Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

In 2013, Sega entered a three-game exclusivity contract with Nintendo for Sonic the Hedgehog content, which ended in 2014 with the release of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on Wii U and Shattered Crystal on 3DS. These two games also marked the beginning of the short-lived Sonic Boom sub-franchise, for which I was formally introduced to through the cartoon series that the first two games were supposed to be a prequel to. While I had heard all the negative reviews of Rise of Lyric, including info on its rocky development, I couldn’t play it for the longest time due to not owning a Wii U at that point, but I didn’t really understand why the franchise failed to last that long since I thought the cartoon and 11-issue Archie comic were of good quality. When the Wii U and 3DS eShops were announced to be shutting down, I finally got a Wii U so I could play some games that were still stuck on the system, Rise of Lyric included. After finally getting to play such an infamous game, I now fully understand why the Sonic Boom franchise fell off the way it did, as the game leaves a rather terrible first impression.

While running after Dr. Eggman, Sonic and his friends (Tails, Amy, Knuckles) are attacked by Metal Sonic and end up separated in pairs. When they meet back up, the four are surrounded by a massive robot army in front of an ancient temple, whose doors are adorned with figures resembling Sonic and Tails. In desperation, Sonic opens the temple doors to escape the robot army. However, he accidentally awakens Lyric, the last of the Ancients, who somehow knows Sonic and seeks the Power Crystals so he can unleash his robot army onto the world.

Lyric (Patrick Seitz) is accidentally unleashed on the world.

While the story has some interesting ideas, the execution leaves something to be desired. Even though it was meant to be an introduction to a new continuity, it seems to assume you already know who the characters are and Lyric feels somewhat generic as a villain. It also seems incompatible with the events of Shattered Crystal, which could otherwise be argued as taking place afterwards, since the characters don’t know who Lyric is at the start of either game. Interestingly, this game has some similarities to Shattered Crystal’s plot in that they are reversed: Shadow appears in this game, but has more of a cameo role and feels out of character, with Metal Sonic having a more prominent role in contrast with the 3DS game; Amy has more of a role in the story of this game compared with the 3DS game, however Sticks does not, being reduced to a cameo role as an NPC despite being a main character in the Boom continuity.

 

Despite getting main character status in this continuity,
Sticks (Nika Futterman) is not important to Rise of Lyric.

The gameplay is similar to other 3D Sonic games at the time, with a mixture of running, side-scrolling and platforming segments. The levels are connected through two hub worlds that, like the levels themselves, feature a lot of incentive to explore through brief side quests and hidden collectibles. For most of the game, the player can use the d-pad on the Wii U Game Pad to swap between the four playable characters at any time (Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles), who each have their own abilities that work for differing situations and strategies. One new mechanic introduced to this game is the Enerbeam, which allows for grappling onto Zip-lines and hooks as well as puzzle-solving and removing enemy shields. Completing side missions also rewards you with Power Glyphs, which can be independently equipped to each character for additional abilities during combat. Often, you can also find Treasure Minions running around a combat area, and successfully attacking them has the possibility to grant additional rings and weapons with limited ammo, as well as the chance to earn nothing at all. In the early game, you also gain AVA, which allows you to look for hidden areas by tapping an icon on the Game Pad, using either the included stylus or your thumb due to its positioning on the screen. While in AVA mode, you can look around by moving the Game Pad around, though moving the camera also works and can be less awkward.

 

There are also vehicle sections where you pilot a boat that shoots water.

 

As for the aforementioned collectibles, there are a few different types that each serve a different purpose. One of the main ones is Robot Scrap, which can be obtained by defeating robotic enemies and finding them in chests around the levels and hub worlds. These can be used to repair designated points around the hub worlds to unlock new areas and complete side quests, but they can also be combined with another collectible, Crowns, to upgrade some abilities. A third upgrade exists, known as Shinies, which can be found by stomping near the end of footprint trails hidden in the levels and hub worlds and can be traded to Sticks in exchange for Crowns. Worth noting is that Shiny footprints and the place to stomp can be found with AVA if necessary, plus Robot Scrap chests can be continuously reopened upon revisiting an area. While finding the collectibles contributes to a level’s completion percentage, it is also worth mentioning that they eventually become pointless outside of this goal once you upgrade everything. Additional bonus content can be unlocked from the main menu based on how many total Rings you’ve collected, although that only extends the play time so much.

While there are some interesting ideas that make Rise of Lyric stand out from other Sonic games from a gameplay perspective, even if the level of enjoyment is subjective, there are some issues from a technical standpoint that greatly affect the experience. The least of these issues is that, unlike most Sonic games, there is a max. Ring count of 100, which seems rather arbitrary and can contribute more to the difficulty than anything else. However, connecting the game to Shattered Crystal unlocks additional upgrades to Ring collection based on your progress in that game, with a full completion of the story increasing the Ring max. from 100 to 200 and making it so your count regenerates over time. Having played Shattered Crystal first without knowing this, it helped my playthrough immensely, and so I would suggest other prospective Rise of Lyric players to do the same if they can find the 3DS game at a good price.

 

Play this first if you can.

Aside from what you are told in the tutorial pop-ups and specific button prompts, there are certain things the game does not tell you how to do and expects you to figure out through trial and error, one of which is floating objects that Sonic can use the homing attack on for traversal, with your only hint being that they light up when he is nearby while playing as him. Additionally, I kept getting the feeling that the game was generally unstable and barely holding on with Band-Aids and hope, as there were several instances of not-infrequent visual and audio stuttering, even during some cutscenes and especially while loading between areas on Bygone Island, making me feel like the game could crash at any second. While the camera is good about changing perspectives when changing between something meant to be viewed in a 2D angle, such as some of Amy’s gymnastics platforming or traversing something against a wall, I did have it happen once where the camera locked on me even after I exited one such area, which was only resolved by talking to a nearby NPC.

Rise of Lyric also boasts a two-player co-op functionality, in which a second player can drop in at any time using the “+” button on a connected Wiimote (Motion Plus or not) with the Nunchuck attachment, though an option in the pause menu is required to drop out. In this mode, Player 2’s gameplay and audio come through the TV, while Player 1 has to use the Game Pad for both. To compensate for the different controller, Player 2’s control scheme is different, albeit less than optimal, especially having to use the d-pad to control the camera and “-“ to cycle through the other available characters. Both players can move around freely in the hub world, however they will be forced back together if they get far enough away, even while AVA is active. If AVA is active, Player 1 cannot move, but can still look around while Player 2 can still explore, but AVA will be forcefully turned off when both players are forced back together. In sections of a level where there is a split path, each player takes control of one of the playable characters, but only one has to complete the objective to progress and one part of the first level still forces you to play through it four times.

Additional replay value is present through Team Challenges, a form of local multiplayer for two to four players. In total, there are three different games to choose from: Arena, where players defeat waves of enemies in a circular arena; Hazard Course, in which players race through a level with a forced moving camera while searching for hidden crystals; and Collector Ball, in which players score goals while collecting crystals with a ball. While playing through these games, players can complete additional objectives to unlock more arenas for each game, however the unlocks are not universal across all games and must be unlocked for each individual game. Some additional tedium is present in that the objectives also unlock additional gameplay settings beyond one, which is made even more tedious by the fact that this must be done with each individual map for each individual game, ultimately making the task a major turn-off. From my experience exploring this mode, I will mention that the game does not tell you that you have Enerbeam other players back in in Arena, and the objectives for Collector Ball are by far the easiest to complete, in that the players only need to stay in play for one to three minutes.

 

Collector Ball has the easiest objectives to complete (concept work shown.)

Although I played the game post-patch, issues with the visuals remain from launch, much of which can be owed to the engine the game runs on (CryEngine) not being designed for Wii U hardware. While the character and level designs are good, including Lyric’s Lair having a nice Tron aesthetic going for it, they look a bit unfinished, as though it was made for a previous hardware generation. In addition to this and some inaccurate subtitles, there are infrequent framerate issues as well as really bad draw distance, which often includes Rings popping in only when you get closer to them. One particularly bad moment included part of a 3D platforming section in Creeper Gorge, during which everything, including Sonic himself, blinked out of existence twice for a split-second mid-jump, almost as if the game was unintentionally giving me a peek behind the curtain.

While there are some funny moments within the dialogue that felt straight out of the Sonic Boom cartoon, much of the dialogue outside of those instances feels very generic. That said, the voice actors are the same as in the animated series and still do their best with the material that they were given, with highlights including Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman and Patrick Seitz as Lyric. While the voice acting is still good, one particularly baffling decision is that this bit of audio is muted UNLESS the Wii U’s audio output is specifically set to Stereo, something I only found out about after looking it up online while in the earliest parts of the game. Fortunately, the subtitles are always on in the event that you don’t know about this, but not being able to hear the voice acting detracts from the experience. On that note, while the subtitles are mostly accurate, they consistently refer to the Zip-line as such while the audio almost always instead says “Zip-wire.” I also ran into an issue where Tails’ flying noise would more often than not keep playing long after it should have ended, which I was usually able to resolve by getting Tails to fly again either through normal play or by switching to playing as him and forcing it.

As stated earlier, much of the technical issues with the game can be explained by CryEngine not being designed for the Wii U, which can be further explained by the fact that it was originally meant to be released on more powerful hardware and a special version of the engine needed to be made just to get it to run on a technically weaker system. This is only part of it, as a lot of the game’s other issues are further explained by the game’s rocky development. Originally, the game was meant to represent a completely separate universe that would explore Sonic’s origin story, however a change in management at Sega led to the game’s story getting morphed to be more in line with the main universe and the related cartoon. Taking all this into account, it’s a miracle that the game runs as well as it does, though it's clear that the storyline suffered as a result of the changes.

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric has a lot of interesting ideas with lacking execution, mainly as a result of its troubled development. As it is, it’s a bad first impression of the short-lived Sonic Boom series, and so I would highly recommend playing this, if at all, only after watching the cartoon and/or reading the comic.