At first glance, Sonic Riders seems to have everything going against it. Mascot-based racers outside of the Mario Kart series are usually average-to-bad in quality, so immediately expectations are lowered. Also, the logo looks suspiciously like a certain Saturn Sonic racer’s, one that may help to draw negative parallels for all but the most hardened of SEGA veterans. However, upon deeper inspection, it’s clear that more effort was put into Sonic Riders than any other Sonic racer to date.
A Sonic-based racing game only makes sense-- you have a hedgehog that can "roll around at the speed of sound," and other characters who can go more or less the same speed, so the idea of racing them is only natural. Of course, you have characters that aren’t quite as fast who will need to be represented, so it wouldn’t be fair if this game were based on a footrace, oh no. In Sonic Riders, characters race on "gears," though they aren’t your typical hover board-style race crafts for two reasons-- one being that they aren’t just boards, but also bikes and skates. The other reason is that each type of gear has its own style of play.
The game’s gears are divided up into three classes: Speed, Power, and Fly. Each sub-section has significantly different attributes. Speed gears can grind on rails, much like Sonic can in the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Advance series’; Power gears can smash through specific walls that rematerialize upon passing through them, and Fly (Engrish be damned) gears can propel themselves along predetermined air-based shortcuts. If a gear isn’t designed to use that type of shortcut, it can’t use that shortcut, unless the player has unlocked one of the game’s fifty special gears that allow players to use more than one type.
Regardless, each type of shortcut has advantages over the others. Fly shortcuts may seem like the best because they cover the most ground, but they’re the hardest to use, as they require players to actively navigate through a set of rings. Missing one will slow the player down, or sometimes knock them quite far off track. Speed shortcuts will send players quickly along a set of rails, and are probably the second easiest to use, since Power shortcuts simply open up shortcuts with one-button presses.
Of course the ability to boost is present-- what kind of a mascot-based racer would Sonic Riders be if you couldn’t? Boosting drains your fuel, so should you over boost and the vehicle runs out of gas, or as the game calls it, "Air," you’ll have to walk to the nearest booster-pack to get moving again. The Air meter can also be filled through performing tricks, so it’s important to learn how to balance using your boost with performing tricks. In this respect the game is similar to EA’s SSX, though the tricks here are mostly automatic.
In fact, a surprising amount of things in Sonic Riders are automatic. Similar to Kirby Air Ride, there is no gas button, so players only have to concentrate on making turns, hitting shortcuts, and performing tricks to keep their Air meter filled. Also, most of the sixteen tracks lack walls, and other true "obstacles" found in most racing games, meaning if you miss a turn or go off course, you’ll probably hit another part of the course and just keep going. SEGA wants this game to be accessible, but the simplicity may turn some people off. It’s not to say that the game isn’t pretty to look at, though -- Sonic Riders blazes at a solid sixty frames-per-second.
Sonic Riders also has some multiplayer features, and could provide those who tire of the single-player antics or those who enjoy competing with friends more game for their money.
A decent cast of selectable characters, a large track-list filled with shortcuts, and a massive amount of racing crafts should be enough to warrant a look at Sonic Riders, but the overly simplistic gameplay might turn some off. Sonic Riders stops in stores this Feburary.
