Sunday, August 10, 2008

idofriar1313: One Day with Sonic Riders Zero Gravity


Congrats idofriar! You won this time.



"Disclaimer: I have only played this game for one day (doesn't mean i don't have a strong opinion about it, this is definitely a review)

The day i came back from Greece i was a kinda sad, i just met the coolest girl in the world and i probably never see her in person ever again :'( I needed a good laugh, something to take my mind off everything. I scanned through every Wii game on my shelf and found nothing suitable. Then, i got a crazy idea, why not play one of my little brother's atrocious games? I ran upstairs and i went through his games. I waned it to be an incredibly bad game, so it was between Sonic Riders or Donkey Kong Barrel Blast. A bad Donkey Kong game makes me sad so i chose Sonic Riders
What a day i had....



The original Sonic Riders was released in celebration of Sonic's 15th anniversary (along with Sonic '06 and Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis, a crappy GB port of the Genesis, or Megadrive, classic). Oddly enough it was met with mixed reviews (when i say mixed i mean that everyone except Nintendo Power hated it). Me, being a brave Sonic fan, decided to rent the game. I swore off of it for life.

Unlike the first Sonic Riders, the story doesn't revolve around a race, or the Chaos Emeralds for that matter, the story begins when a meteorite crashes down to earth, or wherever the hell Sonic and his gang of idiots live, which causes a group of robots to rampage around the world. Tails finds the meteorite and gives it to Sonic, (while Knuckles just stands around asking the occasional stupid question) which causes the robots to chase after them. The entire plot focuses on trying to stop these rampaging robots
This is all introduced to the player in a gorgeous cgi cutscene, unfortunately the same cant be said about the voice acting. Sonic sounds like a high adult trying to sound like a teenager, Tails sounds like a little girl with a sore throat, Knuckles sounds like Yugioh, Jet has a really squawky and annoying voice, Storm sounds like a fat kid in special ed and Wave sounds like Lisa Simpson. Eggman sounds perfect BTW

Now it's time to move on to the most important part of any game, the gameplay (finally!)
There are 3 different character types, speed, flight and power. This effects what type of hoverboard you can ride and what skills you have during the race. Speed characters can grind on rails, power characters can reach certain shortcuts by punching through certain walls and flight characters can fly off special ramps and go through rings, a la Superman 64 (and trust me, it controls just as hard). But you will have to unlock these abilities during a race by performing a gear change which you can do after collecting a certain amount of rings.
The gravity aspect of the game evolves around your gravity power gauge. If u have some power in your bar u can perform a speed boost called a gravity dive in which your character creates a black hole, lifts off the ground and launches forward until your GP runs out. U also use GP for drifting, which the game calls Gravity Control. Your character charges gravity and hangs in suspending space which allows you to steer in a new direction, then release the button to relaunch at high speeds in that direction. You can use this to find some shortcuts in the game as well. Behind certain quarter pipes or after certain ramps, you will find alternative routes in the form of walls you can ride. Launch yourself off the quarter pipe and from mid air, use Gravity Control to redirect yourself towards the wall. These can also be discovered during mid air tricks which are used, along with getting a good running start at the start of race, grinding, and flying through rings to gain GP
In this game, there are 3 different control styles. Horizontal mode controls like any other wii racer, u tilt the wii remote left and right to steer and tilt towards yourself to brake, 2 button 2 jump (C wat i did thar) and to run backward u tilt the wii remote backward. To perform a gear change press he A button, press 1 to activate gravity control and flick the remote upwards to perform gravity dive. Vertical mode SUCKS BALLS. Look how stupid and terribly broken this sounds: Point the wii remote to the left/right side of the screen to steer in that direction. Point at the bottom of the screen to brake AND walk backwards. To jump press the A button, to perform a gear change press up on the d pad and flick upwards to gravity dive. WTF THAT HAS TO BE THE MOST BROKEN CONTROL SCHEME I HAVE EVER USED IN ANY WII GAME EVAR!!!!!!11!!!!1/ONE?!!!
Just use the gamecube remote if u want to play this game.
Besides normal race there is also 3 different mini games under the category titled Survival mode. There is Survival relay where u must run a relay race and survive. There's a soccer type game called Survival Ball in which u use gravity control to shoot the ball into a goal and SURVIVE. And there's Survival battle where u use use the 1 EFFING item in the ENTIRE game so u can EFFING SURVIVE!!!!

On the front of the box is that familiar blue dot which can only mean one thing: ONLINE!! but wait, it's not an online racer, NO THAT'S toO effING HARD!! SEGA JUST COPPED OUT AND GAVE US A CRAPPY LEADeRBOARD. HOORAY!!!!

So wat r we left with here? A mediocre racer with no depth, a BROKEN control system, crappy voice acting as well as story and Graphics (some ps2 games are better looking) EXTREMELY short story mode(i beat both the hero story and Babylon story in under 2 hours) and no real online.
I've only played this game for a day but i have seen all it has to offer. It has some redeeming qualities but the bad really outweighs the good.

2/5"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

good work ido! im so glad that i have the ability to see the scores of other people who are wasting thier time with this one. yay