Sonic Rivals 2

Nov 28, 2007

On paper, Sonic Rivals 2 should be a great game. Take the Sonic games' awesome sense of speed (as well as its colorful characters and environments) and tailor it for a competitive racing game - that should be a formula for success. It's a fantastic concept that seems like surefire way to provide hours of entertainment on the Sony PSP. Unfortunately, the execution is merely adequate and the final product is a game that's okay at best.

A great deal of this game is comprised of running around at ridiculous speeds, jumping to avoid hazards, and collecting various items. Your object, of course, is to win each race. Outside of some awful rubber-band AI that artificially increases the game's difficulty level, the races are a fun blend of putting the petal to the metal and wreaking havoc with the opposition. It feels great zipping around as one of the Sonic characters, but your mercurial exploits are doused by unfair AI that forces you to worry about your opponents no matter how well you've mastered a track.

If you were to equate Sonic Rivals 2 with a culinary dish, it would be guilty of having too many ingredients. Had the developers focused on the racing aspects of this game, it probably would have made for a better product. Instead, they opted to inject some fighting action to add some variety to the mix. Sadly, the fighting is pretty wretched and more frequent than it ought to be. The battle sequences in this game are mostly annoying and don't really add much in terms of entertainment.