Sonic Free Riders

That awful Dr. Eggman is at it again. This time he has tricked Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails along with some of their shittiest of friends to enter a hoverboard grand prix. Sonic Free Riders may ride on a decent idea that could have made for an entertaining Kinect experience, if it wasn't for a few basic flaws.

You will notice them as soon as you step onto the fictive board, a make belief skate board like creation where you stand as if on a board facing the TV. Standing like that with your head turned to face the TV isn't very comfortable for a longer period of time.

Before you dive into the the proper game you are advised to go through the tutorial. It sounds reasonable, but it's a very slow and tedious experience. A small Chao creature speaks as slow as humanly possible and explains every details before you're let loose on a training course where you go through each thing. Each miss (and you will miss), means that you have to redo it, and this is very frustrating. The tutorial took close to an hour to complete, and there are more tutorials waiting later on in the game.

The slow, sluggish pace is something that runs through the experience like a red thread, you will have to suffer through cut scenes that insult your intelligence and dialogue when all you want to do is race. This brand of childish and strained jolliness comes as part of the package when you play a game that features a selection of Sonic's shittier friends.

I'm not particularly happy this far, and it gets worse. Sonic Free Riders is a very fast game where you navigate tight courses, filled with bonus items and rings. It was hard enough in the predecessors, and it's not made easier as Sega hasn't been able to get the most out of Kinect.

Where Rare and Harmonic have succeeded with Kinect Sports and Dance Central, Sonic Free Riders registers your movements randomly. I can stand facing left and see my character on screen facing the other way, jumps are only occasionally registered while precision turns are impossible. It's a frustrating experience for someone like me who loves to hunt high scores, but constantly has to see my times suffer from factors I can't control.

The Kinect functionality is so poor that navigating the menus is pure terror. Sometimes when I huddle down on the board to gain speed for a jump, I'm greeted with a pause screen as that's what the software thought I wanted. Once I'm in the menus it takes ages to get me where I want. It's far from acceptable, especially when you compare this to the lovely Minority Report like experience you get from navigating the menus in Dance Central.

Sonic Free Riders is one of very few Kinect titles with Xbox Live support. I went online in the hope of finding some competition, but I came up with a blank Wednesday as Kinect saw its European release. The same thing happened on Thursday as I tried to find a match on several occasions. So I really can't say how well the network code works, and it doesn't look like anyone else has really tried it either.

Sonic Free Riders isn't a total disaster. It would have been a decent game if only the Kinect functionality would have worked consistently or if there had been an option to use a standard controller. There are plenty of riders and tracks, and there is a lot more to the racing than what first meets the eye. And the Time Trial, that shuts off all the extras, actually works decently as there is no distractions from the racing.

But as it stands Sonic Free Riders doesn't land on a passing grade, not even close. The controls are poor, the pace slow, the voices annoying, and the graphics aren't exactly setting the world on fire. There seems to be a belief among developers that young kids are happy as long as a popular mascot is in a game. I would argue the complete opposite, and the reason why games like the Lego titles from TT Games are so successful is that they provide quality entertainment. Something Sonic Free Riders fails in doing.