RadioSEGA Review: Sonic Free Riders (X360)

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Titans Creed
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RadioSEGA Review: Sonic Free Riders (X360)

Post by Titans Creed »

Sonic Free Riders, is the third game in the "Riders" series, but it is the first that utilises the Kinect for the Xbox 360, and as such is, and probably will remain an Xbox exclusive due to it's control method.

Having picked up the Kinect and subsequently Free Riders recently, I decided to give it a go and see how it felt. Generally, the game is very good, for something that was apparantly made within 6 months. But there are a few niggling issues that are very obvious.

The biggest of these being that while in the middle of a race, it can jump onto a pause menu, which then leads onto the frustration of losing your current in game pose while you either try to physically continue, or even verbally continue. Loosing your stance midgame is one of those highly crucial things that can make or break a race.

Other niggling items revolve around the innacuracy of the Kinect movements. The issues are more noticeable on bends in the actual raceways, as it doesn't always pick up body bends for the game to notice. Although a player can adjust to these, and make further adjustments, it requires larger playing spaces, which is one of the Kinect's general downfalls.

It's not all doom and gloom however. For a game created in the span of 6 months, it can hold up through it's faults, and as a party game for those who haven't played it, it can be a great cause of enjoyment and general fun. But, don't take this as an aside, gamers with knowledge and prior gaming experience enjoy this too, I think this is mainly as the groups allow those players to play with people, seeing as online players seem to be non-existant. Possibly due to the lack of further DLC support for Free Riders, possibly because there is no drive to play online due to any online-specific achievements.

As a lot of you know, this is the game where all the voice actors. Now personally, for some characters, the voices fit well, others, not so much. An example would be this suave Shadow, they have tried to implement. Unfortunately, even with all these new VA's for most characters, the only time we've seen any post-Free Riders, has been Colours, and even that was restricted to just sonic and Tails.

Overall, there are good and bad points with Free Riders, all of which are glaringly obvious. Hopefully if SEGA decide to continue the series, they learn from their mistakes with this game, and improve upon it. Hopefully adding a controller system for it as well, so that it's not a primarily Kinect relied upon.


Pros:
Good level music
Replayability

Cons:
Unstable Kinect readings
Lack of online multiplayer

Review Score: 3/5
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Post by dab_dob »

Thanks for this
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