Sonic Riders (GameCube) Preview

Sonic is the fastest thing on the planet... Shadow and Knuckles are fast but Sonic still is "Sonic Boom" fast. So why would he need to race on a hover board? Well two reasons, firstly hover boards are cool and no one can deny that. Secondly, it's much easier to create good controls and a nice feel to piloting a hover board than piloting a character directly. Anyone who played Sonic R will testify that racing games on foot feel... mushy to control.

Speaking of controls, Sonic Riders certainly impresses in this department for sheer bravery. It would be so easy for Sonic Team to simply do a traditional control scheme (R trigger as accelerator, L is break, the rest can do anything) but they dare to do different. There isn't an accelerate button, instead the game is geared towards moving left and right, using the "turbo" button when the racer sees fit and doing the fundamentals of racing well (drifting, shortcuts, attacking other racers). This will certainly make the game more accessible for gamers not well versed in the ways of racing games, and the simple controls means the gamer can focus on the new gear types.

"What are gear types" I hear you cry? Well, gear types are the extension of the different powers of each character introduced in previous 3d sonic games (e.g Tails = flying, Knuckles = power, Sonic = speed) and these gears will affect the shortcuts you can take. Speed characters can use rails to grind and gain extra speed, power characters can blast through walls to access hidden areas of the track, flying characters can... well...fly.

Now, to use these "gears" you will need "air". Air is achieved by picking up boost packs littered around the course and by doing tricks in a style similar to the old Dreamcast game "Trickstyle". Early impressions on this gaming innovation shows that Sonic Team have gone a good job of balancing the types so none have a clear advantage and with 50 gear types present in the final game this looks like adding a great deal of replay value and general gaming value to the finished product.

Another gameplay addition is that of "waves". Waves are u shaped moving tunnels that trail behind players when the computer deems it so. If you can race within the length of these then you will find your speed hitting retinal explosion levels whilst those out with the wave will be slowed down a bit. If "when boosting" you catch up with the player producing the wave you will automatically do an attack which will slow them down. Should make for amusing last lap wave riding, the only concern is that the waves are too easy to ride but we won't know that until we play the final version.

Single player mode consists of standard races in dispersed with missions that tie in with the plot. Not much info is out on either, but the tracks are littered with enough shortcuts and places of interest that the missions have the potential to be quite innovative. Multiplayer is your standard 4 player racing fare, offline of course...
Graphically, this is stunning and a definite return to form for the series. Everything is crisp, bright and runs very smoothly. The waves look extremely cool and all the characters are well detailed and (crucially) extremely well animated.

All sounds good, but the game does have one or two potential faults. Whilst there are 16 track variations, there are only 5 standard tracks. It would be nice to have a few more and how big a drawback this will be will depend on how good the track variations are. If they can successfully simulate completely new tracks then it'll be fine. There is also the danger that this will be far too arcadey and not have any room for skill, instead relying on using the waves constantly and attacking your opponents frequently. We won't know if this is the case until release though, and it's a release that speed freaks should keep an eye on. This is shaping up to be a fun game to end Sonic's association with the GameCube and on first impressions he is going out an a high.

Sonic Riders is due for release on the 17th of March in Europe