Ho-hum, schmo-hum…
MattG from Press The Buttons seems to be having a problem with the recently announced Sonic Rivals:
Dear Sega: please stop. You’ve gone and announced Sonic Rivals for the Sony PlayStation Portable which is essentially just the multiplayer race segments from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic Rush. I don’t know how to break it to you, but there wasn’t much of anything fun about those old multiplayer segments when they were just a piece of the main Sonic experience.
I understand his concern… I agree with him that both Sonic Drifts were terrible, Sonic R should have been canned while efforts were focused on Sonic X-Treme and, well I haven’t played Sonic Riders yet, so I’ll keep my mouth shut about that for now… I too have asked myself whether or not we need another Sonic racing game? Especially one that’s being developed by a studio with no previous experience at developing a Sonic title…
However, I’m cautiously optimistic… Imagine if this goes quite well… Not the racing aspect (which would be a shame as it’s the main focus of the game), but the format… A 3D Sonic game that takes the form of a 2D Sonic game by placing the camera on a rail, which it could occasionally deviate from for set pieces and maybe boss fights (think about Sonic Rush’s boss battles)…
If that works then who’s to say that this couldn’t be a perfect test bed for a platform game taking the same format? It would be a shame to waste a whole game on testing something like this, but if they get the format right then who knows where that could lead the handheld Sonic platformer?
Obviously it would make perfect sense for another game using the Sonic Rush engine, and the purists will never be happy unless the game is running on an emulated Genesis, but it could allow developers to offer the thrill of a 2D Sonic game, while still keeping things fresh with a new 3D perspective.
I’m trying not to get excited about Sonic Rivals in case it turns out to be a waste of effort for the developer and anyone who plays it, but that engine does intrigue me somewhat.
