The last of the Free Riders videos for now. In this one, we're gonna be trucking through some online multiplayer matches, along with a few Tag Mode races at the end.
Unfortunately, this is where the problems with Free Riders really start to rear their ugly head. See, Sonic Riders in general has never been very good at giving players behind a chance to catch up, but Free Riders definitely handles it the worst out of the three games. Gone are the days of actually having to put effort into catching up. Now you can just pelt the player in first with 5 consecutive RNG golf balls and make them lose all their rings at once!
Not only does balancing the game like this make it inherently less competitive, but it also removes a lot of what made Riders so unique in the first place. And that's really the main issue with all the Riders sequels in hindsight. Sega kept trying to dumb down the original mechanics after the negative reception towards the first game. And honestly, even without this game's infamous reputation, it feels like they were already kinda done with the Riders formula by the time Free Riders rolled around.
Anywho, mini rant over. Hope y'all enjoy the video! I don't know when I'll be posting Free Riders content again, but I'll be happy to look over any suggestions in the comments.
Timestamps:
Multiplayer Races with Flasher: 0:00
Tag Mode Races with Kabal: 55:11
Downloads:
- The No Kinect Patch can be found on the official Discord. Here's the link: / discord
- Your ears do not deceive you, the 4kids voice acting is back and better than ever! I mean, I can vibe with the modern voice cast well enough, but 4kids is just superior in every way (except with Creams voice, but I digressss). Here's the link to replace all the voice clips: gamebanana.com/sounds/69055