There are few ideas that should give gamers more pause than the introduction of "innovations" in Sonic The Hedgehog games. Sonic gets new friends, a third dimension to run in, secret rings, a gun-toting darker half -- any of this stuff introduced in recent "Sonic" installments -- and review scores plummet like an ill-timed jump.
This week, gamers got to see Sonic star in a role-playing game, "Sonic Chronicles" for DS. The fact that it's not bad and actually getting solid reviews is a twist. Whether it's the start of a trend is another question.
It didn't look like Sonic would necessarily be on a good-game trend when word leaked earlier this year that the next Sonic game, "Sonic Unleashed," will intersperse traditional run-really-fast Sonic levels with combat stages that feature a werewolf Sonic.
Werewolf Sonic? Another one of those "innovations."
In a hotel suite in Manhattan yesterday I was given a personal demo of "Sonic Unleashed" and was shown some of the werewolf stuff in action.
In "Unleashed," Sonic turns into a werewolf version of himself at night. This happens because of some as-yet unexplained plot element. You play in this form in what are night-time versions of the internationally themed environments that regular Sonic races through in the daytime. Werewolf-Sonic doesn't really run anywhere. He jumps on some platforms. He collects some rings. But, mostly, he fights, using furry paws and stretching arms.
From what I saw, the night stages look like they play similarly to the E-102 Gamma robot stages in "Sonic Adventure," at least in terms of the gameplay involving the targeting of multitudes of enemies. Screenshots may make it appear that Sonic's nighttime combat is a one-on-one or one-on-three affair, but what I was shown had Sonic against packs and hordes. The PR person playing the level for me had Sonic swiping and punching at clusters of enemies, building up combo chains and covering the screen in special effects.
Sonic's basic combat movies involve swinging his arms and punching enemies. He can pick up enemies and throw them, use them as clubs or use two hands to swing them around the room. Sonic gains experience points and, with that, new moves.
There doesn't seem to be much that is Sonic-esque about "Sonic Unleashed"'s were-Sonic levels. He doesn't seem like he's going to be running really fast through loop-de-loops. The blazing speed that is his trademark is evident only in the swiftness of Werewolf-Sonic's combat moves.
So, is this another unneeded Sonic innovation gone awry? Possibly not. It looked fun. We'll know more when we get a chance to play it closer to the game's holiday launch. "Sonic Unleashed" will ship for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. (The level design of the Wii and PS2 versions is said to differ in construction from those of the PS3 and 360 versions -- but not to the exclusion of Werewolf-Sonic.)
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