Sonic Riders

"Coulda been a little better, but great nontheless."

Hello, and welcome to my review of the Xbox version of Sonic Riders. Hope it helps you.

First off, I want to say that even though I thought this game was gonna suck, it was mainly because the last Sonic racing game, Sonic R, is one of the worst games I've played. Thankfully, this doesn't suck nearly as much.

Graphics: 9/10
Sonic games have been known for graphics for a long time, and this game keeps that tradition. All the polygons and animations are smooth, with no visible clipping. The only downer is that the cinemas run horribly on the Xbox. The only way to see them at their original frame rate is to go into the Extras and watch them on the small screen.

Sound: 8/10
The music in this game is definitely different from the Adventure series, having more of a techno flavor to the soundtrack. It's nothing great, but good enough to listen to while racing, since music is usually second fiddle in racing games anyway. The sound effects are all very clear, using both new sound effects and older ones as well, like the ring snatching "ping" noise.

Control: 7/10
While the controls have no real problems by themselves, the fact that so much about the game isn't even mentioned in the tutorial means that people without an instruction manual won't know about all the moves. And even then, they may have trouble pulling them off correctly for a bit, since the manual is also kind of vague.

Gameplay: 9/10
Basically, it's a more complex version of the GC F-Zero game. You do a lot of the same things in this game, except of course for the alternate pathways. They have also blended in a bit of Sonic Heroes' gameplay, having speed, power, and fly types, as well as the ability to level up upon grabbing 30 rings. The leveling up mainly gives you a bigger bar for boosting, but it also unlocks abilities that are unique to each character (e.g. Sonic spins on the track, attacking anything he touches).

Extras: 6/10 (this may be spoilers)
Here's where they messed up. This is a SONIC game. Why do we need the girl from Space Channel 5 or AiAi from Super Monkey Ball? NiGHTS I can understand, since he appeared in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 for cameos. And yes, Super Sonic is in it, but he really sucks since some tracks are hard to find rings on, and he sucks them all up in seconds. It's very hard to unlock these characters, and only a couple even fit in the game. I was really disappointed with the extra characters.

Overall: 8/10
Even with the flaws, there really isn't any real problem with this game. The cinemas are no big deal, and the extra characters aren't why you'd buy the game anyway. If you like racing and Sonic, I'd say get it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/03/06