{"id":12792,"date":"2014-11-28T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T00:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=12792"},"modified":"2014-11-23T18:16:58","modified_gmt":"2014-11-23T18:16:58","slug":"sonic-boom-rise-of-lyric-wii-u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/28\/sonic-boom-rise-of-lyric-wii-u\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (Wii U)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SONICWIIU_BOX\"<\/a>One day, Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends were being chased by the villainous Dr. Eggman and Metal Sonic.\u00a0 To escape, they hid in some ancient ruins, and unwittingly freed an evil cybernetic snake named Lyric from his 1,000 year slumber.\u00a0 Now Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles must work together to stop Lyric from taking over the world!\u00a0 Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is based on the new computer animated Sonic cartoon airing on Cartoon Network.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get this out of the way right now.\u00a0 If you\u2019re expecting a typical Sonic game full of speedy action, you\u2019ll be very disappointed.\u00a0 Since this is based on a cartoon show, the game has more adventure elements and teamwork-based puzzles.\u00a0 In a way, it\u2019s kind of a cross between a Sonic game and the original Jak and Daxter.\u00a0 And since you really don\u2019t see too many colorful 3-D platform adventures anymore, it was kind of a welcome change for me.\u00a0 But then, I\u2019m not the biggest Sonic fan out there.<\/p>\n

During most of the game, you can choose between the four characters to play as on the fly.\u00a0 Sonic can spin dash into enemies.\u00a0 Tails can glide and use long ranged bombs and mini-robots to attack.\u00a0 Amy smacks around baddies with her hammer and can triple jump and balance on special pink bars.\u00a0 And Knuckles can climb certain walls and burrow underground.\u00a0 You\u2019ll need to use each character\u2019s abilities to find all the secrets. \u00a0\u00a0Everyone can use an \u2018enerbeam\u2019 that fires out electricity like a cord, and it can be used to grab and throw enemies, swing on certain objects, and slide down rails like a zip line.<\/p>\n

As you explore the land, you\u2019ll find all sorts of things to collect.\u00a0 Rings help keep you alive.\u00a0 As you take damage, you\u2019ll lose a few.\u00a0 Lose them all and you\u2019ll fall over, but most of the time I restarted exactly where I left off.\u00a0 But you\u2019ll still want to collect as many as you can.\u00a0 Scrap parts can be used to buy upgrades and goodies, as well as help build up the villages and camps in the levels, which usually lead toward more secret items to find.\u00a0 Your main goal is to find all eight crystals.\u00a0 These help you unlock new parts of the world map and other levels.\u00a0 You can even find sidequests that you can complete to earn you special glyphs that you can equip to give you a boost.\u00a0 If you have the 3DS Sonic Boom game, you can connect it to the Wii U version to unlock even more upgrades.<\/p>\n

The game is mostly a 3-D exploration adventure, but there are some 2-D sections, too.\u00a0 Every so often there will even be 3-D speed sections like other Sonic titles, but these parts aren\u2019t near as good.\u00a0 Two people can play at the same time in co-op mode, with one person using the Wii U gamepad screen to view their character.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t as fun as it sounds because if you wander too far off from your teammate, you\u2019ll warp back to them and it can be very jarring.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually way easier to just play the game in single player.\u00a0 There are also some four player mini-game challenges, and you can unlock and view concept art and other goodies, too.<\/p>\n

The game isn\u2019t without its problems, though, and some are pretty glaring.\u00a0 The framerate can get very choppy, which is inexcusable in this day and age.\u00a0 Like most 3-D adventures, there are some problematic camera angles as well.\u00a0 Goals and objectives aren\u2019t always clear, and it can be a pain to backtrack if you want to get all the secrets.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard the game is glitchy, too, but I didn\u2019t see any game-breaking bugs myself yet.\u00a0 And again, die-hard classic Sonic fans may not like the drastic gameplay changes.\u00a0 But if you can look past all this, the game itself really isn\u2019t THAT bad.\u00a0 It\u2019s not great, but it is nice to see another colorful 3-D platform adventure like back in the N64, PS2, and GameCube days.\u00a0 If you enjoyed those types of games, Sonic Boom may be worth a try.\u00a0 The 3DS Sonic Boom game is a totally different kind of game, so stay tuned next time for my review of that, too!<\/p>\n

\"SONICWIIU_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Cartoon Violence.\u00a0 While you do attack enemies, they\u2019re pretty much all robots.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for some of the menus, but most of it has spoken voice.\u00a0 Younger players might get frustrated with some of the tougher areas and unclear goals and may need a little help.\u00a0 Kids love Sonic, and even though this game has problems, I think kids would enjoy this game anyway.\u00a0 Kids usually don\u2019t worry about things in games like choppy framerates and cheesy dialogue; they just play what they like.\u00a0 In that way, I think kids are better gamers than adults sometimes.\u00a0 So if your kids love anything Sonic, they may enjoy this game, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day, Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends were being chased by the villainous Dr. Eggman and Metal Sonic.\u00a0 To escape, they hid in some ancient ruins, and unwittingly freed an evil cybernetic snake named Lyric from his 1,000 year slumber.\u00a0 Now Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles must work together to stop Lyric from taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews","category-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12792"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12795,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions\/12795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}