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It's about time someone got it right! New Sonic releases seem to be plagued by a number of glitches and bugs that could have easily been ironed out with a little more time but finally, someone has managed to pull off a fantastic new Sonic release. What's more, it's portable!
Sonic Rivals is the child born of Backbone Entertainment; a Canadian game studio who will be most recognised for the PSP hit, Death Jr. Backbone clearly understand what they liked about the early Sonic games and have forced every ounce of playability and graphical tricks they can to make this a seriously fun game. On the outside this is a Sonic racer in the style of 'Sonic R' and 'Sonic Riders' but really, this is old-school Sonic gaming with new-school graphics to bring the series up-to-date. And these are fantastic looking graphics. Because the game is mostly displayed at a 2D perspective it manages to rid the game of any horrid drawback distances and show all the detail of the character models and scenery even if you do rush past it all at fantastic speeds. On the other hand, gameplay is simple but effective (like all the good Sonic games). Run and jump your way to the finish and destroy any robots in your path. If your rival gets in the way you can jostle him, kick him or use one of the many items to dish out a cheeky handicap. The game also features many places to boost giving you an extra bit of speed to get to the end even quicker. What really made Sonic Rivals for me is all the little references to past Sonic games. The game features a card collection system. This means for certain challenges you complete you win cards. Complete a set of 3 cards and your character wins an item of clothing for you to customise him with. All the cards feature a past character, item or vehicle that has appeared in any Sonic game over the past 15 years. Along with this card collecting, the story which involves Eggman using a camera to take pictures of the supporting cast to seal them in cards also harks back to Sonic Shuffle. Even though Shuffle wasn't the greatest Sonic game it is nice to see that Backbone Entertainment have tried to recognise all of Sonic's past. If I was Sega, I would have swapped priority with this game and Sonic the Hedgehog (Nex-Gen). Due to it being released only on the PSP it is not going to get the recognition it deserves and more people will recognise the flop that is Sonic the Hedgehog (Nex-Gen). Sonic Rivals deserves to be seen by more as it really does try its' absolute hardest to recognise Sonic's great history and make a cracking game aswell. 9/10 Written by Sonic Yoda on 09/01/07 |