There's a new Sonic game out. Most gamers would likely cringe at the prospect of a new Sonic game given the blue blur's recent track record, but as far as Sonic racing games go, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is better than past forays into the genre. Zooming around on hoverboards might seem out of character for Sonic, but for those familiar with Sonic R back on the Saturn, an on-foot racing game was a better idea on paper.

The plot of the game is relatively simple. A meteor fragment has fallen to the ground and has caused a massive uprising among all the world's robots. Naturally, it's up to Sonic and his crew to get to the bottom of things. Along the way, they run into old rivals such as the Babylon Rogues and learning how to harness the power of these meteor fragments to control time and gravity.

The core gameplay remains the same from the first game, racing around the track as in any other racing game with the twist of being about to perform "gravity control" stunts. Gravity control can be used to slow time and allows quicker reaction to obstacles, hard turns, and the like. It should be noted that dravity control uses what is called gravity power, or GP, to fuel manipulations of time-space. When enough GP is accumulated, a gravity dive can be executed. This allows the player to speed forward ahead of the competition, and gives the ability to bounce off different obstacles to get even more boosts of speed. While diving, the GP gauge constantly drains, and if it drops to zero then all gravity moves are disabled for the rest of the race.

While the gravity moves are a neat addition, there are also on-the-fly gear upgrades during races. After collecting a specific amount of rings, pressing a button on the game pad activates an ability of the character's selected EX gear. Each gear has three "gear changes", and the changes vary from gear to gear. Examples include increasing maximum speed, increasing the amount of GP that can be accumulated, and changing the gear's physical shape, totally altering its abilities.

The game has two story modes: the Heroes story, and the Babylon story. As far as story telling goes in Sonic games (hold onto your hats, because this may be shocking), the voice acting is actually decent. Surprisingly, the mouth movements of the character models match the words. The cutscenes themselves are up to Sonic Team's usual quality--the fluid animations are bright and colorful as always, enhancing the player's enjoyment. Also, once a stage is cleared in story mode, it unlocks a number of missions for that stage, increasing replay value.

The time attack mode allows players to upload times to the Nintendo WFC and compare times with players around the world. From this menu, it's possible to even upload and download ghosts to race against. Multiplayer supports four players in modes like Free Race, Survival Relay, Survival Ball, and Survival Battle, allowing for quite a bit of diversity when playing with friends.

As far as control goes, it's pretty solid and supports three control schemes: holding the Wii remote sideways, holding it horizontally, or substituting in a GameCube controller. They all work pretty well, and the sideways remote configuration is similar to that of Sonic and the Secret Rings, which makes it easy to pick up and play. For those who aren't a big fan of wrestling with the motion sensor, directional commands can be input using the d-pad while the remote is held in the sideways configuration.

There are still shortcomings to acknowledge. The game has WFC support, but it's only used for a high scores table; if the game had proper online multiplayer, it would be a worthier purchase. If there is ever a Sonic Riders 3, hopefully it'll have the online functions many people were hoping for. Customizable EX gear would have also increased replayability; each gear has its own set of upgrades and skills, but you can't make your own. It doesn't matter that some of the possible combinations would be terrible; players would figure out what works and what doesn't work.

All in all, the game offers an even challenge level compared to the straight-wall steep difficulty curve of the first game and some interesting new dynamics. For those who didn't play the first Riders game, about all there is to miss out on is the introduction of the Babylon Rogues, so it really won't matter if a player were to skip straight to Zero Gravity. It'll hold over racing fans until Mario Kart Wii this Spring, at least.

Feb 21, 2008 | 0 comments
John Marques