Retro|Spective 061R: Sonic the Hedgehog

[Neon Ignition]

Game 42 - Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing
Now 12 years old, the first of Sumo's entries took a much more direct Mario Kart approach of having the characters from various Sega franchises race in cars and use power ups against one another. Taking the core Sonic characters and mixing in the likes of Nights, Beat, AiAi and more the game proved a success and was quite well received.








Was this an All-Star affair?

[Asura]

Game 42 - Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing
Was this an All-Star affair?

Loved this. It's honestly a shame that these two games haven't shown up on new platforms, and instead Team Sonic Racing is still going despite being the worst of the trilogy.

[Dogg Thang]

Loved this. It's honestly a shame that these two games haven't shown up on new platforms, and instead Team Sonic Racing is still going despite being the worst of the trilogy.

Yep. This exactly.

This is such a fun racing game and uses the classic Sega IP beautifully. It's a real journey through some great worlds and it actually plays really well too. It's a very enjoyable game.

[wakka]

I'll be the party pooper here and say that I never got on with this. I know everyone loves it and it's all funky dory and has a more fulsome single player from Mario Kart and all the rest of it, but when this dropped I lived with my three best mates and we were in the depths of a powerful, daily, years-long Mario Kart Wii addiction.

We played a fair chunk of this in 4 player on the 360 but it just didn't stand up to MK, and had no sticking power for us compared to that mighty game (which isn't even remotely the best Mario Kart). I did work my way through the single player as well, but I never really fully got the hype on this one.

The graphics were great though, much better than MK Wii's basic ass horrible graphics, and the way they delivered the fan service was well done. It's just so completely in the shadow of MK Wii for me that it's not really a game I have a lot of affection for.

[Dogg Thang]

We played a fair chunk of this in 4 player on the 360 but it just didn't stand up to MK

Comparing it to Mortal Kombat is unfair, I think.

[wakka]

Actually we did get more fun out of Mortal Kombat 9's 4 player mode on the 360, too!

[Neon Ignition]

Game 43 - Sonic Free Riders
The legacy of Kinect, summed up like so many reinterpretations of game types with the third and final hoverboard entry. The game is a sequel to the prior two entries but uses body movement to control character movement which represented the main change here. It failed hard, killing this run of entries with a poor reaction to the game.







Free to Walk Away?

[Asura]

Game 43 - Sonic Free Riders
The legacy of Kinect, summed up like so many reinterpretations of game types with the third and final hoverboard entry. The game is a sequel to the prior two entries but uses body movement to control character movement which represented the main change here. It failed hard, killing this run of entries with a poor reaction to the game.

Free to Walk Away?

I remember seeing a video of the American games journo Jeff Gerstmann trying to play this on Kinect prior to release, and it was an absolute joke. For all intents and purposes, the game didn't work (like practically all Kinect games).

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, I tried it in a shop and found no fun in it. I don't think I ever found a game Kinect did make fun

[Asura]

Yep, I tried it in a shop and found no fun in it. I don't think I ever found a game Kinect did make fun

I played nearly the entire catalogue of Kinect games on Xbox 360 (don't ask), only missing some of those very late in the system's life, and I can confirm, very few of them were any good.

Dance Central was okay, but ultimately, Just Dance was a much better game for most people. The dance bit of the Star Wars game was playable because that was a reskin of Dance Central. The Kinect Sports games were reasonable but again, generally worse than the equivalent on the Wii. The rest, wow, so many of them were unplayable trash, and I say that without hyperbole; they straight up did not work.

The only Kinect game I would recommend is Child of Eden. Due to a boring series of events I once got the chance to play that for four hours on a cinema projector with cinema-quality surround sound, standing close to the screen, using a Kinect set up just on front of me on the floor, meaning the game filled my peripheral vision - and in that context, it was absolutely magnificent (but the "snap" motion to fire still made my wrist hurt the next day).

This is partially because Microsoft slashed the budget on the Kinect during development. The earlier units had internal processors that did much of the work, running custom hardware that I believe Microsoft bought from an Israeli company? But they were too expensive to mass-produce so the final version was a much simpler device. Ultimately though even the original is flawed, because you can't do full-body camera tracking from a single vantage point (the geometry of it, it would never work).

[Neon Ignition]

Game 44 - Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing Transformed
The Sumo version of the racing arm of Sonic returned and this time widened the track and character count, delving deeper into the wider Sega fan service whilst also having the racing action turn to the air and water as well even if the mechanics of the game remained largely the same between the three modes. The resulting game was seen as a great step forward for the franchise and a big hit ensuring that a clear and obvious path for future Sonic racers had been established...








Was this entry Transformative?

[Cassius_Smoke]

Wow, are these sonic games still going on in here? They really pump them out.

[Dogg Thang]

Transformed was absolutely superb. Some incredible tracks. I love this game.

[wakka]

Transformed was a fun game. I got on better with this one since I played it on Vita, and so I was focused on the single player rather than multiplayer aspects. There were some really awesome moments, I remember a level involving an aircraft carrier that was particularly impressive.

One thing I would say is that Vita was probably not the best choice of platform, though. There were a lot of framerate issues, unfortunately, which took the edge off my enjoyment. Probably wouldn't have been an issue at all on PS3 or 360.

[Asura]

One thing I would say is that Vita was probably not the best choice of platform, though.

The Vita had a few games like that, unfortunately. One I remember was the Borderlands title, which could've been great, but it had huge framerate issues. Pretty sure it got patched but that was long after I parted ways with it.