Sonic Unleashed is the famous spiky blue hedgehog’s latest outing and although it may be something of a return to form in places,it is sadly far from perfect.There is a  demo available to download from Xbox live which is great fun with superb graphics and this runs at an unbelievable pace.Unfortunately though the whole game is not this impressive.The game is split into a few parts some are great,some are reasonable but some are really just very poor to be honest.

This time around Sonic has been transformed into a ‘Werehog’ by the evil Dr.Eggman so when the sun goes down he spouts fangs,sharp teeth,extending arms and razor sharp claws.This sounds great in theory but in practice it’s actually a hell of a lot less fun.The daytime Sonic levels are the best thing I’ve seen or played in a Sonic game in ages.They are fast,furious and switch flawlessly between 3D and 2D sections with no interruptions in the gameplay at all.You will feel your eyeballs are going to melt as you attempt to master the very well designed levels at 'Burnout' style breakneck speeds.Unfortunately these levels are amongst the shortest things in the game and make up only a small portion of it.After these you get to play the dreadful town stages.Here you get to walk aimlessly around,talking to the townsfolk who give you clues about how to get to your coming missions.These are dull,boring,pointless and like the very long and annoying FMV sequences in the game cannot be skipped.They serve no purpose whatsoever only to annoy you.The vehicle sections are also not very impressive either,but are at least they are reasonably playable.The biggest let down though are the night time ‘Werehog’ levels,they are little more than a ‘Crash Bandicoot’ rip off with a bit of ‘Devil May Cry’ and ‘Prince Of Persia’ gameplay thrown in for good measure.I found these dull,repetitive and plagued by slowdown issues.They are also overly long and take up a large percentage of the game.I found myself trying to plough through the town and night time missions simply so I could get to the fun daytime ones.If they didn’t take up so much of the game it wouldn’t be quite so bad.Also the game is rated for ages 7 and above,there are parts of this game which are very difficult and way beyond the capabilities of players of this age in my opinion.The game is also very mean in giving out its achievement points,again making them extremely difficult for younger players to win.

Graphically the game is impressive,but yet again it’s the daytime Sonic levels which impress.Apart from the odd frame rate issue,they look bright,colourful and very well defined.These levels are the best looking in any Sonic game by far.The night time and town levels do not look quite so impressive though and as I mentioned before when there is a lot of action going on there is some quite serious slowdown.The music and sound are all vintage Sonic and complement the game perfectly.

Despite the negatives I have pointed out with this game,there is still a lot of fun to be had on Sonic Unleashed.Its just that you will need to have the patience required to get through the not so good parts of the game.The payback for doing this comes when you get to the Sonic daytime stages.Its just a bit of a shame that after years of truly dreadful Sonic games (Sonic Riders,Sonic Heroes,Sonic Adventure etc.) Sega almost nailed it with Sonic Unleashed,only to mess it up for no real reason.They could have made the ‘Werehog’ levels much shorter and had much less of them and they could and should have ditched the terrible town levels altogether.Adding a mode to race through the Sonic levels against online opponents would have been fun.Also a local party style game where players raced against the fastest stage times in a ‘ghost mode’ could have worked too.

Overall Sonic Unleashed is the best Sonic game I have played in a long time.It’s just that I can’t help feeling disappointed due to it being flawed in so many parts.This is a real shame as it could have been fantastic.It is still worth picking up if you like the series and can forgive it for its problems.It is unlikely to gain many new fans though as other platformers such as Travellers Tales Lego games are better than this in my opinion.

6.5/10.