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.