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• Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity .::

Name: Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (US and Europe), Sonic Riders: Shooting Star Story (JP)

Other Names (Nicknames): None

Release Dates:
January 8th, 2008 - North America
January 17th, 2008 - Japan
February 22nd, 2008 - Europe

Quality: 128-Bit, 3D racer

Game System(s): Nintendo Wii/Sony PlayStation 2

Also released on:
N/A
 
Developer(s): Sonic Team UGA division

Character Introductions: SCR-HD, SCR-GP, Master Core: ABIS

Region Game Takes Place On: Molecurpea "The city of the future" and various surrounding areas.

Concept Introductions: Very similar to the original Sonic Riders but with added gravity manipulation! Instead of the air system used by the original Sonic Riders, Zero Gravity introduces a gravity system courtesy of the Ark's of the Cosmos worn by certain characters (However, considering there are only 5 Arks of the Cosmos, the units utilised by those who do not have an Ark of the Cosmos are total mysteries).

Much like air in the previous installment, gravity can be manipulated in order to make sharp turns and boosts ("Gravity dives"). Gravity points (Or "GP" as it is abbreviated as) is, as with air, moderated by a bar that is filled up upon successful tricks but this time, one can maintain their GP as it rapidly diminishes during gravity diving by performing "Meteor bursts" off of course debris (When one collides correctly with course debris in order to boost off of)

New types of Extreme Gear are also introduced; Yacht-type and Wheel-type gear. The Yacht type is capable of allowing any compatible character to fly and is capable of drafting opponents whilst the Wheel-type bestows power upon the rider and is capable of performing sharp turns and subsequent short bursts of speed.

Gear-upgrading works differently this time around. Out with the level system from the first Sonic Riders and in with the new upgraded Gear change system. Changes vary between Gears as some can have as much as 3 gear changes and some don't have any gear changes at all. Each character's default ones have access to their Riders' ability type at level 2. This means that you can't just spam your grinding/flying/power....ermmm...powers from the offset as you could in the first Sonic Riders. Nope, if you want these powers on  the default Gears or on the Gears with the parts, only ring collection and susequent morphing of your Gear will allow you to access them unless the gear has a specific ability power from the offset (I.e Skate type gear can grind as a standard). Also of note is that the flight type and power type transformed gear looks a lot different to the standard default flying/power gear in the first game. They look arguably cooler, such as the flying type gear morphing into a cool-looking machine that looks not too dissimilar to an altered jetski and the power type gear looking much like a motorbike. The morphed power type gear only looks slightly different to the power type in the first game.

There are three new item boxes: The Colorball, the GP Boost and the Parts Lock capsules. The Colorball capsule splatters your screen with different color paints, giving a slight disadvantage temporarily as it becomes harder to see what is going on. The GP Boost increases the GP gauge by a random amount and the Parts Lock capsule has a negative effect on the rider who breaks it open by freezing and therefore deactivating the Gear's parts as well as negating gravity manipulation.

There are some differences for Gear that were in the first Sonic Riders that considerably improve them. Take the Gambler Extreme Gear for example. It's gear changes now allow it to carry a maximum of 250 rings as opposed to the paltry 100 in Sonic Riders. That means a nice 500 ring reward for getting first place on a Gambler with the maximum 250 rings.

SEGA characters outside of the Sonic series also get a look-in. NiGHTS returns and he's/she's/it's brought back some SEGA pals such as Billy Hatcher (Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg) and Amigo (Samba De Amigo series).

On a minor yet interesting note, it appears that Sonic's world actually has two moons, as shown in the sky outside the Crimson Crater course.

Concept Deductions: As mentioned before, the air system is cut and replaced with the gravity system. No big loss really because although turbulence riding is still present in this game to an extent, it was little more than a hinderance rather than a help in the prequel and it's nice not being consistently penalized just for riding a gear with constant air gauge drainage. Along with the air system goes the Tornado attack.

Attacking during a dash is removed as well, the only way of utilising a character's unique attacking ability being by being lucky and breaking open an "attack" item box. However, the surprising rarity of an "attack" item box is made up by it bestowing the additional capability of using springs that offer shortcuts through the course, whom of which cannot be utilised in any other way. This is a good addition in accordance to handicap as attack item boxes are rarely bestowed upon Riders in the lead and more commonly bestowed on Rider's lagging behind, giving those who lag behind a decent and ample opportunity to catch up to the leaders.

The character's AiAi, Ulala, E-10000R and E-10000G get removed. Good riddance to the robots for they were always pretty lame and it's not so much a loss for AiAi and Ulala to be scraped considering other SEGA characters take their place who are arguably cooler.

Storyline: A good few months after the previous Ex World Grand Prix, a number of mysterious shooting stars impact the planet. One of these so called shooting stars crashes into a MeteorTech-run facility in the middle of the desert, causing an uproar amongst the security robots within and a subsequent rampage. News of the robot's rampages all over the world reach the ears of the world famous Team Sonic one morning from the car radio during a drive towards Megalo station through a part of the "city of the future" Molecurpea. One night previously, a meteor fell outside one Miles "Tails" Prowers house and awoke the young fox. nevertheless, he kept the meteor and gave the ring-shaped rock to Sonic to inspect the next morning.

Upon finally entering Megalo station, the trio is attacked by the rampaging security robots mentioned on the news for unknown reasons and in the effort to desperately escape, the car (or what's left of it to be more precise) plunges nearly 300 storeys along with Sonic. Who unlike Knuckles and Tails, cannot fly. Luckily, his fall is broken by an anti-gravity field generated by the meteor he holds and the 3 succeed in escaping away from the station and the murderous mechs.

Personal Criticism/Opinion: My personal liking of the game aside (For i've always liked the Sonic Riders series), It's too darn short! Anyone who even has a decent grasp of the first Sonic Riders will clear both story modes with only minimal effort in a pretty short amount of time. There are only 6 courses (7 in the Babylon story) in the Hero side story and none of them are particularly large or hard to traverse for the mildly seasoned Sonic Riders player.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity also seems to have Identical-stageritis like it's predecessor albeit in a considerably less severe form this time around. Similarities in overall course design in both Hero and Babylon stories are undeniable but originality in terms of obstacles and layout between similar stages just about justifies it. Course design similarity definately isn't a 'fatal' problem by any stretch but it would have been nice to see stages that are entirely unique to each story without sharing design similarities. Though Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is definately far better course design and layout-wise than the original Sonic Riders ever was.

On top of my personal negative criticism is Super Sonic. Oh lord how he sucks! No lessons have been learned from Super Sonic in the previous game. In fact, he's far worse! For the amount of effort most would have to put into unlocking him along with his previous lameness in Sonic Riders, you'd think Sonic Team would give us an even halfway decent Super Sonic. But no. The only good thing they have done is removed the ring dependence just for being Super. For convenience, I will list what is so broken about him:

- His top speed hangs around a paltry 150-160 on average. This is without his dash ability, going in a straight line on even terrain. It doesn't help that, yet again, Super Sonic is confined to the Blue Star Extreme Gear. I don't know why Sonic Team are so insistent on giving Super Sonic the Blue Star as his only board because i'm sure Super would at least be more interesting if his powers could be utiised in tandem with other boards' Gear Change abilities.

- He uses extreme amounts of rings for basic gravity-utilising manoeuvres. If you use your gravity actions, your rings get sucked dry at a totally unreasonable speed. Granted, this is eased somewhat by his gear changes that bestow increased ring capacity and the ease in collecting rings once his magnet shield is activated as a Gear Change but in my opinion it takes too long to satisfactorily gain enough rings to comfortably utilise gravity actions early on in the race.

- His flying and grinding ability is removed. The exception is his power ability. And yet for the record, he is only a power type once he has activated his dash ability.

- When his primary ability is activated upon the collection of enough rings (A kind of dash whilst enveloped in a blue aura), it drains around 2 rings per second it is activated, it cannot physically attack other Riders, it cannot utilise spring shortcuts (Which is farcical as any other character's attack gives them the ability to utilise springs)  and it is only marginally faster than Super Sonic's usual speed. This ability is definately defined as Super Sonic's main method of "attack" because an "attack" item box will give him this ability. And yes, even when it is temporarily gained from an "attack" item box, it still has the attributes of Super Sonic's primary ability, confirming it is his attack even though it isn't strictly an "attack" by any definition of the word except perhaps for the pathetic speed increase. Even worse, once  your rings run dry, you're going to have to wait until you collect another 60 before the ability kicks in again. To be fair, the developers probably intended it to be a form of increased speed only. But when the speed increase is so poor along with no attacking capability one would expect by the steep ring requirements and Super Sonic's status as an "all powerful character", it makes you wonder why they bothered.

The controls can be an issue as well. They are very intuitive if you've played Sonic Riders before when you play it on a Gamecube controller but when you play it on a Wii remote, throw any true semblance of complete control out the window because only the most devout Wii Remote user will be able to control Sonic and co on Extreme Gear with anything close to precision and even then, that's only if they even got that far without being frustrated initially by the looseness. And yes, this is with both the Wii Remote sideways and upright position configurations. I am a self-confessed Sonic Riders pro and still can't use the Wii Remote with anything close to decency, so I personally always use my Wavebird, in which the controls are easy to get to grips with. The controls are so loose and hard to get to grips with with the Wii Remote that the game can be pretty unplayable using the Wii Remote alone for a large percentage of people. I'm not saying that the Wii controls can't be mastered because they certainly can, but they aren't intuitive and that is a turn-off when it comes to controls that offer a less steeper learning curve.

Let's see some GAMER'S PERSPECTIVE:

Story? The story is pretty basic but good. Undoubtedly the most interesting facets of the story involve the Babylon Rogues. I just find it quite interesting that by the end of the story, its revealed that the Babylon Rogues are in fact an extra-terrestrial race. Ok, maybe it's a bit confusing considering that in the first Sonic Riders, the Babylon Rogues were shown to be descended from genies (Space travelling genies? Eh?) and I'm definately not the only one who was bewildered by this. On another note, it is very interesting that Sonic's world and it's universe has sentient extraterrestrial life and highly intelligent life at that. That's not forgetting that there is at least one other planet in Sonic's universe that can support genie life at least. Another interesting note is that this game is the first to show that Sonic's world/universe has two planetary satellites as shown in the sky outside the Crimson Crater course.

Also, that race had apparently immense technological prowess, given that they crash-landed on Sonics world in the distant past in a highly advanced spaceship and were travelling the cosmos beforehand. Let's also dwell on the fact they crash-landed, quite possibly unintentionally. And wished to get back to their home planet. This implies to me that their planet was far better than earth ever was and inspires imagination as to what this planet was actually like. The story from both Sonic Riders games interestingly reveals the woes of the Babylon race in somewhat tragic detail. From their crash-landing on earth, their wishes on shooting stars (Thenceforth birthing that tradition) to their evolution from genies and to the crimes that led to their spaceship/garden being buried within the earth after they left it in orbit with intent, dashing to pieces their ultimate wish. But that's what you get for being kleptomaniacs and criminals.

This might even support the fact that other species on Sonic's world could be extraterrestrial in nature and that (To me at least) is pretty fascinating. It would even perhaps lend support and credence to the fact that Sonic characters can survive extremely harsh environmental conditions and their obvious and often vivid contrast to the humans that inhabit the earth in the games.

That said, the rest of the story serves it's function well. No one really gets any considerable character development by the end except for mildly compelling expansion on what was already a part of their character. For instance, Storm is still the ever-so-lovable super loyal right-hand man to Jet who gives the best comedy, Wave has a lot less bi***-factor to her after the events of the first game but still has that snide edge to her, Jet is more inextinguishly competitive (Give props to the man, er, bird) and Eggman is still as slippery and decieving probably a bit more so than he has been in the past.

As for the heroes, some more interesting aspects were given to them. If you ask me, it's pretty cool how Knuckles is bi-lingual at least, as he can translate the ancient language of Babylon. It adds to his...how do you say...finesse as a treasure hunter. Sonic hasn't really changed but it is mildly interesting how he responds to Amy when she's "embarassing" him in front of the other guys in the Botanical Kingdom as she mentions their love. It's like there's something there. Of course, that might be just aloofness but his tone in both language tracks doesn't imply that. Tails is just as intelligent as always which is a good thing.

Replay value? Very high given that there are many missions to master, many Extreme Gear to be bought and tried, many characters to experiment with and such. Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity glorifies in the customisable and that adds expotentionally onto it's lifespan. That is, if one can actually be bothered with all that stuff. Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity Wii version also has an interesting Wi-Fi option. It has a World Leaderboard that allows players with Wi-fi to upload their performance. The best course times get put on the World Leaderboard and other players can download the ghost from said performance to compare to on the course.

An option to race others on Wi-Fi would've been excellent if implemented but it wasn't. A great pity.

Graphics? The character models this time around, whilst being extremely similar/practically identical to Sonic Riders' character's models, seem to have diminished polygon counts (I'm only judging the Wii version here by the way as I have no aquaintance with the PS2 version) which results in Knuckles having very spherical fists and Sonic looking more and more like a beanpole. Everytime I see his forearms I think 'Popeye'. Sonic Riders' character render stylings always had even greater exaggeration of already odd Sonic character bodily proportions and the diminished polygon count does no character a favor. However, the Sonic Riders models are otherwise blessed with well rendered, if comical and occasionally odd arrays of emotion.

The graphics of in-game courses are lovely but nothing that particularly pushes the boat out. They are functional whilst looking rather nice. Of particular note are the sumptuous water effects used in the Aquatic Capital and Tempest Waterway courses. I swear that after playing that course, you'll honestly feel refreshed as though you've had a dunk in water yourself, with the water splashes on the camera and the waterfalls casading from buildings as well as entire streets being waterlogged and even waterslides. The FMV's are a definately step-up from Sonic Riders' FMV's with even greater attention to detail. In fact, the attention to detail can be so incredible that I even found myself picking out the little details, like accurate reflections in lenses (I.e Eggman's), highly realistic detailing such as cotton/material texture on gloves and shoes, even near photorealism on explosions, clouds and shards of glass and debris. It's certainly not as impressive as, say, the FMV scenes in SONIC the Hedgehog (2006) but it's certainly lovely to watch all the same and they show the utmost attention to detail.

Music & Sound Effects? A definate plus is the music. I found myself putting a good few tunes on my MP3 player. The style is not too dissimilar to it's predecessor which is all good and well because a futuristic-styled game with frenetic airboarding action naturally screams out for upbeat and well-composed repetitive beats in the vein of techno and trance flavors and thankfully, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity pulls it off with style. I don't know about you, but there's something vaguely groovy about listening to a cool part of a level's music that (sometimes boringly) loops until you activate Gravity Dive, listening to the SFX that occurs as the music momentarily pauses whilst your rider orientates for the Gravity Dive then hearing the music immediately start at the chorus as the rider finally activates their whoosh of sudden acceleration. It's honestly pretty cool that the already rather lovely music is used like that, it's almost as if the music has it's own unique 'character', like it's an entity all by itself along with the stage it plays to.

However, for all the creative use of the music, there's still cases of recycled music not quite suiting very few stages. Case and point? Tempest Waterway and Astral Babylon. The serene and somewhat graceful Aquatic Capital theme "Aquatic Time" does not suit the stormy, grey-skied torrential setting featured in the Tempest Waterway stage and the chaotic nature of the music featured in the Mobius Strip course does not really suit the calmer Astral Babylon. Which leads this reviewer into somewhat believing that music is often given considerable priority to one variation of a stage over the other or that plainly, Sonic Team don't really care about giving similarly designed yet vastly characteristically different stages unique music that suits it. Like the indentical-stageritis, this isn't a fatal problem at all, neither is it an important one but come on, it doesn't take a lot of effort to make a characteristic alteration of one piece of music for either stage.

OVERALL RATING? I personally give Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity an 8.3/10