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lucem_ferre's Sonic Rivals (PSP)
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| [March 6, 2008 02:48:07 PM]
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GAMEPLAY
They still have those little item boxes. They’re not hidden in trees this time, but it certainly tests your button reflexes when you come upon a jump and it suddenly starts flashing ‘O’! And then you get the power-ups that make the screen lag a little as it tries to keep up with your speed, and yay.
Some challenge is good, of course; I lost a few times to Knuckles, but it was fun, and only took one or two retries. But when it you fail five times in a row by half a second to Silver in the same damn race, I start to wonder if maybe Silver shouldn’t have been placed later in the game, when the player would have built up some ninja-skillz. Again, challenge is good, but you don’t put all your hard enemies at the beginning.
DESIGN
It’s a two-dimensional environment with three-dimensional graphics. Places have depth and camera angles move, but you can only go forward or back—much easier than trying to navigate a 3D space when the screen is flashing by. PSP graphics are quite pretty anyway, but it’s still rather exciting to see the original levels from the old Sega Genesis Sonic games done in glowing lights and flowing water.
Which brings me to another point; because Sonic Rivals is a redux of the Sonic line, it wouldn’t have been right if there hadn’t been some of the same details and levels carried over from the first games. I was happy to see the Falls Zone and Knuckles, even though I never really went for Shadow and this Silver character is just irritating me.
Such is the danger of introducing new characters to an old canon. Shadow is a bit iffy, but at least had some history on the Dreamcast; I don’t know where Silver came from, and the already shallow storyline doesn’t make his faked mysteriousness very entertaining in the least. And maybe I just missed something over the years, but wasn’t this ‘Dr. Eggman’ originally ‘Dr. Robotnik’? Why the change, Sega?
As much as I complain about some of the stylistic choices, Sonic Rivals still has that thing that makes racing games so much fun—the variability of outcomes and the speed with which you have to react. You’re actively involved and competing not just against the computer but also the clock, so it’s almost a personal insult to lose. It plays well to one’s sense of competition. (Now if I can just convince one of my sisters to get a PSP, we can take sibling rivalry to a whole new level above Duck Hunt.)
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| [March 6, 2008 02:37:55 PM]
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SUMMARY
Dr. Eggman has turned Sonic’s friends into playing cards! Oh no! Sonic, Knuckles, Shadow, and Silver are now racing to be the first to defeat Dr. Eggman and save everyone!
Pretty standard Sonic plot, actually, though since this is a racing game, perhaps that can be forgiven.
GAMEPLAY
I find it strange that there was no tutorial on things like in-place spinning (the move that lets you get a head-start, for lack of a better name or description), and I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t been such a Sonic junkie when I was little. About half of the explosions and traps I set off for my rival was entirely by accident, since the game essentially just throws you into the race and expects you to figure it out on your own. (Not that it’s particularly complicated or anything, but still, it’s frustrating to suddenly find myself running backwards or encased in ice with no idea how it happened.)
I’m feeling ambivalent about the gameplay. It’s like other Sonic racing games, just with better graphics; a little like Mario-Kart but with spiffier moves. It’s satisfying as hell when you build up speed and zoom across platforms and loops with the ring-counter dinging away (oh, for the days of Game Genie, when codes like SCRA-BAXO would get you permanent running shoes or constant invincibility!) There’s a fair mix of different obstacles: having to push pillars over, jumping, random enemies, etc, so it isn’t like you just push the direction arrows and that’s it. Still, something feels missing, though I’m not sure yet what that could be.
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lucem_ferre's Sonic Rivals (PSP)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 6 March, 2008
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