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February 3, 2006 | 8:50 AM PST
by: Shawn Sinclaire
“If Sonic is the fastest creature alive, why does he need a hover board?” Well…uh…because his shoes can’t help him pull a 360 stale fish method across a huge canyon, that’s why. The latest installment in the Sonic series sees our favorite blue hedgehog taking to the air in a racing game that utilizes the speed and tight maneuvering of games like F-Zero and throws in the style of a snowboarding SSX, then blends smoothly, tops off with a strawberry, and serves icy cold. Much like the strawberry daiquiri being described, Sonic Riders will leave you with a bitter sweet taste in your mouth. Ultimately, you’ll be satisfied. But the speeds might make you a little tipsy.
We’ve spent quite a bit of time with the single player mode of Sonic Riders and the majority of what we’ve seen so far, we’ve liked. As to be expected in any title featuring the Sonic name, Riders is a fast paced racing title that features the racers riding on air boards not unlike that awesome hover board from Back to the Future. You’ll have access to seven initial characters from the Sonic universe, with more to unlock. Each of these riders is placed into simple classes and rated on four specific stats. You have the power class which can literally ride straight through large obstacles that would ordinarily slow down smaller characters, the flight class which features characters that have a higher capacity for air (explained later) and the speed class which is obviously the fastest of the three. The next thing you have to look at are the four ratings your characters are rated on: dash, limit, power, and cornering. Then, as if picking a character wasn’t hard enough, you have to pick a board, and those are rated on the four previously mentioned categories as well. Initially, you have access to only one board, but as you progress through the game you can unlock and purchase new boards from the Chao shop. There are at least 20 or so different boards, each with unique traits and each one rated on a four attribute level as well. There are tons of combinations for players to try out for themselves to see what works best.
The boards themselves are awesomely quick, but they are dependant on a fuel source. Thankfully, this fuel source is abundant: air. As long as you have some air in your board, your speed will be righteous and you’ll take out the competition. However, as your air supply depletes, your board will slow down and if your air falls far enough, you’ll be forced to hop off your board and try to run to the nearest pit stop. This is one of the more unique and interesting elements of the game, because the way to refuel your board is simple: Get some air.
There are many ways to do this, all of which are effective and can really make or break your race. If you’re in the middle of the pack, the speed of the riders ahead of you will actually create a half-pipe of air turbulence that you can then hop in and ride. As you ride this air wave, you can wiggle the control stick back and forth to try and pull off tricks off the edges of the half-pipe. Speaking of tricks, those are another great way to grab some air for your board. Anytime you find yourself soaring off of a ramp or off the edge of a turbulence pipe, use the control stick to execute 360s, flips, mutes, and other gnarly tricks. You can pull them off in sequence of each other for a truly awesome air spectacle, but make sure you stick the landing or else you’ll actually lose some speed. Every time you do a trick, you’ll get graded on the tricks you pull, how many you pull in the air, and your ability to stick the landing. Obviously, the better the grade, the better the speed boost when you pull it off. Nothing is sweeter than pulling off a series of sweet tricks and getting the ‘X’ rating as you boost ahead of the competition. While riding, you’ll also occasionally run into power capsule powerups that contain air. If none of those methods help you out, there are pit stop stations throughout each level that you can ride into in order to charge your board, but they’ll cost you in timely seconds lost to the competition.
The racing goes even deeper than that, as air is only one of the many concerns you’ll have to monitor throughout the race. There are also power rings spread throughout the level that, when picked up, can upgrade your board mid-race. There are three ring levels to obtain by collecting rings and getting your board to level 3 will provide you with a huge advantage. Your ring collecting can easily be thwarted by running off the track of being attacked by enemy riders, both of which ultimately make you lose your entire hard earned ring. Speaking of attacks, each character has attacks that can be executed at the loss of some air. Tails, for example, will actually begin swinging a mace around his head to hit neighboring riders while Knuckles’ fists will get large and swing out at anyone who nears. You can also use timely speed boost attacks as well. Not only will these attacks ram the opposition ahead of you, but they’ll also give you a significant launch forward. But you can’t use these very often, because they drain air. Then you have to worry about deep, banking curves that require you to effectively power slide your way around them. Do them correctly with good timing, and you’ll be rewarded with a speed boost. Mistimed it and you’ll be punished by other riders laughing as they fly past you. Oh, and did I mention the shortcuts in the levels? Each level has shortcuts that cater to specific classes of characters. There are shortcuts for the power characters, the speed characters, and the flying characters. If you’re Tails, you can’t use Sonic’s shortcut or Knuckle’s shortcut, and actually try to do so will probably punish you. This is not a simple racing game by any means. In fact, it’s quite hard.
This screen doesn't do the game justice. It's actually quite gorgeous at full speed.
As a friend put it, “There is no single way you can maneuver yourself to the front.” This sums up Sonic Riders difficulty quite well. There is no rubber banding, there is no blue spiked shell; there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover from falling in last place. It’s not impossible to move from 8th to 1st place, just don’t expect the game to help you much. You have to collect rings, you have to use boosts but not too many boosts because you have to monitor air, you need to watch for turbulence and ride it while realizing that if you don’t have turbulence, you better be ready to corner, or use the shortcuts that you must know the exact locations of but only if you’re the right character and if you miss and are wrong you are dead and….wow. This game is just plain fun.
However, the difficulty is downright frustrating sometimes because it is very easy to lose the lead. A single mistake and you may as well pause and restart the race. So while this game is quite fun, be prepared to lose. It’s simply going to happen. It’s also a good thing the gameplay is so much fun, because the story mode is Cheesy with a capital cheese. The CG is actually quite amazing (Done by Production I.G., the company behind Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) in its color and detail, but the voice acting lies somewhere between cartoony and absolutely annoying. Sure, Sonic and his pals are supposed to sound cute, but their dialogue is just too corny to take seriously. Speaking of cheese, the plot has more holes than Swiss on a shooting range. But, none of that really matters much because the core gameplay is in the racing. You play story mode to unlock characters and tracks and new boards, then you never touch single player again and go straight to multiplayer.
So what can you expect from Sonic Riders single player? The CG is fantastic, but the voices are not so much. The plot is nothing special, but going through it is worth the tons of unlockables you'll discover. But all that is rather insignificant because at the very core of Sonic Riders, the gameplay is fun and addicting. The speeds you'll encounter on the well-designed tracks as well as the character and board variation is enough to get most hardcore players into the game. It may turn some novices away however because it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. When you beat a level in Sonic Riders, you feel a genuine sense of accomplishment, that's for sure. Sonic Riders will bring new life to the Xbox and the GameCube later this month. Sonic Riders delivers a sense of speed and pure, competitive gameplay while executing a completely original racing system with the air boards. This game is gnarly, dudes.
Stay tuned for next week's hands-on where we focus exclusively on the multiplayer aspects of this title.
We’ve spent quite a bit of time with the single player mode of Sonic Riders and the majority of what we’ve seen so far, we’ve liked. As to be expected in any title featuring the Sonic name, Riders is a fast paced racing title that features the racers riding on air boards not unlike that awesome hover board from Back to the Future. You’ll have access to seven initial characters from the Sonic universe, with more to unlock. Each of these riders is placed into simple classes and rated on four specific stats. You have the power class which can literally ride straight through large obstacles that would ordinarily slow down smaller characters, the flight class which features characters that have a higher capacity for air (explained later) and the speed class which is obviously the fastest of the three. The next thing you have to look at are the four ratings your characters are rated on: dash, limit, power, and cornering. Then, as if picking a character wasn’t hard enough, you have to pick a board, and those are rated on the four previously mentioned categories as well. Initially, you have access to only one board, but as you progress through the game you can unlock and purchase new boards from the Chao shop. There are at least 20 or so different boards, each with unique traits and each one rated on a four attribute level as well. There are tons of combinations for players to try out for themselves to see what works best.
The boards themselves are awesomely quick, but they are dependant on a fuel source. Thankfully, this fuel source is abundant: air. As long as you have some air in your board, your speed will be righteous and you’ll take out the competition. However, as your air supply depletes, your board will slow down and if your air falls far enough, you’ll be forced to hop off your board and try to run to the nearest pit stop. This is one of the more unique and interesting elements of the game, because the way to refuel your board is simple: Get some air.
There are many ways to do this, all of which are effective and can really make or break your race. If you’re in the middle of the pack, the speed of the riders ahead of you will actually create a half-pipe of air turbulence that you can then hop in and ride. As you ride this air wave, you can wiggle the control stick back and forth to try and pull off tricks off the edges of the half-pipe. Speaking of tricks, those are another great way to grab some air for your board. Anytime you find yourself soaring off of a ramp or off the edge of a turbulence pipe, use the control stick to execute 360s, flips, mutes, and other gnarly tricks. You can pull them off in sequence of each other for a truly awesome air spectacle, but make sure you stick the landing or else you’ll actually lose some speed. Every time you do a trick, you’ll get graded on the tricks you pull, how many you pull in the air, and your ability to stick the landing. Obviously, the better the grade, the better the speed boost when you pull it off. Nothing is sweeter than pulling off a series of sweet tricks and getting the ‘X’ rating as you boost ahead of the competition. While riding, you’ll also occasionally run into power capsule powerups that contain air. If none of those methods help you out, there are pit stop stations throughout each level that you can ride into in order to charge your board, but they’ll cost you in timely seconds lost to the competition.
The racing goes even deeper than that, as air is only one of the many concerns you’ll have to monitor throughout the race. There are also power rings spread throughout the level that, when picked up, can upgrade your board mid-race. There are three ring levels to obtain by collecting rings and getting your board to level 3 will provide you with a huge advantage. Your ring collecting can easily be thwarted by running off the track of being attacked by enemy riders, both of which ultimately make you lose your entire hard earned ring. Speaking of attacks, each character has attacks that can be executed at the loss of some air. Tails, for example, will actually begin swinging a mace around his head to hit neighboring riders while Knuckles’ fists will get large and swing out at anyone who nears. You can also use timely speed boost attacks as well. Not only will these attacks ram the opposition ahead of you, but they’ll also give you a significant launch forward. But you can’t use these very often, because they drain air. Then you have to worry about deep, banking curves that require you to effectively power slide your way around them. Do them correctly with good timing, and you’ll be rewarded with a speed boost. Mistimed it and you’ll be punished by other riders laughing as they fly past you. Oh, and did I mention the shortcuts in the levels? Each level has shortcuts that cater to specific classes of characters. There are shortcuts for the power characters, the speed characters, and the flying characters. If you’re Tails, you can’t use Sonic’s shortcut or Knuckle’s shortcut, and actually try to do so will probably punish you. This is not a simple racing game by any means. In fact, it’s quite hard.
This screen doesn't do the game justice. It's actually quite gorgeous at full speed.
As a friend put it, “There is no single way you can maneuver yourself to the front.” This sums up Sonic Riders difficulty quite well. There is no rubber banding, there is no blue spiked shell; there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover from falling in last place. It’s not impossible to move from 8th to 1st place, just don’t expect the game to help you much. You have to collect rings, you have to use boosts but not too many boosts because you have to monitor air, you need to watch for turbulence and ride it while realizing that if you don’t have turbulence, you better be ready to corner, or use the shortcuts that you must know the exact locations of but only if you’re the right character and if you miss and are wrong you are dead and….wow. This game is just plain fun.
However, the difficulty is downright frustrating sometimes because it is very easy to lose the lead. A single mistake and you may as well pause and restart the race. So while this game is quite fun, be prepared to lose. It’s simply going to happen. It’s also a good thing the gameplay is so much fun, because the story mode is Cheesy with a capital cheese. The CG is actually quite amazing (Done by Production I.G., the company behind Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) in its color and detail, but the voice acting lies somewhere between cartoony and absolutely annoying. Sure, Sonic and his pals are supposed to sound cute, but their dialogue is just too corny to take seriously. Speaking of cheese, the plot has more holes than Swiss on a shooting range. But, none of that really matters much because the core gameplay is in the racing. You play story mode to unlock characters and tracks and new boards, then you never touch single player again and go straight to multiplayer.
So what can you expect from Sonic Riders single player? The CG is fantastic, but the voices are not so much. The plot is nothing special, but going through it is worth the tons of unlockables you'll discover. But all that is rather insignificant because at the very core of Sonic Riders, the gameplay is fun and addicting. The speeds you'll encounter on the well-designed tracks as well as the character and board variation is enough to get most hardcore players into the game. It may turn some novices away however because it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. When you beat a level in Sonic Riders, you feel a genuine sense of accomplishment, that's for sure. Sonic Riders will bring new life to the Xbox and the GameCube later this month. Sonic Riders delivers a sense of speed and pure, competitive gameplay while executing a completely original racing system with the air boards. This game is gnarly, dudes.
Stay tuned for next week's hands-on where we focus exclusively on the multiplayer aspects of this title.
November 20, 2009
