Quick Review: Disney Speedstorm

Ready your wallets – I mean, your wheels – because you’re gonna be spending – I mean speeding – through the long, hard cash – I mean tracks – of the Disney universe!

I’m telling right off the bat what my review angle is gonna be, huh.

Mickey Mouse, ready to race! And leave everyone else
in his dust! (Unless you change to another racer!)

Disney Speedstorm is a creation of Gameloft released on April 18th, 2023. This free(mium) game is about Arbee, an A.I. that exists in an arcade and which has grown fond of many Disney properties (including Pixar and the Muppets). It decides to create a racing game of its own to bring all these heroes, villains, and other supporting characters in one place… where they can then put on modern racing gear, no matter which time period they’re from, and then duke it out on the racetracks. At time of writing, the game contains 131 characters from 39 universes, with the most recent additions in Season 21 being from Encanto.

I hadn't thought about it, but then I remembered I should
probably censor the usernames of other racers.

I’m playing on PC and keyboard, where W is to accelerate, A and D to go left and right, the left Shift key to make the car jump, and the Spacebar to drift. Taking a page from Mario Kart (then again, which mascot racer doesn’t?), racers can grab boxes on the track, obtaining items to help against the opponents; item skills can be activated with the Up or Down arrows, with some items having different effects depending on what you press (as an example, a bomb that you can toss forward to hit someone ahead, or drop behind you to hit someone getting too close; or flames that can either form a barrier around the racing car, or leave a fiery trail behind it). Racers can run over speed pads, which gives them a boost and fills a gauge at the top of the screen. When it’s full, you can press Crtl to activate a longer boost.

Race variants, team racing, solo racing, and so many events
going on at any moment. All to keep you lured in, right?

You can customize both the racers’ outfits and the karts. However, the more interesting aspect here is how you can level up the characters and give them stat increases through stars. All characters have their own “Racer Shards” (you need to collect 10 of a racer’s shards to unlock them) and start at 0 stars. When you have enough Shards for a racer and enough Tune Coins collected, you can spend some of both to make that racer gain a star fragment, five of which are needed for a whole star. With each fragment, that racer’s stats get small boosts – these can add up to make that character increasingly fearsome on the racetrack, but they get costly. After you’ve given a character a full star, they go up a rank, and you can give them crew members that give small stat bonuses during races as well. Crew members also have their own shards. Phew!

Look at this, he's in a racing game! He's wearing clothes!

The game plays great, looks amazing, and features high-energy remixes of famous Disney songs. The wide selection of characters is good (though unlocking them is a long, tedious, often luck-based process), and they all have their own special skills to unlock and use. And if you’re struggling to win races in Solo Mode, you can play in Team Mode instead, where you’ll be paired with two other players and your cumulative team score will determine whether you win or lose a race. Then of course there are plenty of season events to take part in, and many more sections, like the World Map and an Adventure Road (though in both cases, some levels require owning and/or using specific characters and being at specific racer levels), as well as a plethora of classic freemium stuff like daily missions, seasonal missions, a bit of free stuff every day, etc. You probably know the drill already.

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #4

Been a while since I last did one of these as well! It took me this long because, in-between reviews of other games, I could hardly find the time to play stuff from the Nintendo Classics service; however, I think I’ve found a system that could help me with that.

Before I start this article, I guess I might take this introduction to explain a thing or two: For starters, all I have is the classic Switch, not the sequel console released in 2025. As a result, while I do try to go through the games available on Nintendo Classics, I do not have access to the GameCube games that were announced for the Switch 2 exclusively. This also extends to whichever games on other consoles require a mouse to play, like Mario Paint. (Not that there are many of those.)

In the same vein, Nintendo began releasing Virtual Boy titles to the service in February 2026. I am very tempted to try these as well, and since many of these are short, they will fit perfectly in articles like the one here. However, I am told that they will work much better with a headset currently on sale. I do think I will be better off playing those games with the necessary equipment! Therefore, I’ll skip these for now and put them on the backburner. It’s not like I’ve got a shortage of Nintendo Classics games to cover anyway!

I was in a bit of a hurry to get this article ready for publication, so instead of waiting to have enough entries from just one console, here you have a pot-pourri of games from almost all the consoles that are part of the service. And just like my other collections, any progress is better than nothing!

Enjoy!

The NES

That is, indeed, baseball.

Baseball: I’m still not done with sport games! This game was one more of the console’s launch titles, and is about as straightforward as can be for an 8bit representation of the sport. Pitcher pitches, batter hits the ball, team on the field hurries to get the ball and throw it while the batter runs around the diamond. I’ll admit that I know little about baseball (most of my gaming experience with baseball is… Mario Super Sluggers). And this game explains very little, so I know the basics of the sport, but I was left to figure out the controls on my own. I did poorly at this one. While I can say there’s a few NES sports games I would come back to, this isn’t one of them. I can still appreciate that its release at the console’s launch helped further boost the NES’s popularity in North America.

Year Plans 2025: What I've Missed

Boy, this has been… a year. Please ignore my twitchy eye. Or the emotional exhaustion. Let’s just… talk about video games today, alright?

For the newcomers: I started setting up Year Plans in 2023, as a way to force myself to check out games selected somewhat at random through my collection. The idea was that if I only ever chose on my own what I wanted to play, there are games I own that I’d never touch! So why not leave it to luck? Of course, as I realized at the end of that year, I can always misjudge and overshoot. After all, I take direct inspiration from HowLongToBeat lengths to make these random picks, and I can never know how long a game will truly take me, versus how long that website says it takes on average. That said, I’m a very thorough player and I often go beyond just finishing a game's main story, so it often takes me longer than those indicated lengths to finish games.

Every year so far, I ended up with plenty of games I was hoping to cover in those 12 months, that I ultimately ran out of time for. 14 in 2023, and 17 in 2024. This year, however, I am proud to announce that I don’t have a lot of leftovers… only 8. I call that a win! But still, I wanted to operate the same way as before, by playing just an hour of each game and report on it for the last article of the year. Hell, there were so few this time around, I juggled with the idea of playing two hours of each instead! But nah. One hour will be enough. I’ll just write more for each.

The estimated duration of the eight games today ranges between 11 and 67 hours (…don’t start), and would have taken me an extra 250 hours to get done. I don’t think I would have had enough time.

Well then! With so few, I guess I won’t split these into categories!

Team Sonic Racing

Out of my way, Amy! I'm gonna steal the third place from
you!

There are many Sonic racing games out there, though for a while they existed under the “Sonic & All-Stars” umbrella that allowed characters from other properties to join the roster. This doesn’t quite work for Team Sonic Racing's concept, where characters play in their classic teams (with a few changes) and have to rely on each other to win each race. Each team has a Speed character (Sonic, Amy, Shadow, etc.), with a race car that has faster speed than average; a Technical character (Tails, Omochao, Rouge, etc.) with better handling and the ability to pick up rings more easily; and a Power character (Knuckles, Big, E-123 Omega, etc.) that is slower, but unaffected by most road hazards.

Five teams, 15 characters total, and the entire game is built around teamwork. The car of your teammate closest to first place leaves a trail behind, and the other two can drive along that trail to gain a speed boost. It feels a little like teamwork rubberbanding. Racers can pick up Wisps as power-ups – many of which feels directly inspired by similar items in Mario Kart.

One hour wasn’t enough to go too far into it, so I haven’t seen yet whether having to rely on your two CPU allies to get ahead leads to issues down the line (you never know how well the AI will play, after all), so… guess I’ll see when I get around to it.

Quick Review: Urban Trial Freestyle

The apocalypse might not be the best moment to go out biking.

Everybody's gotta start somewhere, right?

A game from Tate Multimedia released to multiple platforms, and to Steam on September 18th, 2013, Urban Trial Freestyle can best be described as a physics racing game. The concept? You’re a thug biking around a city that’s falling apart. Drive across crazy tracks and do tricks in the air. That’s about it, really.

Controls are simple: You drive forward with the Up arrow, then adjust your angle with the Left and Right arrows, substituting for backward and forwards respectively. This lets you spin in midair to do stunts, and it can also let you do wheelies or push your weight forward to keep the front wheel on the ground – important for some uphill climbs.

Jumping into a spinning logo... or whatever that is...
...isn't nearly the craziest thing we do here.

The game is divided into five worlds, each containing 8 levels. Following two tutorials, we jump into the meat of the game, using the most basic bike. There’s not much of a story: Our biker keeps trespassing in hazardous areas, so cops and even civilians try to get in his way. That’s it. No explanation as to why, on top of that, the entire world seems to be tearing apart at the seams. On the other hand, gotta love how the world modifies itself perfectly to provide one uninterrupted 2D path for us to take. Yes, levels are in 2D only. But with that said, it’s more interesting to look at everything that happens in the background, even as we ride through.

Jesus, they're even tossing burning cars at you.

Levels are played in two versions: First are the “no trespassing” levels, in which your goal is to score points by completing the mini-challenges (longest/highest/most precise jump, best stunt) and getting to the end as quickly as possible. Second are the “timed” challenges, which are retreads of those levels with only the time attack element to worry about, and the ghost of another racer to go up against. You can earn up to five stars if your end score or time is excellent. You can also find money bags scattered around, which give an extra 500$ when collected.

Yeah, I'm nowhere close to that yet.

In turn, the money is used to upgrade your bike. Improve your motor, chassis and wheels, and tune your gear to your liking for speed, acceleration and handling. I’d recommend buying everything there first, since most 5-star scores are impossible without a few upgrades to your bike. You can also use the money to buy new helmets and clothes for your biker. However, I’d recommend the upgrades first, as later levels and worlds are locked until you collect enough stars, meaning that you need to perform great to see this game to the end.

Face, meet giant tree. You're not gonna be biking while
healing from that.

Gameplay turns into trial-and-error as you figure out not just the optimal path to the end, the best sequence of actions, but also the best gear for each challenge. Later levels even have a bit of a platformer feel to them, which… yeah, no, those wheels don’t control well enough for platforming, that’ll be a pass from me. That said, failing in this game is its own reward, as you can crash in a multitude of ways, many hilarious. Thought you could make it under that hotel sign? Oops, hit your head. Outspeed a falling subway car? Nope. Getting through that weird installation? Better luck next time! I’ve had some crazy laughs seeing my biker hurt himself in embarrassing ways. Over and over and over.

Oh, you should be DEAD dead.

Hey, he’s the one biking where he shouldn’t.

The madman!

Credit where due, the physics are very good, the stunts are varied, the music’s alright, and for a simple 2D title, it goes all-out with its background action and details. I enjoy the insanity of everything that happens around us as we drive through places where we shouldn't be. Heck, the insanity actually can hurt you, so it’s fun seeing all those near misses until you do get hit. Challenge is present, and getting those five stars will prove tricky on several levels, thus forcing a grind on both money and stars if you want to get anywhere.

Which brings me to the big issue: The campaign. There’s not much of an incentive to see the game to the end. A point comes quick where it becomes a grind for stars (to unlock new levels) and money (to upgrade the bike), and there’s no way around that. Furthermore, there’s eight levels in each world but really only four distinct ones, as each is played twice, once in score challenge and once in time attack with no difference otherwise, making the game quite repetitive. Can't say I'm big on the more platforming-like segments, either. At least there’s the pratfalls to keep one entertained.

Urban Trial Freestyle is currently available on Steam for 6.80$ USD.

The Crew (non-review)

I’ll be going back to Ubisoft Connect for tomorrow's review, to cover another game that’s been waiting in the backlog for a long time. But, to not clutter that review with a long aside, here’s an announcement about that backlog. And Ubisoft.

My system involves keeping track of my significant backlog of games through websites such as HowLongToBeat and, more recently, Backloggd. With the sheer number of titles waiting to be played, it’s inevitable that I would miss out on the perfect time window to try some of them. Over the past few years, some of my reviews felt more like eulogies for games left for dead when their servers were taken down (Streamline, Offensive Combat, etc.), that I’ve picked up too late. It’s jarring whenever it happens, but I might have escaped it often due to focusing on single-player experiences.

This backlog issue of mine is especially prevalent with Ubisoft, whose games I would forget about were it not for a conscious effort to remember that I have them. Not a dig at the company; but since most of my collection is physical or on Steam, I almost forget about the dozen games I’ve gotten for free over the years through the company’s events. (The only money I ever paid on Ubisoft games on Connect’s store was for the first three Rayman platformers, covered in 2022.)

One of those free games obtained in... 2016, I believe?, I did actually test for a few minutes: The then-19Gb racing/open world title The Crew (1), which did not leave a lasting impression. Again, not a dig, I booted it up out of curiosity and merely felt like seeing what it was like. It seemed to have a decent single-player campaign and an impressive map to visit. Could have been interesting to cover, but I didn’t play it long enough to form an opinion.

On December 31st, 2023, Ubisoft released a statement that they were delisting the game, and shutting down the servers three months later. This gave its players until March 31st to enjoy their open world racer as they saw fit, as it would no longer be possible afterwards. (Yeah, I’m making this announcement four months late. I’m late to a lot of things.) I do understand Ubisoft’s decision, as the multiplayer aspect of the game meant keeping the servers active, and nearly 10 years after release, it was likely wiser to turn off the machine than to keep it going only for a handful, especially after the release of The Crew 2 in 2018 and another sequel, Motorfest, in 2023.

But since this thing’s been waiting to be tested for the blog for over seven years (I’d check, but Connect doesn’t keep track of when games are added to your collection!), I felt I could at least acknowledge its existence, and now its absence. Good night street racer, and the whirring of modified cars sing thee to thy rest.

Literally only tried the first mission and saw the map, so I
knew the game world was big, but I didn't actually get to
see much of it.

And hey, at least we’ve been told about this in advance. When it comes to Ubisoft, that’s a lot better than some of their more recent statements, like gamers having to accept a future where they don’t own the games they buy... Anyway, The Crew is now out of my backlog entirely. That’s 18 less hours of gaming for me to worry about. Stay tuned tomorrow for a review of a different Ubisoft game, and that one better still work.

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 2)

Resuming from Part 1, which you can read here.

Slaughterhouse

Today, 2 people protesting with signs. Tomorrow, 4.
The next day, 8? Give it two weeks, and the Alphas are toast!

Good thing we even have that hovercraft, since Hillys
is mostly water all over the place.

Jade’s photojournalism is working. People are rising up. It’s getting clearer that the Alpha Sections are in cahoots with the DomZ. But it’s not enough. The IRIS Network gives Jade her next mission: The victims taken to the Nutripils Factory get shipped into the abandoned slaughterhouse. Once more, she’ll have to sneak in there and take pictures proving the “guards” claiming to fight the aliens are actually working for them. The place is closed off, but there’s a secret hatch the hovercraft can sneak into from within the third circuit of the underground racing league.

The hovercraft will need the ability to jump in order to enter the hatch, so it’s off to Mammago’s again for a jump kit. 15 pearls, pay up. Of the 88 Pearls in the game, you spend 71 at the Garage, all mandatory upgrades for plot progression. As a result, you’re better off not leaving any Pearls behind, just in case you need them later.

Racing to save the world - why not?

Then, Jade and Double H join the race and find the secret passage. Props to this game, it tries to feature all of its major gameplay elements somewhat evenly; be it combat, the occasional puzzle or piloting the hovercraft, though stealth takes over at some point. Really, if it weren’t that the camera often goes haywire when you turn around too roughly with the hovercraft, it would be great. (The camera is a regular issue in the game, because you don't have control; it automatically positions itself where it deems necessary, and it often clashes with what you’re trying to do. Not a great system, but it was a frequent issue in games at the time.)

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 1)

I’m reaching a point in the year where I realize that many games in my to-do list for 2023 are well-regarded, with some of those having reached some degree of fame from both how long they’ve been around and long-lasting positive opinion of them. I’m kind of scared of hype aversion. Today’s game is one of the most beloved from Ubisoft; not one from their infancy, but assuredly one that helped make them into the big studio they are. (Or were? Between controversies, layoffs and mass cancellations, it’s become hard to tell.) It’s also considered by quite a few publications as one of the best games ever made, so… yeah. The hype is real.

Directed by Michel Ancel of Rayman fame, the game we have today was first released for the PlayStation 2 in North America on November 11th, 2003. It was further ported for Microsoft Windows on the 19th, for the original Xbox on December 2nd, for GameCube on December 11th, and had extra HD rereleases for Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2011. Blending genres, this science-fiction tale is an adventure, but several other gaming genres tack themselves onto it: Dungeon exploration, stealth, puzzle, a fair bit of freedom (the game’s progression is linear but some elements can be discovered by just driving around), and… photography? Oh yeah! There’s not enough photography games out there! Alright, I think we can jump in.

The scoop

She'll even rescue kids if she has to. She's already heroic!

Meet Jade, a young woman living in a lighthouse on mining planet Hillys, circa 25th century. The planet, like many others, has been under attack by the DomZ, an alien species, and they’re constantly being pushed away, but barely, by a special task team called the Alpha Section. The planets under attack have adapted in a variety of ways, notably by creating anti-DomZ force fields; however, the repeated attacks always result in casualties. Jade lives with her adoptive uncle Pey’j, who is a literal pig man (perhaps he would prefer the scientific term “sus sapien”; he does look kinda sus sometimes) and several human children rescued and kept safe as their families were taken by the menace. She also has a helping AI buddy who goes by Secundo and whose speech is a mishmash of languages.

Speaking of the kids at the lighthouse, you better not
touch them or you're getting destroyed.

She works as a photojournalist, but doesn’t see much success and money is rare. Her funds are insufficient to maintain the force field measure around the lighthouse, which is a problem when the DomZ attack again. She barely repeals them with Pey’j’s help, even having to defeat a stronger DomZ creature. Damn, she's an expert in fighting with that laser staff. They defend the lighthouse just fine, getting a pearl by killing the large DomZ. It’s after their victory that the Alpha Section arrives, late, to help. As usual.

From this fight, I feared Pey'j (bottom left) would end up
being not too good in battle, as frequently happens of allies
in video games, but he proves his worth later on.

Sonic Month: Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (Part 2)

Continuing from Part 1: There’s a lot more to the game after completing the Heroes’ storyline – namely, the Babylon Rogues’ storyline. Let’s get into it.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, we must run away from here... just... just let me
do three laps on this track before. I gotta... sorry, I must. I need to.
You wouldn't understand, everything has to be a race to me."

It starts with Jet, Wave and Storm at the Gigan Rocks, picking up an Ark of the Cosmos. The three see shooting stars and make wishes. An explosion happens in the distance and stones are about to fall on them, but Jet’s Ark activates and saves them by stopping the stones in midair. The place looks like it’s about to fall apart, so the Rogues flee through a new course. Yet again, you must complete three laps… of the place you’re allegedly running away from… in a set amount of time. I’ve gone at length over the game’s difficulty curve already, so I won’t go through that talk again. However, while the courses in the Babylons' story are different in name and layout, they keep the settings of the tracks from the Heroes’ side. As an example, one track is set in a city scape à la Megalo Station, the current one takes place in the ruins at Gigan Rocks, etc.

Wave, I don't think Jet's one for technobabble,
even when it's simple enough for a kid to understand.

Back at their HQ, Wave studies the item and finds that it toys with the planet’s gravity in order to achieve magnificent boosts of speed – and that these relics, five of them, belonged to their ancestors from Babylon. They may have been used to achieve a warp drive of sorts. They decide to look for the other ones – just as a news report comes up, showing a robot from MeteorTech stealing one from a museum. Out of nowhere, we get a level where Storm is racing against robots - the plot claims he's fleeing from them, but he's doing three laps again.

The rain out there must not be good for my Extreme Bike...

This is the only level in the Babylon story in which the
player controls Wave. Jet and Storm get two levels
each, that's not fair!

After this, we see Jet crash an Ark-stealing robot into a nature’s preserve. After searching for it, he finds it empty-handed. He then hears Amy talking to Sonic about the bracelet she found. Jet wants to confront Team Heroes, but the rest of the Babylon Rogues join him and they leave for reconnaissance in a snowy area, somehow right next door to a borderline tropical climate. In the next level, you merely need to finish the level in a set amount of time. Those levels are annoying for a whole other reason: The timer is too tight! Every time, I finish with less than two seconds remaining, and that’s after a near-perfect run in which all obstacles were avoided! I described the game early in Part 1 as unforgiving. It really is!

By the way, the race courses still look trippy as all Hell
when you look at their maps.

Amy gets a level during the Babylon Story?
This should have been the Babylon Rogues' time to shine!
It's not like they're featured anywhere else!

Following the race on the MeteorTech Premises, and the group’s first encounter with Eggman, we see what was going on with Storm and Amy while they were away – Storm was chasing Amy around MeteorTech Industries for her Ark. Of course, this takes the form of a race in which Amy must reach first place after three laps, which means she… outsped Storm? I have no idea, the premises for these levels rarely make sense. This level is alright, if a bit dark, which makes it difficult to see the path. Wouldn’t be an issue, but when racing against such aggressive AI, you might like to see where you’re going. 

The Gear Speed Boost is quite welcome as well.

Have I mentioned that the game makes use of racing items, Mario Kart-style? It’s not usually so bad, as most times you’ll be getting extra Rings or Gravity Points. Sometimes, you get power-ups such as a temporary speed boost or a special Punch attack – when it’s activated, the character runs on the track and literally punches away the opponents they come across.

However! If you're in first place, your character may get negative items, such as a ball and chain that slows the character down considerably, or a temporary cancellation of all the Extreme Gear upgrades they’ve collected. When you’re already struggling to keep the lead, you do not need something that will hinder you further. Mario Kart does it right, by giving the player in First Place lame items such as bananas or green shells, but nothing that will straight-up impede them! It's bad game design to have items in a racing game that are directly detrimental to the person using them!

Who the fuck decided to include an item that
deliberately slows down its user...
IN A GOD DAMN RACING GAME?

Man, the Venice of the future is weird.

Storm chases Amy all the way to a watery area. Annoyed, Amy tosses her Ark at his face before trying to flee again – but that’s when a MeteorTech robot shows up, probably to steal the item. It, however, explodes without any reason, revealing another Ark inside itself. While Amy’ friends arrive, Storm takes both Arks of the Cosmos and races back to the Babylon Rogues’ airship. This level is alright, I don’t have much negative to say for it, aside that it has some very inconvenient sections with surprise endless pits. Completing three laps in 4 minutes is a bit easier, but there are tricky segments.

I can describe Eggman a lot of things, but "stealthy" would
have never made the list... until I saw this scene.
This guy is usually the complete opposite of stealthy.

The Rogues now have all of the Arks, and Wave reads upon the mythology of their ancestors that they might be used to power up Babylon Garden… or cause it to create a "lightless black". Unbeknownst to the three avians, Eggman had been spying on them, and he manages to steal all the Arks and flee. Cue to the end of the Heroes’ storyline at the Crimson Tower, and we see the same events unfold: Jet challenges Sonic to a race for the Arks. I do like that the Sonic franchise tries, very often, to make interconnected stories. It doesn’t always work, but I applaud the effort. Instead of the Crimson Crater, this race takes place in the Security Corridor. Same idea of racing up a tower’s side, different track.

Why yes, everyone's just casually racing up the side of a tower.

Casually stopping localized black holes.
It's all in a day's work.

After this race, Sonic and Jet knock Eggman down, and Sonic begrudgingly lets Jet have the Arks. However, when everyone thought this was over, the leader of the MeteorTech Robots, SCR-HD, shows up and steals the Arks, flying off to Babylon Garden. Tails figures it out: These things manipulate gravity through the creation of temporary black holes. Their collective power, used within Babylon Garden, can create a genuine black hole that threatens to destroy the planet. And SCR-HD does it! Though they're all at risk of getting sucked into the black hole, hope isn’t lost; the heroes and the Rogues team up to stop the black hole and SCR-HD, who upon reaching the Garden has mutated into Master Core: ABIS.

You're gonna have to explain to me how the Arks transformed a
normal robot into a giant monster machine, when nothing before this
point implied the Arks had that power.

Hm, this isn't the first Master Core I beat up in the past 12 months.

You could call it... diving into danger!

This race is a boss fight; characters have lost their ability to manipulate gravity, but the boss will often deactivate gravity and make them fly (causing a Gravity Dive). The player controls Sonic, and must gain speed boosts while in Gravity Dive by hitting floating panels, in order to reach Master Core: ABIS and attack it. The boss activates this ability roughly every 25 seconds, and it lasts about 5. Sonic can’t hit the boss while in Gravity Dive if he’s too far behind, or if CPU characters get to it first (these ingrates won’t hit the boss! Yet they still try to beat Sonic like it's some fucking race!). You’re given 5 minutes and must hit the boss a total of six times (and it gains new attacks after each successful two hits). You need to succeed in hitting the boss roughly 6 times out of the 9 or 10 chances you’re given. Thank God the course is free of obstacles, or it would be impossible. It took me nearly twenty attempts!

Eh... there are several geniuses on this planet who could
probably repair the Garden, but it's much more fun to stay
on this planet to partake in some races.

Somehow, defeating Master Core: ABIS solves everything, but it also breaks Babylon Garden. As they find out that the Garden is a ship their ancestors came to Earth on, the Babylon Rogues realize they're descendants of aliens. Huh. I never could’ve told, they look exactly like regular Mobians to me. At least they seem pretty happy staying in this world. Later, as Team Heroes are headed somewhere else in Tails’ flying car, Jet shows up to challenge Sonic to an Extreme Gear race again. Again? Jet, you're seriously obsessed with defeating Sonic. You start to feel like some sort of obsessed love-stalker. Just so you know, Sonic already has to deal with Amy in that department, his platter's pretty full.

Me neither.

18 playable characters. That's pretty good.

Finishing the Story Mode unlocks three new courses (Astral Babylon, ‘80s Boulevard, ‘90s Boulevard), and new characters for the Free Racing mode (namely, Doctor Eggman, Silver the hedgehog and Blaze the cat). If you beat every extra mission for every track, you will also unlock three guest racers from Sega’s other franchises – NiGHTS, Amigo and Billy Hatcher. It’s also possible to unlock SCR-HD, the leader of the MeteorTech robots, and SCR-GP, a regular robot from that group.

After the Story Mode, you can play freely in Normal Race, which has three options – Free Race, Time Attack, and World Grand Prix. You’d better hope you’re good at the game to beat that one! There’s also a Survival mode, which is split in three sub-games: Survival Relay, Survival Ball and Survival Battle, which take place on six special courses. Back when the Wii’s Wi-Fi Connection was active, it was possible to access the World Rankings menu and submit your best performance on a track, or download the ghost of someone else’s performance and attempt to do better than them.

I don't have the patience to grind 9999 rings to gather
all of the extra Gears in the game.

Last but not least, the Shop menu takes the player to a boutique for Extreme Gear. Each character has their own personal Gear, which is unlocked along with them, but it’s possible to buy extra Gears. Most characters are able to use all types of gears Gears, but there are limits (as an example, Eggman can only use Bike or Wheel-type Gears, and the SCRs don’t use Gears at all). Gears include boards, skates, bikes, air rides, yachts, and wheels. There’s a total of 61 Gears to collect, most of which must be bought in the Shop. Prices start at 750 for the cheapest, and go all the way to 9999. I hope you like grinding for Rings…

This covers everything in the game. I liked it just fine, but that comes with a big “But”. I didn’t dislike my experience with the game, however it’s one where the flaws are too present for me to ignore, and I don’t think I see myself playing it again. Or going for 100% completion, either.

As a concept for a racing game, it’s fine; you steer by tilting the Wii remote, using the gravity powers to negotiate tricky turns or get a lead. So, a racing agme with a twist; I can rally behind that. There’s a nice roster of playable characters and Extreme Gears to use, and the tracks do look and feel quite nice. The story wasn’t necessary, but I do appreciate that it’s there, interconnected stories and all, even if some levels happen out of the blue, without any apparent connection to the plot. Also, the tracks do look pretty great (even if some of them are a bit dark), and per Sonic tradition, the soundtrack is quite good.

That said, as a racing game, it has all the problems you could expect from a poor Mario Kart clone. Most tracks are built with the gravity mechanics in mind, so there are 90° turns all over the place. You also unlock these tracks through the Story Mode, which gives you no time to practice them; sure, at every new level, you could quit the Story Mode to go practice the track in Normal Race, but it's a lot of extra steps.

What’s worse, the game expects you to excel from the very start, as you must always either arrive first against ruthless AI racers who know every track and its secrets, and can use that knowledge against you, or finish three laps in a set amount of time, with a timer so tight you will be lucky if you can reach the finish line with more than 5 seconds left. Items often work actively against you when you’re in the lead, the rubber-band employed by the CPUs is exaggerated, and though you’re taught how to use the mechanics, the tutorial doesn’t prepare for the tough difficulty embodied by the other racers.

Everything in the game works against you,
even the items when you're in the lead!

There are things you’re barely told, such as the ability of Power-type characters to destroy obstacles if they’ve upgraded their Extreme Gear up to a point, and you still have to master these new variables when they pop up in the plot. The single error can, might, and likely will cost you the race. I’ve rarely seen a game this unforgiving.

But because I’m a goddamn determinator, I went through the Story Mode in spite of those issues anyway. I won’t say it was always fun, but I wanted to see it to the end. I powered through, but once all of it was done, I felt no interest for the extra missions. Mind you, I like that they went through the trouble of adding said missions, and quite a lot of them too, but I’m burned on that one. I also like the various options for single-player and multiplayer in Normal Race and Survival Mode, as well as the large selection of Extreme Gears (though you need to grind Rings like crazy to buy most of them, which sucks!).

It’s a clear case where the problems outweigh the positives, in my opinion. It’s not a very good game… that said, from what I heard, it’s less complicated than the original Sonic Riders, and also leagues better than the sequel, Sonic Free Riders, which fucked up its controls big time by relying on the Xbox Kinect's motion detection for absolutely everything.

I don’t recommend it if you’re just the average Sonic fan. If you must have it, look for it, but it’s not a big loss if you never come across this game.

It's also a shame that these three tend to be somewhat forgotten
by the franchise. If friggin' Big the Cat can make a return, so can they!

Next week: Sonic and the Black Knight.