Sega1991 said:
I know there are some people here at NeoGAF that will disagree with me, but the Wii version is pretty awful. I finally got around to playing the Wii version a few months ago and it's stiff and janky and most of the daytime levels feel way more rigid than their HD counterparts.
I disagree with you. It was obviously the side effort compared to Unleashed HD, but it was better in my opinion. Far more streamlining (stats are automatically leveled for the Werehog, and only temporarily upgraded for Sonic by "Leveling Up" in-stage for each 20 or so rings). The Werehog levels were much more linear, but focused in a good way IMO, more puzzle-oriented, and generally less tiresome long-hauls. Even if there were too many of them, at least they broke up into segments you could save between.
Sonic's stages had more emphasis on drifting and linking together actions, and had sort of a "you vs the environment" feel. There were still enemies, just not too many times you were locked in a room until you killed them all.
The game's lives system was interesting, I didn't even learn how to earn extra lives until I'd already beaten the game. I liked the extra challenge areas in the temple, which used real-time switching between Sonic and Werehog as part of puzzles, instead of just changing segments. The overworld hubs were sparse, but also not needlessly gigantic and wasteful like Spagonia and such. There's very little wasted time in the overworld of the Wii version, which I appreciate. There's also no terrible "5 minute QTE" Tornado levels.
Also, the Super Sonic sequence was infinitely less shitty than "Fly achingly slow toward the boss," "Curl around this disorienting dome ramming tentacles that like to hide from you," and "Press X 60 times in 15 seconds or automatically die."
Finally, biggest bonus: I was never locked away from playing Story Stages because I didn't scrounge for an unnatural amount of medals in previous stages. I thought I was already doing a lot of exploring in Unleashed, but I was roadblocked twice, hard by the medal requirements. Those were way too high.
I will say the game was best with a Classic Controller, not a Wii Remote + Nunchuk or even a Gamecube controller (something about Boosting and Light Dashing maps differently between CC and GC for reasons I don't understand). I would not play it with motion controls, I remember not even being able to scale pipes with the Werehog with motion controls.
