Sonic Month: Sonic and the Black Knight (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

"You better, I just sharpened you!" - Also said by Sonic.

When we left Part 1, Sonic had completed tasks given to him by Nimue, the Lady of the Lake. However, he felt compelled to help a child whose family had been taken by a dragon. In Crystal Cave, Sonic runs through the cave and defeats a ton of enemies. He also finds himself having to rescue townspeople trapped in magic crystals, by reflecting sunlight off of Caliburn to break the solid prisons. With the villagers freed (and yet no dragon in sight), Sonic returns to the child.

When you run so fast, your legs turn invisibleé

It turns out that this child had been Nimue in disguise, presenting another test to the hero. And Sonic made the right call by going out there to rescue everyone! Hah, and Caliburn wanted us to ignore this! Nimue goes on to explain that the only way to defeat Arthur’s scabbard-powered immortality is to gather the weapons of the Knights of the Round Table through defeat in duel, and combine them to Caliburn in order to get a sword powerful enough to undo the spell. That’s good, I’ve already defeated Lancelot and Gawain. And the only one left is Percival. Why only three? Either there was no room in the plot for the others, or the studio blew their budget and could only afford three. Yeah, that second one makes sense.

...Hey, don't you dare call me a Japanese Gardevoir!

Whoa, she's on fire!
I mean, it's Blaze, yes, but still...

This quest now takes us to the Molten Mine. After venturing through the burning lands, Sonic encounters Sir Percival. Never mind that the Knight is portrayed by Blaze, she’s a Sir. She fights well, and she uses her fire abilities to fend off Sonic, but she’s defeated. With this, she tries to toss herself in the lava below, but Sonic catches her in time. This victory, and the act of heroism that followed, finally make Caliburn acknowledge Sonic as a proper knight. A Sir, not a Knave, at last! Took him long enough! Now with the Knights’s three legendary blades collected, we meet with Merlina again. We might have just what’s needed to take down King Arthur, and this battle in Faraway Avalon will make history!

What is it with knights and suicide around here? Geez!

Watch out for incoming mine carts.

Beating Percival also unlocks the Cavalier and Paladin Styles, as well as a handful of extra missions that veer off more on the mini-game side of things. In one of them, Sonic runs through the Crystal Caves and must not come into contact with a single villager. Of course, this is the level where they’re every-freaking-where. Another one, in the Molten Mines, requires Sonic to spend the whole level grinding on rails, and jumping to avoid rolling minecarts. In both cases, it takes an insane amount of timing and precision, and the smallest mistake forces you to start the whole thing over. These two go from “Okay, cool, an interesting idea” to “God damn it, why did they make these so annoying?” in record time.

He tells me that I'm the one tor un away...
While HE is running away? Hypocrite, that Arthur!

The Epic (Final?) Showdown!

Past those, we can head to Avalon to fight Arthur. It’s a final boss fight alright, as Sonic has to use everything he learned in his journey. The real strategy is filling up the Soul Gauge to the maximum, usually by slashing the spheres of darkness Arthur drops back at him, then by catching up, and homing in on him to attack. Next comes a difficult and annoying QTE moment where Sonic must clash blades against Arthur, six times, which then opens him up for attacks. Slash, slash, slash, lather, rinse, repeat, until he’s defeated. After which, in a cutscene, Arthur begins to heal thanks to the scabbard, but Sonic sets the other legendary blades around him to end the magical process, then slashes him one last time. Boom, done! Roll credits! …Wait, really? That’s kind of sudden.

Okay, so the Adventure Mode was kind of on the short side all things considered, but I’m sure there’ll be a lot of postgame missions, definitely. Secret Rings did that, I expect the same. At the end, it had some annoying moments, but overall it wasn’t too terrible. So yeah, after long credits, we can check the Multiplayer option, since that’s another option. Or the Gallery, which shows all the cutscenes – including 10 that are still apparently missing… Okay… Hm, checking the Adventure Mode, a mission opened in a new area… Alright, I’m intrigued.

Oh great, he's disappearing again.

Pictured: When shit got real.

When Arthur is defeated, he vanishes into particles of darkness like the many Knights of the Underworld that Sonic has been defeating. Merlina is being cornered by the three Knights of the Round Table when the hedgehog shows up with the scabbard, wondering what’s going on. Merlina explains that this King Arthur was an illusion made by her grandfather Merlin to keep the kingdom prosperous… which she believes has always been a mistake, and that what should have been done from the start… was to imbue the entire kingdom in the scabbard’s power to make it eternal… which she proceeds to do, also transforming the kingdom into the Underworld and making monsters come out all over the place.

Well, shit. We’ve been working for the real villain this whole time.

Ah yes, the inevitabe sewer level.
Even in the Arthurian Legends, gotta have one of them.

Also important: Each Knight uses a different playstyle
(Lancelot = Knight, Gwain = Paladin, Percival = Cavalier).

Sonic and the Knights flee from the castle of Avalon as it transforms into a dark, spiky fortress, and meet each other at a safe point. Nimue joins them and explains that, the same way Sonic could cancel the fake Arthur’s immortality with the Knights’s legendary blades, it might be possible to cancel the scabbard’s power on the whole land by planting the blades at the corners of the Kingdom. Surprise – now, it’s possible to play in Adventure Mode as Lancelot, Gawain or Percival, in some specific missions!

"Oh yes, bring me a samurai helmet, an aquamarine,
a chain bracelet and a lollipop, I'll MacGyver a
new weapon up for you."

At the Blacksmith’s shop, you can equip different items to Sonic and the Knights (Also of note, Gawain can hold only one item, while Lancelot can hold two and Percival, three). Also, remember all those objects you pick up and identify at the end of levels, those seemingly-useless items? It turns out that the Blacksmith can build new swords and weapons using those are crafting materials. I like the idea as it encourages players to go through the game some more in order to collect these materials. That said, good luck figuring out what can be found where without a guide…

Is that Shad-er, Lancelot? Yep!

Can I say that some of the areas in this game are
absolutely gorgeous?

Three new areas open, with Barrier Stones at the end of each – this is where the legendary swords must be planted. Lancelot plants Arondight at the end of the Shrouded Forest, though the construct reads “This stone is but a part of the ring that sealeth the Dark Hollow”. A similar message is found at the Great Megalith by Gawain, who realizes after planting Galatine that, though he served Arthur, he never saw Excalibur itself, only the scabbard. Then, Percival takes her own Laevatein to the end of The Cauldron, a fiery area that has the most annoying elements of platforming I have seen in the game so far. Difficult jumps across lava? Yep. Enemies who willingly push you into the molten magma? Yep. After this, Sonic has to go through a dragon’s lair and kill the dragon within before he can set Caliburn into the last Barrier Stone. Alas, Nimue sees that their efforts weren't enough, as they didn't prevent the darkness from creeping further throughout the kingdom.

Blaze Percival will breeze through this land of fire!
It's her element, after all.

Sonic runs to the Dark Hollow, ready to fight Merlina. She wants to preserve this world’s beauty, but Sonic claims that nothing lasts forever and that’s why life must be lived to the fullest. I mean, nice moment of philosophy for a Sonic video game, but… it almost comes out of nowhere. Wished this was expanded upon in the franchise, but apparently that’s too much to ask. After beating Sonic within an inch of his life, Merlina turns into an Eldritch monster, the Dark Queen (what a creative name), while Caliburn merges with the Knights' legendary blades to become the true Excalibur. Sonic also gets a new form, Excalibur Sonic, which is… well, just Sonic in a golden armor that protects the entirety of his body, except his tail. Hey, Merlina! I know his weakness, his ass is still bare! Grab him by the tail!

This final boss is a bit disappointing. It doesn’t really bring anything new – Sonic must slash at large orbs of light to hit them back at the Dark Queen and fill his Soul Gauge. Then a press of the B button, and Sonic will rush at the Queen and slash for a bit. The one change is that, in order to avoid attacks, Sonic must roll left or right, using Z or A to do so. Then comes the Wii remote QTEs again, which yay, we didn’t have enough of those yet. The battle against the fake Arthur was tougher than that! (Or so it seems, at least; I remember struggling against the last boss a lot, back when I first went through the game.) And so, with the Dark Queen defeated, Merlina returns to normal, and her spell is lifted from the land.

Sonic already kills Eldritch creatures on a yearly basis.
He can deal with one more without any problem.

Heh, even Sonic can't believe it.

Sonic has just won the latest game of “My ideology is better than yours”, so I guess it means he’s the hero of this world now. The Knights of the Round Table fear they must disband, all three of them, since they no longer have a King to serve, but Caliburn interjects by claiming that it is the one that chooses who King Arthur is. And, lo and behold, Caliburn declares Sonic to be King Arthur. That comes out of nowhere, but that’s about as good an ending as any. After the end credits, Sonic has been brought out of the book and back to his world (because apparently that world of the Arthurian Legends can live without its Arthur), and faces the wrath of an angry Amy who demands to know where he’s been for so long when they were supposed to go on a date. Yeah, Sonic, good luck convincing her that you were caught in a book the whole time.

"Oh hey, that book is about me now!"

Lancelot: The Rematch.

I am not entirely done talking about the game – the story’s over, but now we have proper postgame missions to complete. I remember the loads of extra missions in Secret Rings, and once again here, we have all sorts of special challenges to finish across the map. The most notable ones may be the rematch against Lancelot. Oh fucking God, he is insanely tough. I think he would be slightly easier if the QTEs worked better, if the game gave the player only a little more time to shake the Wii remote when required – as it is, you’re barely given a second to react. I did eventually manage to defeat Lancelot, with a technique that avoids QTEs entirely, but it took me forever. Eventually, the constant shaking of the Wii remote to slash with the sword put a strain on my arm.

They really go all-out with challenges past this point; one level of the Shrouded Forest asks you to reach the goal without ever touching the ground (though elevated platforms are OK), one asks to finish a level without getting hit once (not easy, but doable when you know the sequence of events), one asks to find hidden fairies. The way to make hidden fairies appear changes depending on the level.

It doesn't take forever to change perimeters at the Blacksmith's shop,
like it did for the equipped Rings in Sonic and the Secret Rings.

According to my sources, the developers behind Sonic and the Black Knight learned from some of the criticism they received on Sonic and the Secret Rings. In S&tSR, you could edit up to four Rings with the abilities collected as you leveled up. It became possible to remove some key abilities from Sonic, such as the instant catching of Rings and orbs. The biggest issue, there, was precisely that several missions were impossible to complete unless you edited an ability Ring specifically to go through them. As an example, in some missions, you couldn’t collect a single orb (the items that refill the Soul Gauge in that game); that included orbs collected by beating enemies, so a Ring had to be modified so Sonic couldn’t collect orbs on the field nor home in on enemies. Editing the ability Rings broke the flow of the game in major ways.

Now you, too, can play as Dan Green Knuckles Gawain!

The system in SatBK is simplified; for starters, the missions don’t outright require one or another of the Styles. All missions allow all styles for Sonic, so the concepts and goals may appear generic, but that doesn’t make them any easier, oh no. The one downside to being able to switch between the Knight, Paladin and Cavalier styles, is that those Styles need to be leveled up as well in order to get their best perks, by completing levels with that style. Also, each playable Knight excels in one Style; Lancelot plays as a Knight, while Gawain is a Paladin and Percival is a Cavalier. The flow of the game isn’t broken constantly, which is a major improvement. The one downside is that the Knights are only playable in worlds that were discovered after the battle with King Arthur in Faraway Avalon.

Every Knight has 12 swords to choose from.
Sonic only gets that Big Mouth Caliburn.

It also begs the question: What’s the use for the swords crafted at the Blacksmith’s shop? Well, those can only be equipped to their associated Knight of the Round Table. There’s a total of 36, so their original weapon plus 11 extra weapons to be crafted. Although one may assume such, the swords aren’t merely cosmetic; each one will change the set of skills that Knight has access to. Perks include higher base speed, easier left/right movement, extra rings gained by defeating multiple enemies, starting with some energy in the Soul Gauge, and so on.

I’ll need to finish this in Part 3.

Sonic Month: Sonic and the Black Knight (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

A point of criticism leveled at the Sonic franchise since the mid-2000s is that new games keep trying out new gameplay mechanics, at the detriment of what made older Sonic games work. There’s nothing wrong with trying out new things in a long-running franchise, as long as it doesn’t clash with the rest. Shadow the Hedgehog had third-person shooting; Sonic Unleashed had the Werehog sections, which are slow compared to Sonic’s usual fare; Sonic Chronicles is a turn-based RPG, which clashes with the very speed-oriented identity of the franchise; and the less we say about Sonic Free Riders and its use of Kinect controls, the better.

As an example, the horizontal remote for SatSR.

The Wii era of Sonic games particularly loved to toy around with controls and features, in part due to the motion controls related to the Wii remote and Nunchuk. I liked Sonic and the Secret Rings just fine. I’ve yet to play through the entirety of Unleashed. Today’s game, Sonic and the Black Knight… well, it’s complicated. Giving Sonic a sword is rather out there as an idea, but hey, if it works, there’s no issue, right? And hey, isn’t anything more awesome if you add a sword to it? Sonic + Sword, that sounds incredible, doesn’t it?

Sonic and the Black Knight is the second of two “Storybook” Sonic games, the first one being Sonic and the Secret Rings (which I reviewed for this blog on my first Sonic month, way back in 2015). Whereas the first one took inspiration from the Arabian Nights, this one draws from the Legend of King Arthur. New setting, new gameplay ideas and new controls. Once again, a concept that makes finishing the game relatively simple, but going for 100% completion a challenge that only the most determined players will take. The game has it all: A ton of collectibles, a library of the developers' content, a multiplayer option, a customizable shield design…

Of course mine was going to be blue with white lys flowers. Call me Sire Nicholas Coeurdelion. 

Time for a Hedgehog ex Machina!

This game begins at nightfall. A young wizard woman is fleeing from an evil-looking armored knight riding on horseback. The knight catches up to her and, in a swift strike, cuts into the sky itself, opening a dark wound from which similarly evil monsters bleed out. …A line this good should go in a novel, I swear. As she’s cornered, the wizard casts a spell that summons the Knight of the Wind. A portal opens above and down falls Sonic, two chilidogs following suit.

"My chilidogs, do you see this? Or am I going crazy?"

A second after Sonic ran through them, all the monsters
were destroyed. He works fast!

Although the contact with the ground is brutal, the hedgehog rushes to get his treats. There’s no way he would allow these chilidogs to be wasted! Also, the last time he got sucked into a literary world, he was asked nicely. That wizard, who looks a lot like Shahra the genie from Secret Rings by the way, is clearly in trouble. Sonic downs a chilidog in a single bite, tosses the other, and kills all the smaller monsters in a matter of seconds, catching his second hot-dog in-flight. He’s ready to rumble against the shadowy knight as well, but the wizard teleports the two of them away, causing Sonic to lose his prized snack in the dust of the gravel road.

That chilidog never got to serve its true purpose! This is the saddest love story in the entire Sonic franchise.

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.