Dear Sega, please stop.

Dear Sega,

Please stop killing Sonic the Hedgehog. The Sonic franchise came from strong and humble beginnings as one of the platforming staples of the early generation of consoles, and has gone through so many revisionings and devolutions that the true essence of Sonic, running fast, has almost been entirely lost to poorly executed gimmicks and lack of proper testing.

Sonic the Hedgehog used to be billed as "the fastest thing alive." We as gamers were treated to Sonic 2 for Genesis, Sonic 3, Sonic and Knuckles, the fantastic Sonic Rush, the fun Game Gear iterations and Sonic Spinball...but something happened. It feels like you lost sight. Let's focus on the latest title though: Sonic Unleashed.

While talking with a friend of mine about the game (which we've almost beaten), we decided that if you were to make the Werehog into Knuckles, and CHIP into Tails, the game would be passable. But by stripping Sonic of what makes it fun to be Sonic, the game falters yet again (one of many hiccups on its road.) The Day stages are fun, fast and twitchy. They're rife with action and destruction and multiple paths and it feels like FINALLY we're playing a Sonic game! Then we have the overworld, the hub cities, and finally the hub cities hubs. Overcomplicated and messy. Collecting the Sun and Moon medals feels tacked on, and forced me to grind stages. I should never have to grind anything but rails in Sonic. If we could only get rid of the overworld, the inventory system, the lame interactions with the camera...the game's score would rise. That's right: by deleting features the game would be better.

Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. It's an unfortunate one. The Day levels are fun, and if the Night levels were Knuckles they'd be fun too. But all that extra fluff, and the annoying game features makes it plod and drag itself along. I want someone to give me a hacked copy of the game, that's all the day levels from start to finish with the boss battles. That's all I really want from Sonic Unleashed.

Here's the plan, Sega: Open a division called Sonic Team America, and let them develop the next Sonic title. Take a hint from Miyamoto, who says Mario isn't about story. Sonic isn't about story. It's not about the Werehog and it's not about CHIP and it's not about the Black Knight. Sonic is about collecting rings, running damn fast, and saving the planet form Doctor Eggman with the power of the Chaos Emeralds, that's ALL. Sonic Team America will make one game, and if it fails, close'em. You've got the funds to do it, you've got the full ability to fund an American dev team, and you'll see the sales from their Sonic title top the sales of ALL previous next gen Sonic titles. You took a shot with Bioware, and it came out fun and interesting. Take a shot with a fresh team. They won't lost sight of what made, and will make, Sonic great.

Thank you for your time.

-Joe Locastro

PS: After hearing criticism for the Werehog, saying that you just "didn't do it right," is lame. Consider why people didn't like it. The Werehog levels aren't a Sonic game. They're a seperate entity, and they don't belong in a Sonic game. Don't "do it better", cut it. And focus on the speed levels.

Red Faction Guerilla

So I made a mistake, and by the end of this review you'll be very aware of it.

Red Faction came in the darkness of the night on the wings of stellar reviews. Metacritic reports amazingly high scores for the first few pages, all mostly lauding the games destructibility and fun factor. Let's break it down.

Game play: The gameplay of RF:G is a tough fence for me to walk. On the Pros side of things there is the incredibly fun and rewarding destruction system. Placing charges, using your madly over-powered hammer and rocket launcher to tear buildings to shreds is great fun. It's satisfying to hear the creak as you can tell as building is about to fall on its own, then book it out as the girders tumble down around you. It's a rush.

Then there's everything else.

The controls for vehicles are sticky, making for a very doable but rigid driving experience. (To get really nitpicky: the character you pick up in your truck react to its movements but Mason doesn't even move his arms when he turns the wheels, he's more of an intelligent obelisk at that point.) Bailing from a vehicle is a hard to gauge action and picking up your teammates can be a crapshoot. But the real kicker is the mission layout. The game gives you a map to choose a location from to perform guerilla actions or story missions (which you have the option to do at any point). The main issue is that once you get to the mission's location you are just briefed on the mission, the actual mission is elsewhere. Back in the car, and you're off. Each mission takes two trips to reach, and that really started to irk me. I could never get my hands on appropriate ammo, or plot good routes, because each mission would result in me criss-crossing the map multiple times. To make a long tirade short: the game got boring (Plus, the guerillas never get mad when you kill them all or blow up their hangar I noticed...strange). 2/5

Graphics: The first thing I said when I looked at this game was "It looks like Mass Effect." The lighting is perfect, the character models are well made and it handles me blowing the living hell out of the environment very well. I didn't notice any slowdown at all. It's a beautiful game to look at, even if it is just the dusty red surface of Mars. One silly graphical note is that all NPCs seem to be packing heat, regardless whether they're guerillas or not. 5/5

Sound: The music was second fiddle, orchestral and sweeping as is fitting a sci-fi action game, but the sounds of the explosions and the bullets hitting flesh were spot on. Each explosion was fresh sounding, lingering in the air. Give it a better soundtrack and you'd really be cookin. 3/5

Lasting Appeal: Multiplayer. Without it, this game is Mercenaries 2 meets...Mercenaries 2. It's not a lot different. It's an open world game based on a pretty neat gimmick, and as a result it falls on it's face in other areas. The online multiplayer however is fun and fast for the most part, with destructable cover adding to the confusion and chaos. But it's not enough to hold me over with it, I traded the game in today. 2/5

Final Word: The mistake I made was buying a game without getting my hands on some real first impressions. The story mode left me yawning almost immediately, then overwhelmed me and left me yawning again. I couldn't get excited about the cookie cutter story and the lame mission layout, it really drove the experience of the game down. To solve this little hiccup: give me the GeoMod engine in a game that's not focused on it, like GTAIV or another open-world sandbox. Having the mod system as a side effect to my actions will give high action games even more depth. Right now this red rock adventure is leaving me a little spaced...

...

...someone shoot me.

Score: 12/20