a Second thought

It is better than Forces though, I'll give it that. You get the good noodle star, Sonic Unleashed.