A few weeks ago I reviewed the Face the Faith CD, and now continuing this theme I’m moving onto the Sonic Unleashed Soundtrack, aka Planetary Pieces.

Planetary Pieces – Sonic World Adventure – Original Soundtrack (Sonic Unleashed to everyone outside of Japan)

Music
Now I really enjoyed Sonic unleashed (well the 360 version at least), and a big part of that was the music which had to create a sense of speed during the day time stages (I’ll get on to the night time ones in a bit) and match the feel of each of the levels. In this I think there was a big success with tracks for the likes of Holska, Arid Sands, and Skyscrapper Scamper giving you just the right pace to match the feel of of speeding past the scenery.

The night time stage tracks take on a slower pace with a bit of a jazz feel to them, which makes them feel slightly more relaxed than the frantic daytime stage music. Its an interesting counterpoint which I feel works well if you listen to a day and night time stages together, the feel of the level is also maintained with the night time music a particular favorite of mine being the Cool Edge Night track.

That really covers the main level tracks, you also have all the tracks from the world hub areas and cut scene music which only really amount to some nice background music nothing that stands out on there own really.

Now normally with a big Sonic game like this there would be quiet a few vocal rock tracks from the likes of Crush 40 etc, which most people seem to have a love hate relationship with (I’d be in the love category btw), but this time there is only one major rock track and that’s the games main theme Endless possibility performed by Bowling for Soups vocalist Jaret Reddick, it feels a bit different from the usual rock that you get with Sonic but I found that over time it grew on me and now I have great difficulty resisting the urge to sing along whenever it comes on.

The only other vocal track in the game would be the ending theme Dear My Friend performed by Brent Crash, which is a very relaxed piano piece which I took to liking immediately although I think it would have been done better by a women.

What may be noticeable to anyone who has listened to Sonic game soundtracks for a while now is that there is generally a bit of recycling when it comes to character themes e.t.c. between CD’s, this time however there is none of that, the whole CD is all new material from the game with nothing from the older games which is quiet refreshing.

Packaging
With this being a three disc set they could have just gone with a bog standard double sized three CD jewel set, instead they went the whole hog (pardon the pun) with a cardboard fold out CD holder with cardboard sleeve with quiet frankly some amazing artwork from the game on the outside. It feels like they just put in a bit more effort to make us happy and they succeed.

Conclusion
Overall I really enjoyed the music and the packaging just sweetens the deal that little bit more, while there are a few tracks here and there that are a bit mediocre the rest more than makes up for it.

Planetary Pieces can be picked up online at Playasia be warned though this is coming from the Asia/Japan region.