It's a gorgeous game, as well: tons of color and detail, and it feels fast. There's very, very little of the twitchiness I mentioned above. The camera is fixed rigidly behind the hedgehog, and the controls are reassuringly solid. We all know that Sonic works as a 2D game, and that holds true here, but for the first time ever, I loved the 3D portions almost as much. The day stages combine 3D and 2D sections, with often stunning effect. When the in-game sun is out, Sonic is his old self, a lightning-fast blue blur. Yet this is a game of two halves - of day and night, of hedgehog and 'werehog' - and while the final product has patches of brilliance that made me love Sega again, Unleashed is weighed down by bloated platform sections of thudding mediocrity.īut let's start with the good bits. In fact, in its best moments, it's the modern Sonic game I always dreamed of playing: fast, exhilarating, ridiculously fun. So here's the yaaay news: Sonic Unleashed handles Sonic's speed better than any other 3D game in the series to date. Add a third, and it becomes a twitchy, frustrating experience. Controlling the nippy hedgehog in two dimensions is hard enough. 'Sonic + 3D' is a formula that Sega has scratched its head over for the best part of a decade with.