Sonic Riders proves that it stacks up as a worthy party game rival against Mario Kart.
The Review
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Sonic Riders, from the Sonic Team, is one of those surprising spin offs that actually plays like the original Sonic game. It's fast, exciting, and has great level design. You'll be amazed by how fast the game goes, sometimes you'll be too amazed and soon start to realize that it's more like a roller coaster ride. Sometimes the track goes by so fast, you don't even know when to use the drift button.
I should probably explain the story line. Sonic Riders like any other Sonic game, starts out with Sonic, Tails, and Knux searching for the chaos emeralds. (bling bling) Soon they discover one of them being stolen by a trio of thieves being chased by the cops. Sonic chases them, and somehow loses them? Not very good for someone with an alias knowned as, "Blue Blur".
During Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles' travel in Future City, they soon learn that Eggman is holding an Extreme Gear racing contest or "EX World Grand Prix" with the entry fee of being one chaos emerald. What I don't understand is that they only showed a little bit of doubt about Eggman's contest. C'mon, don't you know when Eggman and Chaos Emerald is used in the same sentence, it's a bad idea? *SIGH* Eggman is the worst mastermind ever.
One of my thoughts - As if Sonic Team wasn't being edgy enough with the guns in Shadow the Hedgehog, does anyone else find it weird that the hover boards in the game are knowned as Extreme Gear? That seems a bit weird and gives me memories of Johnny EXTREME. *shudder*
Back to the Review-
Eggman puts together a trio of avian Extreme Gear specialists, the same ones who stole the chaos emerald from the intro, into the race to beat Sonic and his friends so he can obviously claim the prize for himself for his evil plans. There's no way he could fail at this devious plot, or does it seem like a cliche' to me.
The tracks that our little furries race on are fast-paced, complicated, confusing, hard, and eye-poppingly stunning. But what keeps the graphics from reaching the ten is some of the horrible textures. If you have enough skill in this game to pay attention to the level details and the race, I commend you. Some of the details like the leaves on the trees and the water effects all seem like they came out of a PC game in the mid 90's. (my timeline could be wrong)
There are so much additions in these tracks. Obstacles, ramps, boosts, rings (to purchase Extreme Gear in the game and increase your Air Tank), power ups, rails, and chances to FLY LIKE THE WIND! Problem with this is that there are sometimes so many doodads in the tracks that you won't even know what to do. You may think it sounds easy, but this game is harder than F-Zero.
Take for example, the annoying Air Tank. Your Air Board is supplied with a couple of air for use on the track. Boosting your board will only take a large quantity of air off, when you run out of air, get used to having to run to the nearest pit stop to fuel up. Which by the way, kills off the fun. What's better about this is that you can pull off tricks Tony Hawk style to refill your air tank. I just wish those tricks weren't so basic with the use of button mashing the A button too much. So remember, to refill your air tank, find a pit stop, some power ups, rings, and make some awesome looking tricks.
One of my Thoughts - If Sonic can run so fast, then why doesn't he run fast enough when he runs out of air?
Back to the Review-
Then there's the constant twists and turns of the game. You don't get much of a chance to utilize the right trigger to its good use to drift because drifting seems very inaccurate and most of the time, you'll be crashing into walls. There's a cool addition called the Turbulence System which allows you to ride with the wind that your racing rival leaves behind. NO not that kind of wind!
It works well, and provides some excitement but can sometimes make catching up, too easy. Though you will be yelling at your T.V from time to time due to the difficulty, the pure speed and "extreme" intensity really gives you the feel of a classic Sonic game. Each character in the game looks so cool on their air boards. Except for Tails and Cream, they look way too geeky.
Their are shortcuts in the game but if you can find them in all the action, then I congratulate you. It's also nice that Sega shed some light on an ancient civilization knowned as the Babylon, it's just that it confuses me that that they could make Extreme Gear at an ancient time.
The best mode this game has to offer is the awesome multiplayer. The Split Screen and Tag Battle have so much to offer! It's just too bad they Sega decided not to put any online play. Cuz if they did, it would've been great, I would've been all, "LET'S DO IT!" and be yelling at people over the online play. (talking about the PS2 and Xbox version of course)
Sonic Riders is an awesome game and does relatively well to stack up against Mario Kart, but it still has too much flaws from reaching AAA or AA for that matter. With the intense speed of Sonic, I give this game a 7.8.