Sonic Rivals 1 & 2 - Every Gamer Review

Apologies if you think the review is in poor quality, it’s one of those games.

2006 was quite the crappy year for Sonic, especially since it was 15 years since the blue blur appeared out of nowhere and took the world by storm (apart from Japan ironically…to an extent).

Most people think of Sonic 06 and Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis when it comes to Sonic’s birthday that went horribly wrong. But there was two other games that have been left to near obscurity. And one of these games was a PSP game, a console that had potential to be great, and I mean it was successful but still wasn’t even close to the Nintendo DS’ achievements, in fact, I prefer the PSP over the DS…mostly because I grew up with it and the homebrew software is great…OK, that isn’t fair to the DS but it is what it is.

Sonic Rivals, developed by Backbone Entertainment and Sega Studio USA and published by Sega and was released in 2006 worldwide.

So Dr. Eggman is turning Sonic’s friends into cards using a camera. Wait, what? Sonic and Knuckles have to defeat Eggman and turn their friends back to normal. Oh, and Shadow and Silver is here too. Which would mean that canonically, this is Silver’s debut since his first debut was erased…Sega: because fuck continuity.

And how is this going to be accomplished? BY RACING! See who can defeat Eggman first because teamwork can go suck one. Hmm, a competition to see who can kick Eggman’s two eggs until they crack. Now where have I seen this before?

So you race in two acts and a boss. You will race other characters in 2.5D stages whilst avoiding their obstacles. Fight a boss where you have to hit Eggman more times than your opponent. AND THAT’S IT. You can also collect cards, with some giving you costumes if you complete some objectives, and one of them is an card with Maria getting shot. A FAMILY GAME!!!

So how’s the game? Utter garbage. Racing against opponents can be a pain, for example, you manage to get in front, the opponent will do everything in it’s path to make sure that you’re behind, like power-ups you will never see coming, opponents bashing you while you’re trying to avoid them and in order to avoid them, you have to be slightly behind them, then hit them.

This is probably due to poor rubber band AI, this is where a piece of artificial intelligence where the computer controlled opponents in any game are designed in a way to prevent you, the player, from being too good. This AI is broken in both ways. The first half of the game the AI will try everything in it’s path to make sure you’re behind. But in the second half, it somehow gets confused and I end up winning with little problems…or vice versa.

The level design is pretty good and I enjoy some of the stages. Problem is, it’s a racing game, had it been a normal platformer, I would have enjoyed it more, but it doesn’t work as a racing game, a racing game doesn’t put trial and error in their game. Well, you do get two final levels in the game where you don’t race and it’s boring as hell but I wish this was the whole game at the very least. The bosses, what little that there are of, are pathetic; in fact, the designs are awful and Eggman is a literal cardboard cutout.

Overall, Sonic Rivals is very flawed and shouldn’t have been made in the way it was made. But what we have is an annoying and monotonous game with blurry gameplay that makes the PSP look bad…OK, it was one of the number of games that made the PSP look bad.

I have no idea what happened with this screenshot.

Sonic Rivals 2 was released in 2007 worldwide, is more or less the same except that the game is even more bullshit in terms of rubber band AI, especially with Rouge and just jetting off somehow.

This time there are some more features like picking teams in story mode instead of picking a singular character, and it finally has a free play mode in which you can go through the levels like a normal game. Problem is, you have to beat the main story to access all levels and I don’t like this game.

I don’t recommend it, though if you’re a Sonic fan, I guess you’ll like it, I don’t know.

What a waste of my time, eh? Look, I wasn’t going to review it…albeit I was trying to enjoy it, but it’s a rather pointless series that is best left forgotten, even Sonic 06 is a little better…a little.