Sonic Riders (GameCube) Review

To begin with though we should have a look at the plot. Dr Robotnik is hosting an "extreme" tournament using hover boards and the price of entry is one Chaos Emerald each, winner takes the lot. Several people enter, including Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and a trio of new characters. These characters are known as the Babylon Rogues and are mythical thieves who have stolen a Chaos Emerald and are searching for the ancient Babylonian treasure. So everyone enters and that's where you take over.

You'll probably head into story mode first, a wise choice indeed. But anyone hoping for an F-Zero type story mode will be deeply...deeply disappointed. You see, whereas in F-Zero the missions led to unique situations and race structures (i.e. not always standard 3 lap races, occasionally having to fulfil certain requirements) in Sonic Riders that isn't the case. The vast majority of missions are very formulaic and invariably require you to finish first. Why have it in? Why not just have the normal race modes and leave this out? The plot hardly warrants a whole mode to uncovering it and this just wastes disk space and the developers' time.

There is a multiplayer mode in there, but it isn't that spectacular. Feels quite tacked on and not as integral to the game as it should be. At worst the multiplayer should've been an amusing diversion, however this won't get near your GC when mates are around. "Shall we play Sonic Riders?" "Instead Super Monkey Ball's Monkey Race? No chance".

Graphically the game is very nice. Virtually no slowdown and good detail is present all through the game. The cut scenes vary from being in game to being in quite a cool anime style fmv movie reminiscent of the old fmv on Sonic CD. It would be interesting to see Sega carry the style of the cut scenes into the full game, it might give Sonic back that unique style he's been missing since he moved to 3d. Alas we are stuck with the generic graphics again. Not a bad thing, just not a particularly good thing either.

When you actually get down to racing you'll realise that this isn't your normal racing game. There is no accelerate button, there is a grind button and there are buttons for front flips and back flips. Confused? Understandable. You see, Sonic Riders is based on tricks. The more tricks you pull off when in mid air then the more your "air meter" will fill. Your air meter determines how much you can use your speed boost, which is crucial when you can't actually accelerate. To refill this air meter you can either do tricks (as has been mentioned), collect the necessary rings for an air upgrade or go into a pit lane. Now the pits aren't like in F-Zero, you don't glide through them recovering your depleted air and not interfering with the speed of the game. Instead you stop rather abruptly and are forced to wait whilst you recharge. Agonisingly having to watch everyone drift past you with all the ease of the wind itself.

That's just one of the annoyances of actually racing, and in fact it's a suitably minor one when compared to the one we're going to mention. Firstly let's think, in a fast racing game on hover boards what do you expect to be sublime? Yes, the controls. You are riding on the air, this should control like a dream. You should be darting in and out of opponents, sliding around corners and pulling off tricks like there is no tomorrow. However the controls are what kill this game and consign it to the bargain bin section of your local gaming emporium. If you somehow manage to catch up with an opponent then one hit of the A button results in you attacking the opponent nearest to you. You have no control over attacks and some are pretty odd (Knuckles seems to bite people, Tails swings a plug around his head) and all they do is remove coins and a bit of speed from the equation. Not the game deciding factor it really should be.

When on the straight moving left to right is far too sensitive, you'll crash into the walls and lose vital speed. Bizarrely, when you then go to turn a corner it is impossible. You're character leans and leans and leans but your hover board just slams into the barrier. Now this isn't just on walls where you should be using the "air slide" to turn, this is on all corners. So you are left having to air slide around all corners, again taking the speed out of the game. This might be okay if the computer faced the same problems, but guess what... they can take corners perfectly.
It just adds to the frustration factor of racing and means that you can race a well as you possibly can and still lose simply down to the controls. The fun factor is zapped out as is the skill factor and those are two to of the main reasons of playing games in general, so why waste your time struggling with this? Well you shouldn't, gamers everywhere deserve better than this. The simple lack of care taken in making the game really shows through and it shows a complete lack of respect for gamers.

Those factors make Sonic Riders a Sonic game you can definitely miss out. Granted there are enough extras to unlock (new boards, characters) and the levels are well crafted (although not up to Mario Kart or F-Zero standards) but actually racing is a frustrating and soul sucking experience that was clearly not tested well enough before being sent out. The worrying thing is that a sequel is strongly rumoured, could this mark the slide into EA style Sonic games? It's possible. The standard of Sonic games is certainly slipping and the general lack of care when using the brand is a big worry for fans. Here's hoping things improve, because this game is a crushing disappointment. We hoped for F-Zero meets Sonic, we got a monster of a game. Sad.