You know what?  Games are too long.  Yes, I know, it’s fashionable to bemoan the demise of the epic videogame, but frankly, I’d rather have three hours of solid fun than fifty of crippling boredom.  Just look at Portal and tell me I’m not right.  I dare you.

Three hours would have been a good length for Sonic Unleashed.  Three hours of straightforward, high-octane running around linear tracks, while far from a wonderful reinvention, would have sufficed just nicely.  It’s in these sections that Unleashed becomes passable – and, at times, even rather enjoyable.  Sonic’s sheer speed provides much of the entertainment factor, and there isn’t a whole lot of skill involved in these sections – indeed, there are even a few inexcusable instant death traps to be sprinted into – but, as the scenery goes whizzing by, it’s hard to hold much of a grudge.



And we do get three hours of this.  But I’m less than thrilled by the repetitive, nonsensical, gimmicky interruptions that constitute the remaining majority of the game.

The first time night rolled around, alarm bells began to ring.  We see our loveable blue scamp turn from hedgehog into werehog – and yes, we noticed that it translates as ‘man-pig’ as well.  What this actually means is that Sonic grows stretchy arms and spends a couple of hours at a time moving boxes, swinging from beams, beating up embarrassingly stupid enemies and generally behaving as though he’s in the outtakes from pretty much every notable 3D adventure of recent years.

It strikes me as a bad idea to include these sections at all, let alone to this extent.  It strikes me as even worse an idea to not bother making them fun.  The werehog levels are relentlessly tedious, with badly-planned level design and awful control mechanics.  Whenever you die, usually as a result of Sonic flat-out refusing what you tell him to do, you’re chucked back to the last check-point, wherever the hell that was.  If you fancy leaving it for later, well, tough luck.  You can’t save the game, even at the check-points, meaning you have to endure the whole insufferable stage in one jaw-breaking mouthful.

It’ll probably make you sick.

Sonic Unleashed is yet another example of SEGA’s inexplicable misunderstanding of what people want from a Sonic game.  It’s a badly-contextualised, awfully-scripted and hideously contrived mess of bad ideas with bad implementation.  If I want to play Tomb Raider, Zelda or God of War, I can already do so, safe in the knowledge that there are a range of high-quality titles to choose from.  If I want to play Sonic, I expect to be able to enjoy Sonic for what it is – not as some lazy, uninventive and horrifically dull plagiarism of other people’s ideas.

Oh, it’s colourful and pretty, and there are a few moments of glorious madness hidden away in the depths.  But, in a casual game such as Sonic, I’m not sure I appreciate having to search for my fun – particularly when there’s barely any of it to be found.  How much longer can it be before SEGA stop trying to over-complicate things?  How much longer will it take for them to realise what made this series good in the first place?

Frankly, I’m not holding my breath.