Sonic Free Riders

If you've read anything I've written about Kinect and Kinect titles you will know that I'm not exactly overwhelmed so far. It's not so much the technology, though more limited than I had hoped for, instead I've been disappointed in the lack of vision and ambition in the first wave of Kinect titles.

The eighth and most recent Kinect title I've gotten my hands on (or body) is Sonic Free Riders - the third game in Sonic's hoverboard racing series. You're excused if you don't remember the other two as Sonic Riders (2006) and Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (2008) didn't exactly set the world on fire.

The premise is simply. Get to the line in first place, collect rings and power ups along the way. But, naturally it's the Kinect functionality that will make or break Sonic Free Riders. The controls are intuitive enough, you stand with your side facing the screen as if on a board and you lean back and forth to steer it. If you happen to lose speed you can drag your foot a few times as if you were trying to pick up speed with your skateboard, but there is no actual acceleration control. Your speed is down to how well you steer your board and the speed of the hoverboard you've chosen. Oh, and on top of that you level up your character during the race by collecting rings. If these are a little to your sides you can reach out with your hands to grab them. There are also jumps spread out and if you time it right (you're graded on the timing of each jump), you will get an instant speed boost.

The demo I played contained two tracks. Both of them as outrageous as one could expect. One track featured an underwater passage where you had to make swim strokes to propel your way forward. There were also several short cuts and/or alternative routes you could take, but my experience with Sonic Free Riders was a bit like a car crash. There was so much going on while I was mainly focusing on getting my body to behave, that it's hard to recall exactly what went down on screen.

While I would have loved to have been able to hit out against the other racers with chains and fists like in Road Rash, there is sadly no such functionality. You can of course shove your opponent if you're playing split screen, but that can have real life consequences. On the upside there are weapons and power ups in game and they each need a special gesture to activate. Throw your missile, shake your maracas-like ring dispenser, or bowl a giant ball. It's fun and frantic, especially for younger players.

And to me, that's what Sonic Free Riders is - a fun, accessible racing game for kids. While there is strategic decisions to make, and tactics to deploy, I don't see it rivalling Mario Kart as the prestige title in the genre. It's one of the more entertaining Kinect titles I've tried, but it doesn't go far towards justifying the price tag on the Kinect camera. Hopefully the game will come with a generous supply of tracks and game modes, as I think variation is key if this game isn't going to go the way of its predecessors when it comes to critical response.