Review by: Jenn Cutter

Even though Sonic fans have been dumped on for years, that should not give Sega the right to compound their misery with downright woe. The idea behind Sonic Free Riders is nice and simple: get the whole extended universe together on different teams and have them race on futuristic boards and tracks to win the day. The art looks great, the tracks evoke the old Sonic 2 bonus stage feeling, and there are rings and power-ups a-plenty. It’s when you have to actually play it that everything goes horribly, horribly awry.

Accuracy is everything with Kinect games and Sonic Free Riders has none. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Rien. It alternates between “I might as well be standing in another room for all the effect I’m having here” and “I moved my eyes to the right and that somehow registered as a sharp lean left turn into the wall”. I like games that surprise me; surprisingly deciding that I sporadically exist does not count.

Sonic and his pals, or the villains if you’re so inclined, take to powered boards called Air Gears to take on a racing challenge set out by Doctor Robotnik. I mean, Eggman. Err, King Egg-something-or-other. The ruse to hold another EX World Grand Prix – Sonic Free Riders is the third game in the series – is not important, anyway. It’s all about the racing. There are only three reasons to play this game:

1.) You are a die-hard Sonic fan

2.) Grabbing a Soda Rocket power-up is great. Shake the can with your right hand until is explodes and ride the wave for a sweet speed boost.

3.) Using a Bowling Strike to take out anyone unfortunate enough to be in front of you.

Those few moments may make you forget about not being able to reliably turn right or jump to save your life. Wii Sports Bowling took off like it did because people like the motion and not the work of going to an actual alley and wearing smelly shoes. If you get hit by another player’s Octo-ink, you can just use your hands to wipe it off the screen. Fantastic. Too bad about, you know, the rest.

The clever Air Gears are also buried under the frustration. Later on you can equip your gears with different parts for different skills. If you want to be able to grind on rails or punch to destroy obstacles in your way, it’s up to you. One part can be fitted to the front and one to the back. If you’re on a track with air rings and obstacles, boom, you can fit the floaty part to your front foot and smash things when you switch your stance around. That was the theory, I suppose. I ride goofy – board slang for right foot forward – and I had to jump up and down several times, without turning, before it would notice that I switched from regular stance. That rail I was aiming for was now well behind me.