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Sonic Free Riders is a motion controlled racing video game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. It is the third installment in the Sonic Riders series, following Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity. The game utilizes Microsoft's Kinect peripheral. It is a Kinect launch title, released on November 4, 2010 in North America, November 10, 2010 in Europe, November 18, 2010 in Australia and on November 20, 2010 in Japan.
Gameplay
The game is controlled by using the player's body to navigate their chosen character through the course. Actions include bending their body to steer, performing kicking motions to increase speed and jumping to perform tricks which earn more boost. The player has the ability to ride bikes, which sees the player using steering motions to play. By collecting enough rings, players can increase their level during each race, which enhances their attributes. There are several power-ups and weapons which each require specific motion actions to activate, such as a missile which is thrown like a football or a boost that is activated by shaking a soda can. As before, characters are divided into Speed, Flight, and Power classes. Players can equip special attributes to their Gear, such as improved cornering or the ability to break through barriers, which can be changed by switching the riding stance. Players can also perform special moves if lacking in races The game's main single player campaign is the Grand Prix mode, where players select from one of several teams of characters to play through the story. Along with Time Attack and Free Race modes, Sonic Free Riders also features a few multiplayer modes that can be played co-operatively. Tag Mode allows two players to race together, required synchronised coordination to performed combined tricks, while Relay mode, playable with up to 4 players, requires teammates to swap places after each lap. The local multiplayer supports up to two active players while online player multiplayer features one active player per console for up to 8 players. The game also supports voice recognition, allowing people to navigate menus using their voice.
Image of Sonic grinding in the game.
Plot
Dr. Eggman is holding a second EX World Grand Prix, offering up prizes of cash and treasure. The prizes are the Ghost Queens of Babylon. He puts four teams into the race instead of two like in the previous EX World Grand Prix, to prove who is the best. However, his true motive was to gather data from all the players to program into his E-10000G robots.
The Story Mode features four available teams of three characters, and a last story.
Sonic being followed by Jet.
Cast
This is the first game where all the previous 4Kids voice actors have been replaced with Studiopolis voice actors. Like in Sonic Colors, all the voices from 4Kids were replaced except Mike Pollock.
Although both voice language tracks are included in the game disc, there is not a proper option to switch them in any regional version. The game sets both the text and voice language by default according to the console settings language, so the only way to change it is by changing the Xbox Dashboard language settings.
Sonic and Tails doing co-op.
Reception
The game received mixed reviews. IGN gave the game a score of 7.5, calling it a strong launch title for Kinect, although criticising the motion controls stating that they "make it hard to just jump into the game". Official Xbox Magazine also gave it 7.5, praising the wealth of content and multiplayer options while criticizing occasional unresponsiveness in the controls. GameTrailers gave the game a score of 4.5, panning cumbersome controls that tax the body. Brian Crecente of Kotaku reviewed it negatively, calling it "the most broken of the Kinect titles I've played." Joystiq gave the game 1/5 stars, calling it "the equivalent of patting your head while rubbing your stomach while riding a unicycle." Kotaku's Crecente later reported that the responsiveness of the controls seemed to differ between persons, with fellow reviewer Stephen Totilo saying the controls worked fine for him.
Sonic Free Riders I can probably tell isn't the best out of the Riders series. It seems more like a test for the Kinect controls in my opinion. But still, feel free to discuss about Sonic Free Riders here.
