Sonic and his friends are hardly newcomers to the race line, with previous forays including Sonic R and the less known Sonic Drift series for the Gamegear. Sonic Riders was an original direction for the franchise which would take Sonic and friends off their feet and onto hover boards allowing all jokes about Sonic’s natural speediness to be laid aside for a more fair means of transportation.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is a direct sequel to the first game, continuing the franchise onto the Wii. Zero Gravity focuses on the rivalry between Sonic and his friends and the Babylon Rogues, first introduced in the previous entry. Sonic is traveling to the station and happens upon a mysterious rock which allows him powers to alter his surroundings to his likeness, with this in mind they fend off an on-suing group of machines which are on a rampage following a meteor storm the following evening. The group decide to head for Dr. Eggman to find out what he is up to this time. With the same irony as used in Super Paper Mario, the creators of the game realize the mediocrity of their storyline and embrace it as a nostalgic joke. The storyline is at best, passable, but much like previous Sonic games in recent years, what more would you expect? The storytelling and voice acting in the story mode is obviously not the games strong point, and it really feels like the creators only added it in as an explanation for various game play additions they decided to add in to bring something new to the Riders series, and as a way to unlock extra characters with a notable relay point.

Upon first entering the game you are faced with a multitude of options, single game, story mode, obvious stuff in your average character driven racing game. My first interest in the game was the extreme speed and thrills the experience would offer, so like any experienced gaming fan I jumped straight into the single race mode only to be absolutely embarrassed by my computer controlled competitors. The game is incredibly difficult to understand at the beginning and offers little to no help on how to compete until you try out the story mode where you are offered a confusingly structured tutorial mode where again, it’s near on impossible to know what the game wants you to do half the time.

Gameplay itself is fast paced and exciting, with the extra added hype of the overly epic soundtrack, on paper it all sounds like what you’d expect from a Sonic game. However, your experience is very often marred by the points that are meant to enhance your enjoyment of the product. The best example is probably the gravity shifting which is done at the press of the 1 button (or B if using a Gamecube control pad), it allows you to slow down time and shift your racer round a tight corner or hairpin. The move becomes quickly frustrating when you are prevented by walls and other objects, you are even limited by a time bar which is only extended by doing jumps and other tricks. Although a nice addition to the sense of speed, it’s use becomes a necessity in some of the later levels which becomes quickly annoying if you’ve not saved enough power to do so or are in a tight situation with other racers. The function does work and adds to the excitement when done well but during the first few hours of the game, you will find yourself with a few teething problems.

Any decent racing game includes some form of multi player option and thankfully, Sonic Riders does too. Allowing two players to race together with a split screen, the multi player is a great way to compete with friends giving you the same options as in the single play mode. You can even play through a world grand prix mode with a friend which is a nice and social way to play games together. Although the Wii has the capability for online play, sadly Sonic Riders doesn’t incorporate it but does allow you to see worldwide leader boards and compare yourself to others around the world. An online race mode would have been nice but with most games on the Wii, it’s not much of a surprise to not see one included.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is an excellent example of some of the problems you can create in bringing a gamers game to a casual machine, the lack of onscreen explanation and confusing control schemes is definitely going to beoff putting to casual gamers. At first the game makes it very difficult to comprehend but, the initial few hours aside, the game is actually pretty decent fun. The sense of speed and the cool of the gravity changes give this game an edge over other Wii racers like Need for Speed ProStreet which focus more on traditional racing than something fantastical. Zero Gravity is extremely good fun when you get into it, with many extra boards to acquire, characters and different play styles to learn, an extreme amount of depth which I’ve not seen on many Wii games to date. Sonic Riders could keep you busy for a long time but don’t expect to be pleased with it at first, it’s an investor which requires quite a bit of forced time to get to grips with, but once you do you won’t regret the effort.

7.6/10