Got this with my Wii U in 2013 and at the time I was young and stupid and didn't understand that the "New Super" series was being exhausted by Nintendo. I just thought it was a fun sequel to the Wii one I loved so much, and enjoyed it overall.

But man now I get it. Like if you put a gun to my head and told me to describe specific traits of a level in this game, I'd say shoot me.

Wait actually I'd say "OH MY GOD THE VAN GOGH LOOKING ONE" and then you'd say "everyone says that one say something else" and then I'd stutter and sweat a bunch and then you'd shoot me.

I picked this up as part of those free giveaways on the Epic Games Store, though I originally owned it on the PlayStation 2. I didn't really intend to revisit it, but I thought it would be fun to mess around with the character creator again, so I downloaded it. Ended up being disappointed when the textures for the creator wouldn't load except for the heads. It's a bug that seems exclusive to the copy Epic offers, from what I read online. Not sure what's going on there or if it has been fixed.

While the gameplay is really not too different from the other early titles, I think this one suffers a lot for not being based on a film series. Even though you might be tricked into thinking that it was because it borrows heavily from the films made by Tim Burton, even using the score. Levels often feel repetitive and lack the set pieces that would otherwise distinguish them from one another in other Traveller's Tales Lego games. It all feels very generic at times, with lots of lairs dictated by a villain's aesthetic and far too many Gotham streetscapes.

If you tend to pick up most of the free game giveaways that go on, you might have ended up with the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit Lego games that I'd at least recommend over this. It's ok but doesn't quite offer the same experience as ones I've played that act as movie tie-in games.

This game is such a nostalgia trip and even though I'm a grown ass young man I sometimes become emotional playing this. I am proud to say that I have 100% this game even though getting there was not fun at all. Sometimes it feels like you have done nothing but killed the same enemy over and over again for 30 minutes. It's also annoying that you constantly get shot at when trying to build something and just when you're about to get done you get shot at and the thing collapses. The challenge modes is also the bain of my existence and I really hated the extra lego city level. In my honest opinion this game is the best when it's only played in story mode and when you forget about the extra things. Just trust me on that one, chasing 100% made my childhood game become tedious and frustrating.

Wow, I can't believe the cold reception on this game, because this is actually so fun and creative. I will admit the controls leave a lot to be desired, but that's easily the worst part of the game, plus some questionable design choices on a couple of levels. But otherwise, it's quite fun. The gimmick of switching between platforming and either 2D space shooter or overhead shooter (à la Blaster Master) is very fun and much more creative than I expected from this game. Plus, the soundtrack goes very hard.

It's not perfect, and only has sixteen levels plus bosses, but I genuinely don't get the legacy of negativity surrounding the game - I've heard it been called the "worst Cartoon Network game", no way can that be true.

I came back around to this after finishing New Super Mario Bros 2., and found this one to pretty lacking. It's frankly impressive how much of a difference just adding the incentive of coin collecting makes to a game's formula. This one on the other hand just felt like a standard Mario game. Perhaps the most baffling inclusion to this game is the Mega Mushroom (I presume it's called). There haven't been many instances I've found for it's use, aside from cheesing a fortress boss with it. Otherwise, levels are have too many gaps that prevent you from running straight and racking up those 1-UPs, not that you really need them, either. Still, it's fun to absolutely wreck shit on an early level and tear it apart, literally.

At the end of the day, it's Mario, just without anything that stands out.

Funny that of the two versions of Sonic Unleashed that I played, none of them were the HD version, I only played the PS2 version and a 1-minute (?) demo of the Java one.

This was the version I was born playing, it's decent, the boost stages are easily the highlight, the controls didn't click with me at first, but the gameplay gets pretty satisfying once you get good at them, the level design gives you multiple alternate paths which greatly increase the replay value, not only for improving your time going on the hardest paths and have higher chances to get the S Ranks, but also for exploring each of them and find the hidden items, I really enjoyed playing the day stages, I wish the game had more of them.

Now the Werehog stages... They're not bad, but they're not great either, the combat strategy doesn't change much between doing the same combos over and over again until the enemies dies, with only few exceptions (like for the giant Dark Gaia monsters and THE BEES), the game tries to make Werehog's gameplay more interesting by adding more traditional platforming sections, you can even be creative at certain areas and manage to skip parts of the levels with Werehog's run + double jump, but even so, the platforming is pretty dull most of the time and just boils down to "Hey, grab the flying Dark Gaia creature and slowly go to your destination".

But what really makes this game worse than it could have been is that it doesn't even try to balance the amount of levels for each style, the day levels only have one per continent and are very short (2-4 minutes) with the only exception being Apotos with two boost levels, now the Werehog levels are not only longer (5-8 minutes), but also have at least three per continent, some even having four, or FIVE in the case of Eggmanland, it's absurd.

Something exclusive from the Wii/PS2 versions are the Gaia Gates, they mainly serve to unlock traditional levels/bosses after getting certain keys from the village after talking with the PNGs of the civilians, but they also have extra doors that can be unlocked depending on the amount of Moon and Sun medals you have, inside them, you can switch between the two gameplay styles, if you touch a light, you become the Sonic from the day stages, if you wait a certain time in the dark, you go back to Werehog, the puzzles themselves are not the most amazing thing in the world, but the idea itself of switching between the two styles in the same location is cool, it's a nice distraction from the main game and rewards you with items and extra lives.

Although the review looked mostly negative, I still had fun with the game, the boost levels are great, and Werehog's levels are tolerable, it's just a shame that you're spending 85% of your time playing the weakest play style of the two, even if you count the missions, which surprisingly there are more for the Day levels than for the Night levels.