What I can never fault Ring Racers for is its ambition. Its environments are lovely, well realized, and expand on familiar Sonic zones and trappings in a way that accentuates every single track. It's a mechanically rich game with a bunch of different systems to compensate for every idea it has. It loads you with objectives and a glut of content that is mind boggling to begin to tackle. In all senses, it is a love letter to the legacy of Sonic and the fan game community that has sprung up around him, and takes every opportunity to remind you of its fan game status that it absolutely relishes. As a celebration and collection, Ring Racers is absolutely sublime.

Getting there tends to be the trickier issue. Much has been said about the game's intro, and while I find the dialogue and overall presentation of the tutorial very charming, I do find it a very misguided intro to the game. The mechanics taught in the tutorial are often used very sparingly across the actual races, and even those used often like drifting are used in different, shorter-form contexts than the tutorial would imply. It practically posits Ring Racers as an entirely different game and experience compared to what it actually is, and it goes on doing that for quite a while!

The actual races themselves vary in quality drastically depending on the track layout. Ring Racers can be absolutely vicious with its track designs, with hazards feeling devastating as they can easily combo into other hazards or items that toss you around like a pinball. This can be DEVASTATING on slopes, which require Sonic's vaunted momentum to get up and are aided by the ring system, letting you increase your speed a little bit per ring used. This should present some level of risk/reward; do you use your rings on straightaways to burst ahead, or save them for slopes as a means of recovery to maintain position? Unfortunately, rings are plentiful to a fault, and computer opponents (ESPECIALLY your rival character) are want to use them whenever possible to ludicrous speed increases, so rings become less strategic unless you're specifically saving them for chaos emerald bonuses in Grand Prix standings and more "I hope this part of the track also has rings". And when it doesn't... well you have the spin dash to get you out of the worst of things, but it feels pretty rough.

Drifting is also highly committal compared to rings, meaning that all alternate forms of speed are just kinda secondary to the immediate allure of the rings, which do not have enough risk to them to make the immediate reward not always a pull. This is compounded by items, which use the same button as using rings and, thus, often get in the way of progress more often than they help, especially considering how avoidable most offensive items tend to be as they struggle to interact with the steep sloped terrain of Ring Racers! I feel that individual race courses struggle to decide if they want to play nice with Ring Racers' systems or want to struggle against them, and very few of them are properly in line with the expectations set by the tutorial. It makes for a very uneven experience where a single bad spill on the last lap is both really debilitating and could not be entirely your fault, with means of consistent recovery not entirely present as opponents can keep padding their lead with rings and the comeback items are either unweildy to use, especially in a bad headspace, or inaccurate.

There are moments where Ring Racers does put everything together. Zones like Emerald Coast, Withering Chateau, Opulence, Regal Ruin, and Joypolis show DRRR at its best, with a consistent sense of flow, opportunities to best use shortcuts, and a great feel for combining the drift and ring mechanics. But for every one of them, there's a Marble Garden just asking for the player to try and break it in two before it breaks them. It lacks the kindness of kart racers like Mario, fails to commit to its individual mechanics like F-Zero, and does not string its systems together in nearly as seamless away as Crash, Diddy Kong, or even other Sonic racing titles manage. Ring Racers is its own, unforgiving beast that I can't say I had a bad time with, but it feels a bit overtuned for all it wants to strive for; a love letter that needed an editor, but how do you say "turn down the passion?" I like and respect it, I'll come back to keep pecking away at its wide breadth of content. But man I STILL haven't unlocked Whisper and don't even have a clue on how to get her, and I sincerely hope she's in the character class I like otherwise I'm gonna be real sad.

Honestly about still as good as I remember?

I feel like there's more to appreciate coming back to it now in a,, endearing way. It's like a collective playable synthwave album, down to how the attacks are basically a rhythm, but just jumbled around by bursts of twin stick sections and walking moments where you let the music play while a stupid pastiche narrates at you. And all of that is still really really fun to me. I'm enjoying the push and pull like normal, even if it's all rudimentary now that I've already beaten Furier and still have the muscle memory.

Which really surprised me, because I think that's the kind of opaque bullshit I would come back and go "wow this meant genuinely nothing, what the fuck did they think they were cooking?", but with all the environments and how the music sways it comes off more in the stoner sense where they THOUGHT they were being so interesting and deep but their eyes are staring blank straight through you lol. That's like the best way I can explain why it's fun to experience on a return.

It congeals together in such a way that I find myself unable to resent its very standard and now blatantly generic "phase" design. It's like yeah, I can get into it ^.=.^ I'm still banging my head to You're Mine, after all. Hilariously it makes me feel like I'm too harsh on Sekiro that This is the rhythm like action game I'm eating up today.

+ Pleasing visual style
+ Feels like the game is testing the breaking point of enemy density. You push the crowds or else you will die first.
+ Felt unfair at first because the movement felt too stiff to deal with the enemies on the screen, but still there are many tools that can be used for making your own space (like izuna drop, LLL-dash loop, get-off-me-tool that uses resources, grenades), and the dash i frame is surprisingly lenient.
+ Healing system also encourages you to be more aggressive and the meter management also plays into this process.
+ Bosses are (as long as they are functioning as 1v1 humanoids) pretty alright.
-A lot of encounters blend in too much because barely any environment plays into the combat arenas.
-Maybe way too long considering the enemy variety itself and the monotonous gameplay flow shifts. I would remove some levels in the middle.
-3D background and camera panning can make misaligned hit boxes which can make some how-did-that-hit-me situations
-Final boss sucks ass
+- Tutorial dump at the beginning can be overwhelming, but hey, if I could comprehend it, maybe you also can.
+- I think S ranking is in the unreasonable territory. It requires a no-hit run in regular encounters and bosses.. and honestly that’s…reserved for only the top 0.1% of the player base? It’s definitely not for me lol

Estimated read time: 6~ minutes.

I have terrible rhythm—I can synchronize, but that's about it—but I love this game. I practically can't beat Rhythm Heaven (might dive into that at some point), but I adore these tours and subpar live recording album-tier covers with completely nonsense maps that make the guitar play the piano, horns, etc.; not because it makes sense but because it's simply fun.

The intro goes incredibly hard. I think it perfectly represents the series as a whole. Even though Guitar Hero III is widely considered the best by a decent margin, I’m partial to II for its crust. Although one very nice feature starting here was they realized people were buying various types of RPTVs and plasmas, so they implemented a calibration screen to make the game playable in the new era of TVs with high latency (40+ms!!).

I’ve always had stage fright, particularly if it ever involved singing. Despite that, I walk through those venue doors, nervous and frankly embarrassed; social anxiety is a bitch. But my love was secretly listening to hard rock, metal, prog rock and metal, maybe a bit of trance here ‘n’ there. I Am here to enjoy some fucking music, meet fellow musicians, and hopefully grow as one.

You know what I found, though?

The fakest fuckers on the planet lamenting about not being popular enough or whatever. "What about me?" What about you? Another cold burnout song about how much everyone else sucks? Wow, how revelatory, you really shook up the scene today. I'm sure we'll quake in our boots at the idea of your sniggering, side-eyeing, nonchalant disregard and elitism leaving the venue and being laid to rest. I just want to play Guitar Hero for God’s sake!

Do you even understand fun? Talking about playing for the music, the esoterica and innate joy of it all, but it sure doesn't seem like it, not unless it's doing literally the same thing you decry the rest of the bands of doing: low effort punk rock with a bit of crass lyrics in there poisoned with irony, but then you make it worse by painting it with the veneer of artistic understanding and passion. Where is it? You seem content to hide it all up in a little heart-shaped box you’ve deemed only your little act worthy of being privy to.
Also, did you really have to do all that at karaoke night? Unplugging the amp and making a speech about it? Telling people they just don't get it and aren't singing for the right reasons? That punk night is dead! Do you even hear yourself? It's just some karaoke; get over yourself.

Go do your own tour or whatever; literally nobody asked you to leave, but I bet you’ll pretend you were kicked to the curb anyways. Showered in praise, yet you hyper-fixate on a couple of dissenters that pop up throughout the year? Who cares! The next set’s about to be played!
You were never here for the music, and it's no wonder you're completely and utterly obsessed with eras you were barely sentient for, or worse, not even around for. You can't get over the fact that time marches forward without you, someone new showing up one day and curb stomping you at your own act; it's humbling, but rather than take it on stride, you grimace, forcing a pained smile as you pat them on the back for performing so well. But it's clear that this was a massive blow to your ego. Maybe you can convince yourself it doesn't hurt so much if you only care about your fellow burnouts quitting emo and declaring the rest of the venue a madhouse.

It hurts, because I thought your act was pretty cool. I guess it’s pretty “punk rock” to jeer and give the cold shoulder though, right? Maybe it’s in spirit, maybe it’s hypocritical of me, whatever.
Throughout my musical journey it’s been nothing but revitalizing, igniting the flame once more for the medium I held so dear. I was berated and constantly mocked for my love of music, especially metal, combined with curve balls left and right, losing loved ones (or what few I would call those), I became very disillusioned with how people behave. It was branching out and stepping out of my comfort zone, keeping my chin up even in the face of pretentious acts that my love for music only grew more. Yeah, it sucked that some of my favorite bands became increasingly misanthropic, but why should that stop me? Why should it stop any of us? It was never about those assholes; it was about the music- their words, not mine. Well, their words until it was just about themselves. I’ll stop now, I’ve got a set to play whether or not people show up. It’ll probably be mediocre! I don’t care.


Punk rock never died. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Goodnight.

Favorite track: The Sword - Freya

Unrelated music highlight: The Mothers of Invention (Live in London, ‘68)

Kind of interesting how much the space of these years were really into the sort of Tron/FC3 Blood Dragon Cyberspace. I think it's kind of "fun" in the way any cotton candy town can be appealing and enjoyable. Now on replay it hurts my eyes every so often, almost intentionally with its awful and absolutely dire random tv-crt cuts.

And that sums up the experience, awful every so often in a disappointing way. When the overall work grabs you it can be genuinely incredible, with desyncing enemies and comboing sequences together to become an absolute fast-and-furious powerhouse that demolishes through tactile precision and great understandings of your gunplay fundamentals. Things like blowing up a stage bomb to turn a few slashing enemies into projectiles that you've conveniently pushed towards an increasingly large shuriken, getting a particular bonus you set up ahead of time, to then use the new speed to rocket up another set of enemies that you then laser point-blank underneath their hides for ANOTHER bonus.

And then the encounter is already over.
What?

Yeah, the game is honestly way too forgiving, way too easy. It's so afraid of throwing particular enemy combos at you or putting too much on you that even its second boss fight will go invulnerable and just stand there staring at you while you take care of a poultry wave first. The real meat is in its aberration challenges, but those kind of pull apart having your own "sandbox" to combo enemies in favor of a pre-determined affair. Which I do personally prefer, but it means that about 3/4 of whatever setup you do with the menuing means nothing if the weapons are different.
But, when you've accustomed to the game's own rhythm, they provide the closest Desync gets to pulling you apart in a very engaging way. When these hardmode levels take away your dash and force you to tactfully make your kills to get back HP before your meter runs out. When you're playing a weird game of "keep-away" with weapons that require getting at least a bit close to do proper damage, because the enemies now decided to explode on overkill. When you've got one hit to your name and a host of smaller enemies swarming on you and there's only ONE way you can stagger them to do damage in the first place.

It all helps that at the end of the day this is a very fun frictional shooter, with devs at a midway point where they don't give a shit what you think but also graft on a rpg-your-weapon modifications because that's a thing now. It's a team that lets you be able to make the final boss a multi-enemy one of your own volition and say "deal with it", and has the least accessibility for its nauseating interface. The moniker "adult swim games" has great meaning here, and that's pretty cool.

Inessential.

Despite the many quality-of-life changes meant to bring this more in line with the rest of the series, like updating the Zero-G sections and letting you use your kinesis more offensively, the broad strokes of the game are surprisingly close to the original. A change I was really looking forward to was the “Intensity Director” which is meant to dynamically alter the mood of areas and what enemies will spawn, but in practice, this mostly seems to determine whether or not you’ll get ambushed while backtracking instead of radically altering the major combat encounter. It’s a nice thrill to occasionally get surrounded by enemies, but as with so many of the new features of the remake, it doesn’t wholly commit to this idea, more a proof-of-concept that could be really transformative if it was expanded on somewhere else. Basic Necromorphs are also substantially less threatening due to the fact that it’s surprisingly easy to stunlock them by stomping on them once their legs have been shot out, and for the sheer effectiveness of these newly revamped kinesis powers (encounters and the ammo economy needed to be dramatically changed to make threats meaningful the player).

Given that this production seems to owe so much to the success of the recent Resident Evil remakes, I wish it would’ve taken a cue from them and include some bolder pieces of design and pacing- throw in an extra Regenerator fight, change the order of levels, or go all the way and pull the best enemies from the entire series to give these fights an extra edge. There are earnest discussions to be had about what function the RE remakes serve (if they’re replacements or reimaginings) but at least they’re distinct- I’m compelled to go back to them from time to time!

Really, I think the hesitance to change to radically alter the structure and encounter design speaks to the real intent of this remake, which seems far more interested in making the narrative flow more seamlessly between this and Dead Space 2. Isaac Clarke more or less had to be invented as a character in the sequel, and that made the amount of screentime that was devoted to his guilt over Nicole all the more weightless- retconned baggage that hardly landed. The attempt to expand their relationship mostly works, the revelations here about how their relationship ended are much better about setting the groundwork for their arc in the sequel. For as strong as this dynamic, it seems to have come at the cost of much of the supporting cast; compared to their original versions, everyone on the Ishimura comes as the lifeless versions of themselves. Dr. Kyne and Dr. Mercer were amazing presences thanks to great performances by Keith Szarabajka and Navid Negahban respectively, but without that prior context, I’m not sure these new iterations of the characters will stay in the minds of those who’ve only played the remake.

The biggest sin is that the remake ends up being dreadfully boring to play through in practice, the threats so similar to the original that the horror doesn’t land and the action so easy to break that it actively feels like a regression from the constraints of the earlier version of combat design. There’s obvious passion for the project here, especially in some of the granular details, but seemingly not the broader vision needed to successfully combine the old and new ideas together.