The sixteen bit era of video games brought about a vicious franchise battle between industry leaders Sega and Nintendo. At the forefront of this battle were the companies\' mascots and lead products: Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. In the days of the platformer genre\'s dominance, these figures reigned supreme. Time has a curious habit of contorting even the most concrete of facts.
As Sega unleashed dead-on-arrival peripherals and consoles left and right, the shining, if a little blurred, visage of their once mighty fictional figurehead became more and more tarnished. Somewhere between Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Riders, the fans lost interest. Meanwhile, Mario was granted lordship over the realm of the platformer and other, more gun-centric, grabbed for the top spot on the sales charts.
While the clout Sonic once held may be significantly less than it once was, I\'m sure everyone would be more than pleased to see a true return to form from the nimble blue rodent. With hope and trust fading hand in hand, Sega has continued efforts to revive their fallen mascot, but have come up short yet again.
One of the more recent blights on the name of Sonic the Hedgehog comes to us in the form of Sonic Rivals for the PlayStation Portable. In an attempt at livening up the sound-barrier shattering gameplay Sonic is known for, Sega and developer Backbone Entertainment, under the collective glow of the thought light-bulbs above their heads, decided to throw in some good ol\' battle racing action. After all, the fun of the classic Sonic the Hedgehog platformers wasn\'t tearing through a level at high speed, bouncing on enemies, collecting coins and uncovering clever secrets; it was obviously doing all of that, but as fas as you possibly can versus someone else, right? Hell, I wrote that and even I\'m not convinced.
Sonic Rivals is teetering on the border of being a really fun Sonic game. It has eye pleasing colorful visuals, entertaining motifs for the separate zones and nostalgic, if not simple, boss fights. Unfortunately, there isn\'t time to enjoy these saving graces. Instead, you have to worry about your opponent who, when controlled by the computer, isn\'t big on making mistakes. Each level has multiple paths you can through small chunks of it which may give you an edge. However, you\'ll eventually hit a portion of the level that forces you through a uniform path filled with loops, boosters and other such shiny pretty things, or you\'ll end up gliding down a zip line with the similar options of “watch” and “do nothing.”
I\'ll say right now that I probably won each individual race based entirely on luck. Luck and memorization are really the only skills you need for Sonic Rivals, though, so I guess it\'s fine. Once you screw up, only a healthy dose of luck will get you in front of your opponent. A mistake doesn\'t necessarily mean defeat, but just as often winning doesn\'t denote superior skill.
To make these competitions more x-treme than they already are, the developers thew in a batch of items throughout the levels and special attacks for each character. I\'m having a lot of trouble figuring out just what the point of these items is. All of them do the same thing: freeze you in place. Some might give the illusion of doing something different, but that\'s just visual flim flam throwing you off the trail of shitty game design. Moving extremely slowly to the point that you aren\'t making any discernible progress forward may as well be freezing in place. You can be stunned by electricity, trapped in a twister, frozen in a block of ice or slowed to a pace that would make a snail swell with pride. No matter how you slice it, they all just make you stop. The only stand out items are one that randomly scrambles your controls and one that provides a speed boost. The control scrambler was a lot more impressive back when I saw it in Wipeout, but that\'s not to detract from its use here. Of all the lame items at your disposal in Sonic Rivals, it\'s easily the most interesting. The speed boost, however, may as well be called the “fuck you up button.” The only time a speed boost is even usable is in those multi-tiered stretches between zip lines and boost laden paths. Coincidentally, those are the areas where you\'re most likely to charge right in to a pit of oil or a bottomless abyss. Perhaps in a truer Sonic platforming romp you\'d just be angry about wasting a life or losing some coins, in Rivals you\'re bound to realize that your burst of speed and misjudgment of the terrain have lost you the race before even reaching the half way mark.
Don\'t worry about having your mind blown by the special powers of Sonic, Knuckles, Shadow and Silver. Oddly enough, they\'re all strikingly similar to the items! Sonic can use a burst of speed, Knuckles can stun, Shadow can slow your pace to a halt and Silver can scramble your controls. Where the innovation stops I will never know. But, hey, they probably just used up all of their good ideas designing the levels... hopefully.
There are five zones with two levels each. Four of the zones have boss battles, as well. Developers certainly should try to tailor their gaming experiences for handhelds if they\'re going to venture on to the hardware, but this is the complete opposite approach they should use. A handheld gaming experience should be a long chain of short tasks, not a short chain of crappy tasks that you may have to attempt repeatedly. Even the extra modes fail to add anything to the game. While “Story Mode” offers you the breathtakingly unimportant lore behind Sonic Rivals (apparently Eggman likes robots and trading cards, but not animals) coupled with the game\'s infuriating concept and gameplay, “Challenge” and “Circuit” modes cut out the fat. What you\'re left with is... well, the same disappointing game, but with a time limit or ring-collection goal, or a series of stomach churning races.
I really wanted to like Sonic Rivals. I mean, I was raised playing the glorious Sega Genesis. The prospect of Sonic giving up his Dreamcast “adventuring” ways for a delightful trip back to platform town was enticing. That, sadly, just highlights the utter failure of this game. Theoretically, the game could be enjoyable when played wirelessly with a PSP toting companion. Being that I\'m the only person I know who owns a PSP, I wasn\'t able to test this theory. Sega was headed in the right direction by throwing Sonic back on to a two-dimensional plane, but forgot to include the ingredient this title\'s fore bearers had in spades; fun.
"Sonic Rivals (PSP)" is on sale November 11, 2006 and is rated E. Platform.
