Xbox 360

If you have the Xbox 360 version, and you insert it in a console that has Blades, since Unleashed came out exactly one day before the New Xbox Experience, would it force you to update, or will it let you play the game on the Baldes dashboard?

(1000th post was posted today yay)

This this game… just no. Sonic Free Riders is the 3rd installment of the Riders series. The first Sonic Riders released in 2006 for the original XBOX, PS2, and GameCube (the best experience for me), and I thought it was a great game that distinguished itself from MarioKart with its tricks. Zero Gravity was not a bad game but oversimplified the challenge of the first, and came out two years after the first game for the Wii and PS2. And in 2010, we got Sonic Free Riders for the XBOX 360. The Wii was very unique at the time for its motion controls, and it was a money printer, along with being the talk of the town. So the competitors would try to get into it. PlayStation just shamelessly copied the Wii. Xbox, however, were a bit more original with the XBOX Kinect. You played the game without a controller and moved your body to play. Most Kinect games got bashed by critics because of the add-on being very unresponsive. It was hard to make a sale with the 360 being $200 and the Kinect being $150. Sonic Free Riders was released for the Kinect. Unluckily, it landed on the bad bunch. It was also bashed by critics and, most tragic of all, killed the Riders series. After this game, there were no more Riders games at least at the time of this writing, but I doubt this series will come back. So, let’s get into the game.

I also hate this game with all my might and think it’s the worst Sonic game of all time. And if you’re like “you’re too lazy to exercise or move your body” or something like that, you have got it all wrong. Free Riders does provide exercise, but what it does more is tiring in your muscles, pain, and I believe playing this can get you sent to the doctor. The controls are extremely unresponsive, so you end up doing it over and over again and these movements and strategies require you to move very quickly and frequently, so it can be tiring. Your body will really hurt after playing from doing actions so frequently and over and over because the game is so unresponsive. Even when you’ve done the body movement it just doesn’t register. The turns require you to stretch your body with legs wide open and that can cause tiredness and pain, at least from my experience. But again, it barely registers and leaves you frustrated in races. To summarize the gameplay, it just makes you feel pain and frustration. When you want to do a trick it registers a punch and it’s so annoying. This game is worse h than chronicles, a game I skipped from frustration, but this is different. I just couldn’t stand playing the game and didn't want to do research on it because of how bad it was, but I’ve already played Free Riders and don’t need to play it again. The menu is some circle kind of thing you rotate around with your finger. Literally it’s always gonna out you in the wrong option and when you do get the option you wanted, it won’t register when you try to select. It's just nothing but frustrating. There’s a mission where you need to break ice or something but my punches would just not register or register the wrong action. In another mission for the Babylon story it has a similar mission. There are two punch icons which are supposed to indicate which hand you punch with, but it’s just so unclear. You also have to play sideways to match your character, which makes it so you have to move your neck to see the screen which probably causes pain in the neck.

Phew, so what is the story mode? There are now four teams: Heroes, still with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, Babylon which still has Jet, Wave, and Storm, Team Dark has Shadow, Rouge, and E-10000B, and finally Team Rose with Amy, Cream, and Vector. Oh, sorry to Big and Omega, I guess. The Teams have ten missions: three races with each of the other teams and one final race- but unlike the last two games- Free Riders mostly consists of solo missions, like the punching one. That’s just boring to me. There’s also a tutorial which teaches the basics, which you have to do if you wanna survive the entire campaign. One of the solo missions in Team Rose as Cream is just so unresponsive and I couldn’t do my tricks so my speed gauge kept running out and I had to retry again and again. The story is Eggman held a Grand Prix in disguise and that goes on until the doctors find out Metal Sonic has been copying the data of the racers and becomes the main villain of the game- which is cool I guess. Metal has slowly faded into nothing after Sonic Heroes, so this was nice. He’s just put into games so Metal Sonic fans buy the game. The cutscenes are unappealing- they’re made to look like a tv screen with some pngs on the screen. I really miss the action cutscenes. I absolutely hate Free Riders because it killed this wonderful spin off, and it was sad for it to get worse each entry. They’ve switched to more traditional kart racers now, which just doesn’t fit this series. Sonic The Hedgehog is a series with style and too-cool for school vibes- which Riders perfectly implemented. Goodbye, Sonic Riders. This discussion is done.

I wont bother editing it but ignore the “PlayStation shamelessly copied the Wii” part. I now know the truth.

Image taken from Reddit.

Shadow The Hedgehog

Sonic Heroes

Sonic Riders

Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)

Sonic Mega Collection

Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing

Sega Superstars Tennis

Sonic Free Riders

Today I received the Xbox 360 (although it's getting a bit old) with lots of Sonic games, like Sonic 2006 or many others, I think it's cool so far (:

Secretly the ultimate console for SEGA die-hards.

Input used: DUALSHOCK4 (DS4)

Emulator: Xenia Master (X360 emulator)