Sonic Rivals: A Three Dimensional Action Adventure Sidescrolling Racer.

What's wrong with the Sonic and Mario series? It seems like every few months they release new games, but none of them are any good. Why? Because they always stray from the old premise, thinking that us fans want the gameplay to be completely new. They couldn't be farther from the truth. Mario has had some great games and some not so great ones. Sonic has pretty much had a decade of crap. Sonic Rivals is the closest thing to the Genesis gameplay that we've had for a while, and it feels really nice to have the Sonic gameplay back again, but like Sonic and the Secret Rings on the Wii, there are some big hits and there are some big misses.

Story
Dr. Robotnik has trapped all of your friends into cards by using his new people to card capturing camera. You must race through several worlds to find and kill all six of Robotnik's evil giant robot suits to free your friends from the Doc's card realm. Once you kill all the robot suits, you will have Dr. Robotnik right where you want him! Giant evil robot suitless! Don't laugh, this should be taken seriously. It's a very profound story. It could change some lives here people.

Gameplay
Sonic Rivals is a Sonic racing game. Now don't click the back button and navigate to another review yet! So while the term “Sonic Racing game” may have a negative connotation, Sonic Rivals manages to actually be fun. The game is a sidescroller, something that doesn't usually gel with racing games, but this one surprisingly does. The game retains that speedy Sonic feel, and manages to feel like an updated version of an older one. The big change in the gameplay is that instead of getting to the end as fast as you can, you just have to get to the end before your opponent.

Most of the levels in the game are variations of levels that you would see in the old Sonics. For example, the game features the theme park level, the green forest level, a space level, and more. The levels are just as excellently designed and are on par with the Genesis ones. There are multiple branches to every level and at pretty much any given moment there are about three different stories you could be on and it just depends on which pathway you have taken. There really isn't enough time to choose which way you want to go because the gameplay is so fast paced. There isn't time for slowdown like the old ones because really every second you play counts. You aren't even going to be able to look where you are going, and there is a right way and wrong way to developing a game in this style. The right way would be to keep a consistent and predictable future to the level. The wrong way is to throw in a random ditch. For the most part, the game doesn't throw anything you can't avoid, but in a few levels there are some places that require trial and error, which seem like distractions to make the game a little bit longer. Some levels put in too many obstacles to jump over making it much less consistent with the usual quick pace of the game.

The loops and twists of all the other Sonics are still here, and boy are there a ton of speed boosts making this an extremely fast game. You still have to collect coins in this one, and those coins make it so you don't die when you get hit. The game doesn't feature as many enemies as the old ones, because really its a one on one battle against another character. There are a few bad guys in every level, but you really can zoom right through them, even getting hit by them won't really do much because you only lose ten coins and by the end of the level you will probably have over a hundred. The battle system in this one remains similar to the old ones, but adds some new attacks. You can't kill your opponent you can just slow him down, which can definitely mean some difference in the end of the match. Your attacks are your jump dash, a punch, and also you have some powerups like speed boosts and various attacks you can use to your advantage. The powerups are pretty uninteresting, but they do help; they could have added more than the five or so that appear in this game.

The game often feels like it is either letting you catch up or letting the enemy catch up. You can be way ahead of the enemy and you can look on the map and you will see him start boosting up really fast until he's right behind you. When he has a lead on you the enemy will suddenly gets really slow. Its definitely annoying, and it seems to happen on pretty much every level.

The game does feature a multiplayer mode which is great if you can find a friend who also has Sonic Rivals, which may be a bit of a challenge to find. As you play through the story mode, you collect cards for every level. In the multiplayer games, you can trade the cards, or wager cards in a race. I think its kind of funny how they actually put time into the game to trade e-cards. The multiplayer races are a blast, but there is some obvious lag seen.

The game strays from getting repetitive, because the levels all feel different; but if the game lasted much longer than the extremely short two and a half hour story mode, it would start to get dull. This game would easily be worth four stars in my book, but spending about twenty bucks an hour seems completely out of the question. There are a few other modes, like the quick match mode and championship mode, but you'll most likely never play those and instead be playing the story mode.

The boss battles in the game are really fun. Basically, its a race to see who can hit Dr. Robotnik's robot suit as fast as possible. Robotnik generally will fly around in some kind of machine and then will have a flashing light turn on over his head indicating when to attack. After the first few battles it kinda loses its novelty, but still remains fun.

The controls will feel right at home for anyone who has played any of the Sonics. You mainly only use the jump button and movement buttons. The battle system is very simple too because you only have a few buttons to press. The game's a lot of fun, but it doesn't seem worth it to spend forty bucks for two and a half hours of fun. I say, if you have a friend who owns this, think about buying it for the multiplayer. If not, just rent it.

Graphics

The people who created this have transferred the two dimensional look of the old ones perfectly into 3D making it look and feel like an updated version of previous games. The textures are very cartoony and appear to have been borrowed from the Sonic and the Secret Rings. The character models and environments look very smooth, and the levels really make you feel like a little hedgehog in a big world. The frame rate runs very smooth except slows down quite noticeably in multiplayer sessions. This is great looking sidescroller!

Sound
The music in the game always fits the mood and is much better than the soundtrack found in the Secret Rings. Most of the game's music is techno and sound pretty decent; the fast pace of it definitely fits the fast pace of the game. They have some updated sounds from the Genesis games like the “ding” noise from the coins and the little clip that plays every time you complete a level. It all sound really good.

Suitability for Kids
The game is rated E for everyone. The violence in the game is very non-explicit. Definitely one suitable for kids.

Difficulty
I zoomed through the game in only a couple of hours and only lost a couple of races, but I never died once. They made the game too easy in my opinion.

Should you get this?
Well, this is certainly the closest thing to the old school Sonics in a while, but I think us Sonic fans would prefer it not to be a racing game. Still, this is a fun game, but really isn't worth purchasing unless you plan on spending a lot of time on the multiplayer. This is a perfect rental, but not much of a purchase.