Head to Live Arcade, and download Sonic 2. Go on, it’s only 400 points – that’s hardly the price of a Persian sofa, or the complete discography of David Essex. Once you do, fire it up, navigate through that pointless Sega Vintage screen, and dive into Emerald Hill Zone, Stage 1. Hear that wonderful music, rip through that glorious level and tell us that it’s not one of the happiest gaming experiences of your entire life. Shortly afterwards, try one level of 2006’s 360 game, Sonic The Hedgehog, and try not to projectile vomit into the faces of oncoming children. It’s difficult. With these two different scenarios in mind, we get a clear picture of how far the Sonic franchise has fallen in recent years. From Mega Drive icon to multiformat joke, no character needs a makeover more than Sonic.

Well, like that reprehensible 2006 game, Sonic Unleashed promises to put the franchise back to the forefront of the platform genre. X360 travelled to Sega’s headquarters in Tokyo, and got a first look at the game in action. We saw four of the game’s nine stages, which, unlike previous games, take place in ‘real-world’ locations. By that, we mean the game is inspired by places like New York, Europe (eww!) and China, even though they’re not supposed to be accurate representations of those regions. Nobody, for example, is going to hold up a McDonald’s sign in Times Square, while contemplating a slow and painful suicide – they’re included to give each level a recognisable feel. For us, we’d have been happy with new takes on old favourites, like Casino Zone and Starlight Zone, but the levels in Sonic Unleashed look astonishing as they are. The detail is intricate, the backgrounds are rich and a crucial soft focus makes everything feel that bit more light-hearted.

As you may already know, one of the major gimmicks of Sonic Unleashed is its 2.5D perspective. No, this doesn’t mean it’s framed in an obscure, freakish isometric perspective like the abominable Flickies’ Island, but rather a view-switching mechanic that alternates between 2D and 3D, depending on the part of the level. It’s rather easy to be cynical about this concept, yet we see it as the hedgehog’s most sensible move in over a decade. After all, the only proven aspects of Sonic’s history lie in 2D, so re-integrating that idea with the pace and beauty of next-gen animation was always going to work well, it’s just a shame that it took Sega so long to realise this.

Sonic Unleashed originally started life as Sonic Adventure 3, but this idea was scrapped when the team realised it would be total bollocks. Instead, Sonic Team focused on making a game that could erase the sour memories of the series, while proving that the character still had allure. To do this, it created an entirely new engine (the Hedgehog Engine – genius), and the game was placed into the hands of developers that understand the series’ near-cancerous flaws.

… continued