Sonic Riders (PS2)

Since speed is a core part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, it was only natural that at some point it would enter the world of racing games. While not the first, one of the better-known attempts at this is Sonic Riders, which also features the first appearances of a trio of characters named Jet the Hawk, Wave the Swallow and Storm the Albatross, collectively known as the Babylon Rogues. This was also one of a few Sonic games I engaged with as a kid, and the Babylon Rogues’ reintroduction to the franchise through the IDW comics and the more recent Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds led me to revisit their roots. For the purpose of this review, I mainly engaged with the Story Mode, though the game’s controls and difficulty unfortunately led me to not finish it, as much as I really wanted to.

In a similar fashion to previous games, the story mode is split across two campaigns, beginning with the Heroes Story. This story begins with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles failing to stop a theft by the Babylon Rogues. The three then see their chance at redemption when Eggman starts an Extreme Gear tournament featuring the Babylon Rogues, the EX Grand Prix, where the entry fee is one chaos Emerald and the winner takes all of them.

Completing the Heroes Story unlocks the Babylon Story, which shows the other side of the Heroes Story. Jet, Wave and Storm, in possession of the key to the ancient Babylonian treasure, are coerced by Eggman into helping him gather the Chaos Emeralds. Finding Eggman untrustworthy, the Babylon Rogues use the EX Grand Prix as a means of investigating his true motives.

Seeing the true ending requires completing both Stories, which ties up loose ends from the campaign and reveals what the mysterious treasure actually is. Although I didn’t quite finish the Heroes Story (more on that in a bit), I opted to watch the remaining cutscenes on YouTube for a sense of closure, and thus cannot truly comment on the gameplay against the final boss. Overall, the campaign is surprisingly short, but tells an interesting story, assuming you have the skills to make it through.

Sonic Riders takes a unique approach to the racing genre by way of turbulence-based gameplay, with characters categorized into Speed, Power and Fly types a la Sonic Heroes and riding Extreme Gear appropriate to their category. There is a tutorial buried in the Extras Menu, however the controls are very poorly explained, so I will do my best to explain them here.

The Extreme Gear constantly moves forward, so you don’t need to push the stick or hold any buttons. When running out from the starting line, you can potentially get a bonus for exiting at the right moment, but attempting to do so too early penalizes you and delays your start. Each track has various shortcuts and different routes intended for each of the aforementioned character categories; Speed involves grind rails (press Cross once to jump and Cross again to grind) Power involves breaking obstacles and Fly involves flying through rings by moving the Left Stick; the game doesn’t tell you that the Y-axis in flight is inverted. You can also gain speed by boosting, and doing so next to enemies gives you an extra edge.

The inverted Y-Axis is something to keep in mind.

 

This is where it gets really tricky. Your Extreme Gear has a limited air supply for boosting or drifting (Left Stick + R1), the latter of which is very easy to mess up. This air supply can be refilled by grinding on rails or using refill stations around the track (which can be difficult to spot in some cases), but doing so takes time and, depending on how low you are, can cost you your position. You can also refill air by performing tricks off of ramps by manipulating the Left Stick, with your performance determining your score that, in turn, determines how much air you get and how much your momentum is impacted. Additionally, each track has a section near the end where you can continuously rotate the Left Stick to refill your air supply. If you find yourself behind, you can ride another racer’s turbulence, and performing tricks off of them can earn you additional air. Your maximum air supply can be increased by collecting Rings around the track, but falling off brings it back down a notch; earned Rings can also be spent on other Extreme Gear styles, but they can be rather costly.
 

Performing air tricks helps refill your air.

 

All of this combined with an unforgiving enemy AI in the Story Mode can easily make the experience frustrating, not to mention your hand will hurt after rotating the stick so much. Needing to keep track of the air supply doesn’t really help matters, and in fact only exacerbates these issues and creates a needlessly complex racing experience. Even with assistance from another, more skilled player, neither of us could get past the final track of the Heroes Story, leading us to give up on it and reason that the difficult controls would not make the other Modes fun for us. There is certainly an audience for this type of gameplay complexity, but I simply lack the proper dexterity for it.

All that said, the graphics hold up pretty well, both in-engine and pre-rendered. The traditionally-animated opening cutscene, animated by Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell) holds up especially well, featuring a unique art style that does a good job setting the stage for a race. Jet, Wave and Storm have good designs that add some flair to the character lineup while being memorable and looking like they fit within the Sonic universe. The Sonic characters’ outfits unique to this game are additionally fitting and give the experience a consistent feel. The background music and sound design are similarly great and very fitting for a racing game, with even the main menu music doing a good job at hyping up the player.

Since I grew up watching some 4Kids-dubbed anime, including Sonic X and especially Yu-Gi-Oh!, I have a hard time writing off the 4Kids era of English Sonic the Hedgehog voice casts completely. Jason Griffith’s take on Sonic is actually pretty fitting for the role, as are Dan Green as Knuckles, Amy Palant as Tails, Lisa Ortiz as Amy Rose and Mike Pollock as Eggman. I can, however, criticize the voice acting for the Babylon Rogues. Interestingly, Griffith and Green voice their respective characters’ rivals Jet and Storm, but don’t do enough to make the characters sound too differently from Sonic or Knuckles; Wave is voiced by Erica Schroeder (aka Bella Hudson) rather than Amy Palant, thus avoiding this issue and giving a better performance.

Sonic Riders takes a more novel and creative approach to a racing game in a time where Mario Kart clones were far more common, allowing it to stand out even today since there’s no other like it outside the Sonic franchise. However, the complex, often confusing controls and the high skill ceiling required to beat the story mode may be a turn off for those who have less dexterity. In that case, the main reason to still check it out anyway is to see where the Babylon Rogues originated from.