You couldn't be more leashed

From what I'd seen, I figured this and Sonic 06 were the most likely to be the successors to Sonic Adventure. And, when I first launched this game and started playing through the tutorial level, I began to think I was right in my assumptions. Although a little more linear and with a few new annoying features (like QTEs mid-jump), the core gameplay is more or less the same and is just as exciting and fun. Then I hit the first hub area, a beautiful coastal Greek village with NPCs that say weird shit, just like in Sonic Adventure. I thought, "wow, could this be my new favorite Sonic game?" By the end of the second (if you count the tutorial) level, I was about ready to sing it praises.

But then the first "Werehog" level began, and boy oh boy, my opinion on a game never flip-flopped harder than that.

Jesus Christ, are Sonic developers insecure or something? Do they hate older Sonic games? Why do they keep using new formulas instead of polishing up what worked in Sonic Adventure (I wanted to abbreviate it as SA, but then I realized that SA closer describes what the Werehog levels did to this game).

The Werehog levels are just a TERRIBLE God of War clone. I mean, God of War is not my favorite hack-n-slash to begin with (I find it rather sluggish and overbearing), but it's a fine formula to iterate upon. There are things that God of War does better than any other game, but it also invented mechanics that have become a blight upon all of gamedev. Sonic Unleashed shamelessly copies the latter and utterly fails at imitating the former.

The combat is slow, unresponsive and too basic to be engaging in any way. Just button-mash until you get your rage meter filled and then button-mash faster. There are QTE finishers, but who the fuck needs those? Thankfully, you don't have to use them, and all that remains of them are annoying pop-ups with a loud notification-like sound. And the game just LOVES throwing crowds of annoying little (often flying) enemies at you. The kind that everybody hates.

When you're not contemplating suicide fighting, you do GoW-style platforming with all the annoying button-mashing prompts that it throws at you. I was genuinely surprised at just how many GoW mechanics they steal. Even 10% would've been too much for a Sonic game, but it's actually closer to 100%.

Except in God of War the tactility of routine actions is used to reinforce the player's participation in a cinematic epic. It makes sense: if you do QTEs when fighting giant monsters, why wouldn't you be doing the same thing when, say, opening doors? The reverse is also true. In both cases the QTE represents player interaction in an otherwise non-interactive sequence. This is a kind of psychological trick that empowers you and reinforces your agency, i.e. grabbing a giant monster's head with your chainblades and slamming it into a wall is as easy as opening a door.

So, my question is, what the fuck does any of this have to do with Sonic? Sonic is not a game that leans into cinematic epic battles. It has no use for QTEs in any context. All they do here is slow you down and pester you while you're just trying to make it through the level.

Ultimately, I gave up on the first boss. Playing through that level was genuinely fucking agonizing. I hated every minute of it. If I was rating the two playstyles that this game features separately, I'd rate the Sonic levels as 8 or 9 out of 10. The Werehog levels would be a 1. Absolutely horrendous.

And this is such a fucking bummer, as it's the second time (after Sonic Adventure 2) that the devs are chaining a genuinely great Sonic game to a dead weight and dropping it into the ocean.

If the devs of the Recompiled port could somehow separate the deformed twin from the healthy one, I would give it another chance, but as it is I'm not willing to torture myself through the abominable Werehog levels.