Sonic Free Riders
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 This is why you shouldn't make motion controls 100% mandatory.
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"Sonic Free Rider has...has ruined my life, Th-that's it! This is the worst game i've ever played! Nothing in my life is this same anymore. Music doesn't sound the same?! Food! Food doesn't taste like anything anymore!"
— Angry Joe
Sonic Free Riders is a racing game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega in 2010 as a launch title for the Kinect and the last game of the Sonic Riders racing game series.
Plot
Eggman, disguised as a king, announces the World Grand Prix. Though he offers prizes to the winners, his real plan is to collect the data from the racers in order to program them into robots. After defeating Eggman, the real enemy is revealed to be Metal Sonic. It challenges Sonic to one final race, and Sonic wins. Even though are no prizes, everyone is happy because they had fun.
Why It's a Free Fall (and Not a Good One)
- The use of Kinect is completely mandatory for everything, and there is no option to use a regular controller.
- The nearly broken unresponsive controls make the game borderline unplayable at times, thanks to the poorly designed and heavily rushed control scheme.
- Besides the unresponsive controls, the movements the player has to do are tiring and even painful. In particular, having to lean back and forward can hurt your back.
- Menu navigation is frustrating due to the requirement of spinning the menu to cycle through options, and voice commands barely working at times and require to say the exact name of the option you want. The problem is the game don't even show what option it is unless if you select the option.
- Not nearly as much content as the previous games.
- Repetitive music during the cutscenes.
- Some characters are unlikably annoying as they won't shut up while riding their hover boards like Amy Rose saying "HERE I GO!!!" every time she accelerates her hover board.
- Some things like grabbing rings, flying in the air, drifting, bumping into stuff can cause frame rate drops.
- The multiplayer mode can be very awkward for certain players because you need to hold hands with the other player.
- On the topic of multiplayer, the Kinect has a harder time tracking two players which makes the controls even worse somehow.
- Split screen multiplayer can be kinda dangerous because you might bump your head into someone while leaning back and forth.
- This game was the beginning of the flanderization of the cast:
- Sonic retains the same character derailment he suffered since Sonic '06, that being going from a brave, courageous, free-spirited, carefree, fearless but laid-back, chill, gentle and friendly hedgehog into a smug and over-confident narcissist who constantly talks down to his opponents.
- Tails went from an intelligent, independent and curious fox cub mechanic into a generic tech genius, though he still remained likable for the most part. Unfortunately, his flanderization would eventually start kicking in starting with Sonic Lost World.
- Knuckles went from a hotheaded, stubborn and gullible but determined, protective and strong (figuratively and literally) echidna into a dumb jock and a punching bag.
- Cream went from a sweet and polite, but not less heroic and brave child into a background character who's mostly left out. The sad part is, she's one of the few likable characters in this game since she's the least flanderized of them all.
- Shadow went from a somewhat grouchy and timid, but levelheaded, selfless and noble hedgehog into a pre-character development version of Vegeta.
- Rouge went from a smart, sassy and jewel-loving government spy a into just a flirty bat girl.
- Vector, while still likable for the most part, went from a smart, strong and somewhat greedy detective into a crocodile version of Mr. Krabs. Not only that, but he's treated like a butt-monkey/punching bag too.
- Jet went from a rebellious, laid-back and confident hawk with a fixation and knack for speed as well as good sportsmanship into an extremely selfish, arrogant, snooty, crabby and disrespectful jerk since his arrogance is cranked and amped up to 11. To make matters worse, Michael Yurchak's portrayal is atrocious. Instead of sounding like a rebellious teenager, he made him sound like a whiny one.
- Wave, while also likable for the most part, went from a sly and sassy yet smart, level-headed and responsible voice of reason into a more wimpy technician who's also treated like another butt-monkey since Jet treats her (and Storm) like garbage most of the time.
- Storm went from a dimwitted and forgetful yet sympathetic, loyal and capable albatross into an even dumber and klutzier punching bag who screws everything up.
- E-10000B is just a robot who fills in for Omega for Team Dark. Although, he was actually Metal Sonic in disguise. Another sad part is, he's another likable character in the game
- The worst offender is Amy, who went from an excitable, proactive and well-meaning hedgehog girl with a crush on Sonic into a bossy and hostile girlfriend who keeps pestering Sonic with her obsession with him. She also acts like a huge jerk towards Vector and doesn't acknowledge Cream's existence at all. In fact, her portrayal in this game could be rivaled with her Sonic X iteration.
- Most of the cutscenes involving the Babylon Rogues show that they had Jet play at his absolute worst and Wave, while innocently insensitive and stern in her own right as well as snapping at her team when she really needs to, being utterly harmless and innocent.
- The game uses cutscenes with characters talking without any motion and with a background of a racing map behind them, similar to Team Sonic Racing later on in the decade.
- In one cutscene, Knuckles states that there was foul play. Omochao then says: "Alright, let's roll back the tape!" yet we hear a camera snapping pictures. Plus, Knuckles racing by himself in the race before that cutscene.
- Terrible plot filled with plotholes, like how everyone is easily fooled by Eggman's pathetic "disguise".
- There is no option to switch the voice-over to Japanese in the game. Instead, you have to switch the system's language to Japanese in order to change voice acting. Why didn't they just program a simple UI option?
- Sega never bothered to release a patch which adds normal controller support.
- It ended up killing the Sonic Riders subseries.
- In a meta sense, this game exemplifies why motion controls should always be a secondary option, and should never be forced upon the player, especially when they are this unresponsive.
Redeeming Qualities
- It marks the debut of a new voice cast (starring Roger Craig Smith, Cindy Robinson, Kate Higgins, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Kirk Thornton, etc.) asides from Mike Pollock as Eggman, who still remains his voice actor even to this day, who are good as their characters (aside from maybe Cindy Robinson as Amy, though she would improve greatly in future games).
- The graphics look really good.
- Bike gears are more functional and enjoyable than Board gears.
- Much like every other modern Sonic game, the music is good to listen to.
- Some characters get their own controls and moves like Tails' ability to take shortcuts from Sonic Adventure, Sonic's ability to grind on rails, and Knuckles' ability to punch upcoming obstacles.
- The intro cutscene is decently animated.
- There are some nice moments in the story such as Jet wanting a rematch with Sonic after an undeserved victory and a Sonic Heroes-esque final boss with E-10000B revealing he's actually Metal Sonic in disguise to collect the racers' data.
- As mentioned on WIAFF #10, Tails, Cream, Wave and Vector are still likable (along with Silver, Blaze, E-10000B and Omochao) since they're not mean-spirited at all.
- Speaking of Wave and Vector, it's easy to root for and feel sorry for them due to them being rather sympathetic since they're treated like butt-monkeys, thanks to Jet and Amy treating them poorly.
- Like most Sonic games, this one has a cool concept (in this case, a Riders game where the player actually feels like they're hoverboarding) ruined by hideous execution.
- "Free" by Chris Madin
Reception
 "You fucked it up!/You done fucked it up!" |
The game received negative reviews from critics, but a much more negative reception from user scores due to the unresponsive controls that make the game near unplayable. It is a very common example as to why motion controls faded from popularity, and are more of a novelty nowadays.
Angry Joe gave the game his very first 1/10 rating stating it to be "outright broken," panning the controls as unresponsive, and the menu navigation to be clunky and similarly unresponsive.
Somecallmejohnny couldn't even get past the tutorial segment because of how unresponsive the motion controls were when he reviewed a series of Sonic racing games.
Although he never reviewed the game itself, The Retro Replay believed Sonic Free Riders to be an example of how motion controls need extensive testing before being released.
Scott The Woz briefly reviewed this game in his Kinect video. He stated that the menus were hard to navigate and said that you could get back cramps from playing this. He was clearly not having a fun time with this game.
Nathaniel Bandy ranked this game #1 on his "Top 10 worst Sonic games" video.
The game is currently holding a score of 1.9/10 on IMDb.
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