Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 18th March 2008

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Sonic heads to the track once again!

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity Details:

Goto Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity Game Page

	Action
	Nintendo Wii
	SEGA
	SEGA

Out Now

N/A

The original Sonic the Hedgehog games were all about speed and this is something that goes hand in hand with the “Sonic” franchise in general, so you have to ask yourself why it is that a Sonic based racing game feels like a Sunday drive out.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity story, like most of the Sonic games is a bit naff and revolves around a mysterious meteorite that crashes from the night sky landing near a squadron of security robots that malfunction and then go berserk. However, this wasn’t the only meteorite to impact the planet as tails had found one too and given it to sonic. Whilst sonic and his friends are driving through the city they are attacked by berserk robots. During their escape they crash through a skyscraper window falling to their doom the mysterious rock begins to glow affecting the gravity around the heroes. From hereon in the group decide they need to find out what’s going on and solve the mystery. As the story unfolds Sonic will also encounter some familiar foes along the way, including the Babylon gang, and of course Dr Eggman. The games story mode sees you compete in a series of races in which you must either win or reach the finish in a set amount of time, all in the story mode is pretty short only lasting a couple of hours.

Races themselves are a bit of a challenge, not because the games hard but every bump into the side slows you down as does bumping into other racers, which you’ll do a lot thanks to the games dodgy controls.

The game features 3 control systems. You can either use the Wii remote vertically or horizontally or a GameCube controller. For me using the GameCube controller is the best way to play the game as both the options for the Wii remote seem to be seriously flawed. For instance using the remote vertically is near impossible, as characters seem to constantly spin, using it horizontally means you have to hold the remote perfectly flat or you character will strangely grind to a sudden halt, also it’s much easier to use the d-pad when using the Wii remote as the tilt controls simply don’t work well, yet these can’t be disabled at all so you will have to sit perfectly still.

During races you have access to two special abilities thanks to the meteorite these include a high speed mode that allows you to fly through a portion of the track at speed. The other power available to you is gravity control. This power allows you to swing around tight bends and hairpin corners quickly before giving you a short burst of speed.

The timing required to use these power is essential, otherwise it will do nothing more then hinder you during a race and let one of your opponents gain ground or even pass you.
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Tracks in the game aren’t the best designed, most of them feature shortcuts, but these rarely give you an advantage and can often slow you down as they seem to be littered with obstacles for you to bump into.

As mentioned already the sonic franchise has been built around speed and sadly Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity fails to give the feeling of travelling at speed and feels quite sluggish, this doesn’t really help make the game appealing to play.

In addition to the games story mode Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity also features normal race and survival modes. Included in the normal race mode are time attack races and a free race option for up to four players in which you can race on any track you have unlocked in story mode. The games survival mode features a survival relay for two to four players, using the racing gear as the baton. Other race types in survival mode include Survival Ball and Survival Battle in which players must use the games gravity controls. In Survival ball you must hit a ball into a goal using the gravity control to score goals and in survival battle you must use gravity action to launch missiles collected from around the arena at opponents in order to take them out. It’s kind of like a mini death match! You all start with 3 lives until only one is left. All these modes add to the variation in gameplay and while they’re fun in small doses they don’t really have any lasting appeal.

Visually Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity looks a little dated, the tracks are pretty varied and characters are as you would expect from a Sonic title, the game is very colourful, although it does feature a strange blurring effect that makes the game look a little untidy.

Sound is exactly what you expect from a Sonic game. Characters all have a familiar sound to them whilst most sound effects could have been pulled from any game in the Sonic library. The games music is a little repetitive but the high octane track fits in well with the racing theme of the title.

It’s important for racing games to portray a feeling of speed and sadly Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity doesn’t do this well! The game also doesn’t make the best use of the Wii’s unique control abilities and you can’t help feeling that Sega have missed a great opportunity to advance the Sonic Riders games. This is one for the more hardcore sonic fans and should really be avoided for those looking for a more casual racing game.