Sonic Riders Zero Gravity Wii Review

[Heike Fallago]

Sonicand friends have been alerted about crazed robots from "MeteorTech" attacking the city of Megalo City. The heroes set out to retrieve the legendary artifact known as the "Ark of the Cosmos", an item that has the ability to control gravity. The artifact has been split into pieces and its up to the team to find them all before the Babylon Rogues can get their hands on the goods.

Essentially SRZG is a kind of futuristic hover-board racing game that doesn't quite feel like a car racing game nor does it feel like a snowboarding game, its somewhere in the middle. It's also crystal clear from the very first intro sequence that the game takes huge visual influence from the extremely pretty, SEGA developed, F-Zero GX.

The game is shared between two groups of characters, those on Sonic's team, the Heroes and those part of the Babylon Rogues captained by Jet the Hawk. The usual sidekicks are here, with a grand total of 18 playable characters. Whilst characters do vary slightly, its not really a major feature of the game, sticking with Sonic keeps things simple.

Story mode is also split in half, first you play through as the Heroes, which tells the story of Sonic and his gang, then as the Babylonians where you learn what the other group was upto during the same time period. The story is told with some rather nice, but pre-rendered, cut scenes that always ends up with you needing to race for some reason or another, winning that race will then progress the story.

You can either play SRZG with the Wiimote (ala Excite Truck) or a Gamecube controller, because we're old fashioned we elected to use the Gamecube controller, to give a much more familiar racing feel. Actually, that's a total lie, the Wiimote controls are crap and the Gamecube ones are good, simple as that.

We'd usually at this point jump straight in to some racing and skip the help section, however there's one big problem with SRZG, the controls are rather complicated. After a few desasterous attempts at winning a race, I caved and went to seek guidance from the tutorial gods. Having not played the original, I can't tell you how much I needed the tutorial in this game to understand what the knuckles is going on.

1) Starting the race - this is done by actually walking backwards, then forwards so that you cross the line just as the countdown hits zero. 2) Trick jumps - whenever you come to a jump, you need to hit the button as late as possible to perform an in-air trick and earn yourself some "gravity points". 3) Gear changes - these are power-up/upgrades you must manually enable during the race by collecting a certain amount of stars. 4) Grinding - one of those said upgrades used to grind, Tony Hawk style, into the lead. 5) Gravity turns - performed using a trigger button to slow down time and dart around a hairpin corner. 6) Gravity dive - used to plummet forwards and bizarrely crashing into large objects speeds you up.

Once you finally understand what's going on you'll soon get somewhere with story mode, progressing through the two halves of the game. There are 7 tracks per side of the story, that's 14 in total. Each of these tracks, which range from botanical gardens to futuristic factories, has one main race and 4 extra events. It seems these events are just simple challenges which act as a rather crude and simple way to add longevity to a racing game.

The tracks are generally very good, very varied and nearly all of them ooze with SEGA futuristic style, when coupled with the excellent soundtrack Sonic Riders soon becomes quite an enjoyable experience even if it does have an unrealistic feel. The action on-screen gets quite frantic at times but never reaches the highs of "intense racing" you might find in other speed junkie titles such as F-Zero GX or Burnout.

Once you come to the end of your quest, your thrown into one final show down in a rather bizarre boss race where you attack the boss with your gravity dive, smashing into him again and again until the prize is yours. Completing the game unlocks a whole host of extra chaff including two bonus tracks which will make any SEGA fanboy wet his pants. Basically the two tracks, titled 80s Boulevard and 90s Boulevard, are a homage to all things SEGA, the two tracks both are littered with SEGA related billboards and memorabilia ranging from Streets of Rage all the way to Crazy Taxi, an excellent, but nerdy little touch.

Graphically SRZG is decent, in fact the whole futuristic style of the game will be impressive and visually pleasing to most. However these views might not be echoed by a hardcore Sonic fan, I'm not sure the game quite holds enough "Sonic-ness" to please the fanboys. General presentation is overall good apart from a few strange menu choices, especially in the tutorial mode.

It seems FAR too many other publications have rushed to slam this game (shame on you), judging it because its not exactly what they wanted from a Sonic racing title. In fact, they probably only played the game with the Wiimote, you seriously need to use the Gamecube pad here. We however felt it was important to rate this for what it is, we accept its not a solid racer nor is it an adventure game, but played with an open mind it can become pleasurable.

After gaining a full understanding of the controls using the Gamecube controller Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity can be a very enjoyable title, its certainly not a fully fledged racing game nor is it anything like a snowboarding game, it sits somewhere in the middle of the two genres. Sonic fans might be annoyed with another spin-off title but if embraced correctly they should still get alot out of this latest incarnation. Far from perfect, but a good effort by SEGA, given time and understanding it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Anthony launched Nintendo Life in late 2005 and has remained at the helm ever since. He loves Nintendo but sometimes gets confused and tells everyone that F-Zero X is the best game. We've tried getting him help, but alas...

I'm surprised to see a good score for this game. I can't believe I don't have this game yet, since I loved the original Sonic Riders so much(albeit the story mode was annoyingly difficult). I guess I was put off by most of the review, but I'm not putting it off anymore!

Its weird. Some good racing games like kirby air ride gets a 6, yet this "racing" game gets an 8?

The control in this game is really hard, and it feels like you are driving a truck instead....

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The game was released in Japan and North America in January 2008, in Europe in February 2008 and in Australia in March 2008. The PlayStation 2 version was not released in Japan. A sequel, titled Sonic Free Riders, was released in November 2010 exclusively for the Xbox 360.

Sonic discovers a legend regarding an artifact known as the "Ark of the Cosmos", an item that can take matter and use it to control gravity. However, the Babylon Rogues, Sonic's well-known rivals, are also after the legendary artifact. This sets off a war over who gets the artifact, now leading them to settle their dispute by having an Extreme Gear competition.

The next day, Team Heroes are on their way to Megalo Station in Monopole when they hear about the news on the radio. Tails gives Sonic a meteor which he thinks might be from the events last night. Soon, they are attacked by the robots, who seem to have recognized the meteor Sonic is holding and barely escape. While Tails and Knuckles use their respective flying and gliding abilities to distance themselves, Sonic almost falls from the summit of a 300-storey building, but fortunately, the meteor was able to stop his fall, clamping the object to his wrist. All three manage to escape from the city afterwards.

Team Heroes then meets up with Amy, who says she was being pursued by the robots as well. As she hugs Sonic, she drops a similar meteor. Tails suddenly realizes that the robots are after the meteorites. They decide to go to MeteorTech to solve this mystery.

The team then arrives at MeteorTech and is greeted by the Babylon Rogues. Jet tries to force Amy to hand over something called the Ark of the Cosmos but she is clueless as to what he is talking about. An alarm then sounds alerting the robots. Sonic and friends take off, leaving the Rogues in pursuit. Sonic and Jet unknowingly crash into Eggman in the main computer room of MeteorTech. When revealing himself, he reveals that he owns MeteorTech, causing his nemeses to accuse him of the robot rampage. He feigns he has no clue until he sees Sonic's meteor and is threatened by the blue hedgehog and Knuckles. Eggman reveals that his Mother computer hasn't been responding ever since he gave it a meteorite, which is why the robots are going out of control. He also says that the robot leader contains a stone. Jet remembers what he was there for, but realizes that Amy and Storm are missing. Eggman's computer shows that Storm is chasing Amy, but they are being followed by the MeteorTech robot's leader.

Sonic, Tails and Knuckles leave and find Amy at Aquatic Capital. She informs them that the robot self-destructed and Storm ran off with something that was previously inside the robot. She then says that Storm was going on about something he found in a place called "Giga" or something along those lines. Knuckles then confirms it to be the Gigan Rocks, a famous ruin among treasure hunters. The team arrives at the rocks and find the treasure gone. When Knuckles reads an ancient script, they find that Babylon Garden is a spaceship powered by the Arks of the Cosmos and that a great darkness attacked it. Eggman then flies overhead with the Babylon Rogues' airship in pursuit. Sonic then says that they should catch up.

They arrive at MeteorTech's home tower and find Jet and the Rogues waiting. Wave confirms that Crimson Tower is MeteorTech's signal tower. Storm then says that the Arks they collected were stolen by Eggman. Jet challenges Sonic, with the prize being all the Arks of the Cosmos and title of "Fastest Creature in the Universe" to whoever nabs Eggman first.

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