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Sonic Free Riders Review (X360)

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Sonic Free Riders Review (X360)SEGA
Sonic Free Riders is a broken, bad game. The learning curve is El Capitan-steep, and even when you play long enough to learn the quirks of the controls, it just plain doesn't register half the time. This is the dark side of Kinect of unresponsive controls and sloppy design that critics feared. Find out all of the details here in our full review.
Game Details

  • Kinect Sensor Required
  • Publisher: SEGA
  • Developer: Sonic Team
  • ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone
  • Genre: Hoverboard Racing
  • Pros: Colorful graphics; decent track design
  • Cons: Cutscenes; menus; unresponsive Kinect motion controls that don't work

Sonic Free Riders is about a hoverboard race competition hosted by Dr. Eggman to which Sonic and all of his pals and rivals are invited. That is pretty much all you need to know. The story is told through still images of the characters with voice work (with a new cast of voice actors, apparently, but I have to admit I don't play enough Sonic games to even notice a difference, my bad) played over them, and is generally awful. Even worse, you can't skip the cutscenes.

Gameplay

Not that you'd want to be in a hurry to get to the gameplay, though. Sonic Free Riders is broken. The controls work like this - you stand perpendicular to the TV like you are riding a skateboard or snowboard and bend your upper body forward or backward to turn. You kick with one of your feet to boost. You jump over on-track obstacles or crouch then jump off of ramps to do tricks. You reach your hands in front of or behind you to grab rings. And you use weapons (bowling balls, tomatoes, etc.) by "throwing" them like you would in real life. The game also has hover bikes that you control by standing parallel to the TV and holding your arms out to hold the handlebars and steer, but the other controls are the same.

SEGA
When I first started Sonic Free Riders, I was optimistic. I went through the tutorial and learned all of the moves and controls, and thought the game had potential and was fairly accurate. You learn everything one motion at a time there, though. Once you get out into an actual race and have to do things all at once (lean to turn, throw weapons, jump, boost) the game completely breaks down. It just plain doesn't register what you're doing, so you spend a lot of time slamming into track barriers and not really doing much racing. Yet, somehow, I managed to win my first race despite the fact I never really felt in control of anything that was happening.

The controls sort of get better as you play more and learn the quirks of the system, but even on its best day Sonic Free Riders only works about half the time. It just isn't fun.

Also of note is how bad the menus are. I've noticed a definite pattern in Kinect games where you can usually tell the quality of a game just by how well the menu works. Motion controls in Sonic Free Riders' menus barely work at all. For whatever reason, it doesn't pick up your hand movements very well. I even opened up the Xbox 360 guide and waved my hand around, and went back to the game to compare and the difference was night and day. You can use voice controls to select things, which works much better, but isn't always practical.

Graphics & Sound

Visually, Sonic Free Riders actually looks decent. It moves at a fast pace and the tracks are nice looking. There is quite a bit of variety to the environments you race in, and all of them look good.

The sound is okay. The music fits the fast paced Sonic racing theme. Sound effects are only okay, however, and the voice acting is only so-so.

Bottom Line

SEGA
All in all, Sonic Free Riders is one of the poorer Kinect launch titles. It controls absolutely terribly, no matter how much re-calibration and living room feng shui I did to try and make it work right. There are plenty of tracks and vehicle upgrades and modes (including a local multiplayer mode where you have to keep in physical contact with the person you are playing with), so value actually isn't a problem here like it is with some Kinect games, but it just isn't fun to play. As an aside, I wonder why SEGA didn't just make a Kinect version of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, which came out earlier this year (and we loved). It probably would have worked better. Sonic Free Riders is what we ended up with, though, and it is a pretty massive disappointment. Avoid at all costs.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.

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