Sonic Rivals | a Review
originally published on 10/05/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the speedy speed demon, G.E.M.Simov, a mostly swift and effective maniac, and I haven’t lost my speed, unlike Sonic, whom I’ll be talking about today, due to the fact that I’m reviewing the game Sonic Rivals, for the PSP.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
This is a racing game. It targets enthusiast who enjoy:
Not knowing what the fuck is going on;
Not knowing how the fuck to do things;
Sonic; racing against a single other person;
Mario Kart boxes
If any of those strike you as odd, I understand perfectly. Let me explain.
As with most Sonic games, following the failure to shift into 3D that the blue hedgehog experienced, this one is not good. Why? Because it does not really manage to capture the feeling that had been so integral in making Sonic good - SPEED. Way more games out there, currently, and at the time of this game’s release, were doing SPEED nicely. Sonic, on the other hand, was not.
And I’m talking about the type of SPEED that leaves the player feeling good about it, not the type that leaves the player confused and suffering from some kind of sea sickness. The type of SPEED this game tries, and fails, to capture is the former, but it succeeds at bringing the player the sea sickness of the latter and none of the SPEED associated with either. At best, Sonic Rivals can give the player a pinch of the ‘going fast’ feeling.
Why does that happen? Partially, because this game had no tutorial. There was nothing that could teach the player how to play and what does what. I still have no clue what half the buttons do, and I still don’t know how these goons charge up and get super nice starts - all I know is that even the AI cannot handle this atrociously bad level design, so they fuck up even more than me, which means I get to win.
This is more of a Presentation issue than it is a Gameplay issue, but it affects the enjoyment I got of this game so badly that I can’t even allow myself to not mention it. I had no manual in my box. And, even if I did, I wouldn’t know what the FUCK I was meant to do with the information it provides me with. I figured most of that this shit was telling me by the time I was done with my first race, which I won, so that goes to show that, even with a tutorial, this game is still atrocious.
Now, half the problem comes off of there being no means for the player to figure out how to play the game. That causes confusion and further increases the lack of understanding of what is going on. But, then, even if the player does know what everything does, there’s still about 65% confusion left, because the level design is so fucking weird and god-awfully bad that I cannot understand why people made this and thought “yeah this is gonna be good”.
Did no one playtest this game? Because you can’t expect the folks who designed the levels, or the folks who built them, to playtest them - they already know the layout, they know what’s where and what’s what - this is info the player would have after playing through the same shitty track 10 or even 20 times, because they’re god-damn long and seem to have a fuck-ton of paths to take.
I mean, sure, that’s commendable, the tracks are long and interesting, but that’s the only good thing about ‘em. The SPEED that Sonic is meant to go up to either totally fucks with the levels and the experience of the level, due to the fact that the player is going so fast everything passes by as a blur, and then they bump into something that instantly kills them and they’ve got to spend like 3 seconds waiting to get back into the action - it really ruins the experience - and then there’s the issue that half the maps have some shitty roadblocks which the player just stops and needs to totally lose their speed, break the pacing of the game and make the one playing it feel bad.
Now, this whole thing might be confusing to the reader - believe you me, this is how confused I wish I was when I was playing Sonic Rivals. This shit SUCKS. There’s no clarity at all, there’s no thought put into the User Experience of the player AT ALL, there’s just a bunch of neat ideas all packaged into a blob of mediocrity that just screams: “We don’t know how to do a game that’s about going FAST, help!”
This game has its moments - even if they are few and far between - but they really, REALLY fail to make the experience be any better than what it is. 1/3
Presentation
This game doesn’t look bad. For a 2006 PSP game, it’s not bad at all. It also doesn’t sound bad, either. Unfortunately, there’s very few tracks (musical), and so the audio becomes a tad repetitive, but the gameplay manages to be engaging enough, with how overwhelming it is to keep an eye on things, so that the music becomes more like ambience, and is relegated to the background.
The story is presented in a very lackluster way. There is a bit of voice acting, but it is relegated to laughter, some gasps, and singular words. No character says more than a single word at a time, and they generally make a sound when they pop up on their turn of the Visual Novel style roulette, where the character who’s talking has a sprite of themselves occupying the screen and then a wall of text showing what they’re saying. It’s not the best approach to this, and it really hinders the storytelling and the experience itself.
None of that really degrades from the whole presentation, at least, not enough, for it to be horribly bad. But there is a catch. Sometimes, the camera moves about, while the player is going at “very high speeds”, and that almost causes motion sickness. It’s not good.
Overall, however, the game manages to keep a good looking Presentation. Probably its strongest suit. 2/3
Story
Story? What story? There are a few slideshows with 5 to 6 sentences every other race, and that’s all there’s to it. No cinematic, no nothing. It’s atrocious, and I wish I’d never wasted my time playing through it. Nothing even remotely similar to character development, there are no motivations to anything, it’s absolutely disappointing and underwhelming. 0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No. This game is… Not fun. I really, REALLY didn’t see anything redeeming in this, frankly. 0/1
Conclusion
3/10. I did not enjoy this experience, and I would urge you, dear reader, to not play this. Only if you are a BIG fan of Sonic, then, by all means, go ahead. Everyone else… Don’t bother with this one.
I hang it on the wall of shame, thinking of how cool it would have been if there was a noose for games like this.