Werehogging

I’ll assume that the majority of you have heard the term “jumped the shark” before, but I wonder how many of you know what it means or where it came from.

According to Wikipedia, “Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that is used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery.” It was coined in 1977 in reaction to an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie literally jumped over a shark on a pair of water skis. At this point, the show had seemingly completely lost touch with itself and had become so ludicrous that to bring in viewers they had to resort to such charades as death-defying stunts.

An equivalent term has also been accepted for movies. “Nuking the fridge” is the point at which a movie is so ridiculous or out of touch that putting Indiana Jones in a refrigerator to survive a nuclear explosion becomes a thing that actually exists in film.

To get to the point of this article, there have been many cases of a video game jumping the shark, and many equivalent terms have been suggested, but haven’t really stuck. Here at PvG, I think we have the answer.

Werehogging.

Yes Werehogging, a term that I can barely type without grimacing a little. And in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, it refers to the game Sonic Unleashed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and, most notably, the Wii.

Sonic Unleashed is a 3D action platformer released in 2008 for our three favorite home consoles that features the lovable blue speedster, Sonic the Hedgehog. The day stages of the game combined 2D platforming sections, reminiscent of the Sonic games of old, and a new, fast-paced 3D Sonic experience, running appropriately on the “Hedgehog Engine” (except on the Wii), that put Sonic Adventure stages to shame. The game was fast, the controls were good, the music was decent (although a new Crush 40 track would have been nice) and it became what later Sonic games would use as the basis of their gameplay.

Unfortunately, if there is day, there must also be night. See, at the beginning of the game you watch a cut scene of Sonic obliterating Dr. Eggman’s space fleet and transforming into Super Sonic to assumedly capture him. However, when Sonic catches up to him in the bowels of his flagship, Eggman flips a switch that activates a trap, capturing Sonic, draining him of his power, stealing the Chaos Emeralds, and, you guessed it, turning him into a werewolf.

(Image belongs to Tyson Heese)

I’m generally pretty accepting of new gameplay mechanics or twists in the storylines of my favorite franchises (I’m looking at you Wind Waker), and oftentimes these changes can make games more enjoyable than a copy paste of the last installment (I’m looking at you New Super Mario Bros. U), but if the Werehog levels of Sonic Unleashed were the least bit “fun” or “innovative”, then it wouldn’t be a contender, and our pick, for the video game equivalent of jumping the shark.

To begin, and I suppose this is just nitpicking, the word werewolf comes from the Old English wer for man, and wulf for wolf. So in this regard (which is the only regard, mind you), calling Sonic a Werehog is akin to calling him a man-hedgehog, which is definitely not what the game is trying to convey. Maybe they thought Hogwolf sounded stupid, who knows? Regardless, that’s not what earned Sonic Unleashed a jumping the shark award.

What did was the gameplay of the Werehog stages. While Sonic is usually known for his blazing speed and levels filled with loops, pinball machine mechanics and easily trounced enemies, what he is not normally thought of is slow, lumbering or stretchy. In the Werehog stages of Sonic Unleashed you play as Sonic, transformed by the visible moonlight (not even a full moon, unless this alternate earth has a perpetually full moon) into a hulking, snarling, hairy shell of his former self. Your main abilities consist of swinging both or either of your long, stretchy arms at enemies to dispatch them, picking them up to beat the others with and using said arms to traverse obstacles like pitfalls.

Now at this point, you may be thinking, “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad, it sounds like a normal 3D hack and slash/beat ‘em up game”, but you’d be wrong. The game still puts an emphasis on beating these levels as fast as possible without giving you any sense of speed whatsoever, and the limited abilities you have as the Werehog get stale before the first stage is over. The only rewarding part of playing these levels is that you unlock more day stages afterwards (and progress the plot I suppose).

Oh, did I mention? Dr. Eggman used the power of the Chaos Emeralds to awaken the spirit of the earth, who subsequently broke it into five or so floating chunks, so that he could build his secret base/laboratory/amusement park “Eggmanland”. Almost par for the course, but I still fail to see what this has to do with lycanthropy.

One more thing, if you play the superior version on the PS3 or Xbox 360, you’ll get better day stages that make up about two thirds of the game while only having to endure the Werehog portions for the remaining third. If you play the Wii version, you’ll not only be playing as the Werehog half of the game, you’ll also be forced to use motion controls to swing Sonic’s big, stupid arms around (unless you play with a Gamecube controller, but that’s cheating, right?). Try getting an S rank on that stage now, sucker.

This is the end of my rant, and while I’ll submit that other games have Werehogged their stories or plots worse than Sonic Unleashed, none that I can think of have Werehogged their gameplay quite as badly.

If you disagree, tell us what you think in the comments.

Esky out.