Sonic Unleashed/Chronicles Playtest: The Reactions

What are Sonic fans saying about Sonic’s upcoming adventures after seeing them in motion? Let’s find out!

It’s a mixture of emotions this morning as we head in to the final day of E3 2008. Yesterday, Gamespot gave live demonstrations of not only Sonic Unleashed on the Xbox 360, but also Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood for the Nintendo DS. In particular, Sonic Unleashed seems to have divided fans, with some people angry over “Sonic the Werehog”, such as poster Luckett from the SonicEatsRings.com forum:

“That was the most shameless rip-off of God of War I have ever seen. Even moreso than Conan and whatever. Every single element thieved, from replacing his chain blades with goofy stretchy arms, to lifting up doors via button bashing and orbs from fallen enemies drifting into you.

A truly astonishing lack of originality, that should just really cement the end of this franchise in the hopes and dreams in just about every fan.“

Other people, like Tweaker of SonicRetro.com, chose to focus more on the positive elements of the live demonstration:

“I just watched this too—it improved my view of this game drastically. It’s a lot more interactive and fun than it once appeared to be.

(…)

I still don’t like that the environments are real locations and not completely nonsensical surrealistic environments, but I think this sets a very important precedent for the gameplay styles of future Sonic games—they may not suck after all!“

Some people didn’t know what to think, like Locit of TheGHZ.com:

“Damn it I think I’m getting excited about a Sonic game again.

This sucks.”

Reaction to the on-stage demonstration of Sonic Chronicles faired about the same, offering a wide-range of emotions - both positive and negative, like FlameStream from the SonicStadium.org forums:

“I feel that some elements in the game are stretched too long. Like those desert monolith’s attack. It seems to take quite a bit of time to charge up their attack.

The monster introduction before the start of the battle is not needed. Or, at least, it’s far too long. I shouldn’t look at the enemy and its name for 2.5 seconds each before the start of every battles. If intros are wanted, making them short and dynamic is the way to go (except bosses of course).“

Going back to TheGHZ.com, user K2J writes:

“I’m liking the 25+ hour thing. I guess this is more fleshed out than I thought.“

Over at Sonicfangameshq.com, Hungry Blyde also seems to like what he sees:

“Battles look alright, the EBA style play looks neat. Also, Central City’s BGM is apparently a remix of Jacques’ Diamond Dust Zone…these BioWare guys are pretty cool.“

One universal talking point regarding the Sonic Chronicles live demo is the difficulty, as highlighted by Keith Hemari at SonicEatsRings.com:

“I am seriously concerned about the fact that this guy is getting his ass handed to him both times he goes through combat.  I hope those are just powerful baddies and that they aren’t too common.“

Jolly Joes, also from SonicEatsRings.com, thinks it’s just because of where they started the demo:

“That’s because they seemed to be fighting very powerful enemies in that demo. Notice that when the few times the character did do damage only one hit point was shaved off.

(…)

Seeing that Bioware is calling this an “all-ages” RPG, I don’t think you have to worry about most battles being too challenging.“

What do you think of the new playtest footage of these upcoming Sonic games? Let us know in the comments!