Sonic Riders

Sonic Riders

released on Feb 21, 2006

Sonic Riders

released on Feb 21, 2006

Sonic Riders is the fourth racing game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, preceded by Sonic Drift, Sonic Drift 2 and Sonic R. The game was released to start off the 15th anniversary of the release of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. For a short while, the Microsoft Xbox version of the game was released with a free Sonic X DVD. This game introduces five new playable characters, the Babylon Rogues and the E-10000 series. A sequel to Sonic Riders, entitled Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, was released in 2008 for the Wii and PlayStation 2, followed by the Kinect-required game Sonic Free Riders for the Xbox 360 in 2010. This was the last Sonic the Hedgehog game for the GameCube and Microsoft Xbox.


Released on

Genres


More Info on IGDB


Reviews View More

Haven't replayed this in a long while but I'm still as good as ever. Still my favourite racing game ever made. Got the Xbox version today just for funsies cuz playing on pc can be a pain due to the setup. And that justified this replay haha.

Yllätävän syvä peli vaiks tää on aika vihattu jostai syyst, paskan tutoriaalin takii varmaa

This is a game i always wanted to play as a kid seeing info for it back in the day, which i never got to actually play until a while ago. (I was a PC-only kid and i never even knew it got a PC port until a few years ago, i beat it there and then recently replayed on XBOX) I just loved everything surrounding it. The designs of the Babylon Rogues which i absolutely adored, (Jet is just completely cool, Storm is like a cursed yet badass mix of Shadow and Big the Cat, and Wave is my first vidya crush), as well as the animated intro and 2D renders with that cool flat artstyle. Despite all it's flaws, this game is really fun and i'm glad to it gets to see some redemption in the public eye. It's funny to think that back in the day plenty of magazines were saying that this game was just a desperate cashgrab copy of SSX, Which to me sounds as idiotic as saying Super Mario Strikers is a poor man's PES 6.

I've heard many complaints about this game being hard to understand how to play, but it's actually really simple. All you have to do is watch the "how to play" attract mode video after letting the game idle for a while on the main menu, and then you'll understand that you're supposed to hold the jump button in ramps juuuust at the right time in order to jump higher and do better tricks with the left stick while mid-air. The hoverboards characters race on run on compressed air as fuel, and thus air management is also a big element of this game. It really adds a lot to the challenge, since moves like boosting, the Tornado and drifting cost air, and successful trick jumps can help you get it back. How much air you can hold on your board depends on the board level which you can upgrade by picking up coins throughout the map, and there's plenty of different boards to unlock or purchase from the Black Market which have different stats and can consume more or less air for moves. There are some items that can get you a slight edge over your rivals and help you level up your board faster, but no amount of items is going to help you if you keep burning through your air bar quickly. NEVER fall off tracks as not only you will be wasting time but you will lose your coins and your board will also be downgraded all the way back to Lvl. 1.
Even something as simple as starting the race becomes part of the skill curve, as you have manually cross the starting line just as the timer starts, and a few miliseconds of difference can either get you zapped at the starting line or get a head start over other racers.
I suppose there's a lot of things they could have explained somewhere in the game itself as well so people wouldn't skip over as easily. Sonic Riders is definitely not as 'pick up and play' as Mario Kart and can be quite tough to play with a friend or family member who isn't good at videogames, but honestly, i think all of these mechanics and not-so-accessible gameplay are what holds the game back from becoming yet another forgettable mascot racing game, and what makes the game so fun and engaging to play even on your own, let alone against another player who knows what they're doing.

The only thing i really, really don't like about this game is... the missions. The ones you get after beating the game where you do objectives like breaking robots, getting trick points, etc. that you've already done throughout the entire game.
They're just fucking awful, at their best they're just lazily done and amount to the game repeating itself, and at their worst they feel like massive fucking lifewasters that require frame perfect jumps or are outright deliberately designed to troll you, like one mission where you're supposed to destroy 15 robots but just one never seems to spawn anywhere on the map so i found no way to beat it other than some trick where i just waited for one to respawn and then destroyed all the others while getting to the end line in a split second. The only reason i don't deem these missions horrible enough to take even half a star from my log is because they are pretty much just side content for the ultra dedicated, you don't really need to beat them for any noteworthy content outside of a few hidden characters such as Ulala from Space Channel 5 or Super Sonic once you clear all the missions.

Spring Canon is also burned into my mind as hard as Luigi's Raceway or de_dust2.

Pretty solid sonic game when you get the hang of tricks and the controls!

Acho o jogo bonito, tem cenários bastante diversificados e uma boa ambientação. Ainda acho a ost legal mas um pouco "simples"

Mas poxa, q joguinho difícil. Nem é questão dos bots, a própria jogabilidade é difícil de se acostumar. Sério, fui me acostumar quando eu tava na última fase do time do Sonic. Depois disso o jogo ficou mais tranquilo, mas poxa, vai ser difícil assim na casa do chapéu.