{"id":5308,"date":"2010-11-14T12:52:30","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T18:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamesanityblog.com\/?p=5308"},"modified":"2010-11-14T12:52:30","modified_gmt":"2010-11-14T18:52:30","slug":"game-review-sonic-free-riders-xbox-360-kinect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/14\/game-review-sonic-free-riders-xbox-360-kinect\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Review: Sonic Free Riders (Xbox 360 Kinect)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sonic the Hedgehog and friends are back for more hover board racing action. In Sonic Free Riders for Xbox 360 Kinect, you can jump into the racing action\u2026literally, as you lean, reach, crouch, and jump as if you were on a hoverboard. Just like Sonic!<\/p>\n

In this Kinect racing game, you stand like you\u2019re riding on a flying surfboard. Lean left and right to turn and reach your left arm and right arm out to grab rings at your sides. Or raise your arms up to nab rings above you. Your hover board will level up if you collect enough rings. I really had fun making ground kicking motions to make the hover board boost faster!<\/p>\n

Just like Mario Kart racing games, you can pick up weapons and power-ups to uses against other racers. For instance, if you grab a soda can, use your right hand like you are shaking up a soda, and when you shake it enough, you\u2019ll be able to ride on the soda can like a rocket! With the bowling ball weapon, move your hand in a bowling motion to take out racers ahead of you!<\/p>\n

Sometimes you\u2019ll have to do other motions as well. For instance, if you hop in a mine cart, you\u2019ll have to pump your arms like holding an invisible bar to make the cart roll faster. Two players can even team up and race together like a tag team! Sonic Free Riders has all the gameplay modes found in other racers of its ilk, like a Story Mode, Free Race, Time Trials, etc. You can also customize your board and unlock other goodies and racers.<\/p>\n

The only thing I had trouble with was jumping and doing tricks. You\u2019re supposed to be able to crouch down and jump up and spin around in the air to do stunts, but I could never get it to work. Of course, we probably weren\u2019t in the most optimal place to play Kinect either, as we were on a 2nd floor apartment and had to be careful when jumping so as to not disturb the people below. Plus I\u2019m a klutz and being blind in one eye hinders my balance a bit, so I fell down once when trying to jump and spin at the same time!<\/p>\n

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

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

Sonic Riders is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Cartoon Violence. You can bump other racers and slow them down with silly weapons, but that\u2019s it. Reading skill isn\u2019t required as all the instructions have picture cues and spoken voice. But younger gamers might get frustrated at the controls if they have trouble doing it like I did. But kids love Sonic, so they\u2019ll probably enjoy a game where they can do what he does.<\/p>\n

Cary\u2019s Kinect Impressions<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was the first time I was able to play Kinect. I don\u2019t have it myself (not enough space in my small house and I don\u2019t want to spend 150 bucks on it anyway), so I went to a good friend\u2019s house who has Kinect so I was able to play and review Sonic Free Riders. I\u2019d like to thank my friend for letting me come over and do that. Anyway, I\u2019m very impressed with the Kinect technology; however, I don\u2019t think Sonic Free Riders is the best demonstration of how well it can work.<\/p>\n

First of all, you need LOTS of space to play it. Enough where you can stand a few feet away from the TV with no furniture around you. You\u2019ll need even more space if two players are on at the same time. And if you live on an upper floor apartment or dorm, jumping in games may pose a problem for your downstairs neighbors. So basically you need to have a ballroom for a game area if you want to really enjoy Kinect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonic the Hedgehog and friends are back for more hover board racing action. In Sonic Free Riders for Xbox 360 Kinect, you can jump into the racing action\u2026literally, as you lean, reach, crouch, and jump as if you were on a hoverboard. Just like Sonic! In this Kinect racing game, you stand like you\u2019re riding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308","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=5308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}