YMMV / Sonic Free Riders

• Awesome Music:
  • "Free" by Chris Madin, Free Riders theme, is cited as being one of the few good things about the game.
  • "I'm Still a Believer" (no relation to the song "I'm a Believer").
• Character Rerailment: Shadow's haughty attitude has made a comeback. Lampshaded by Knuckles.
  Knuckles: Nice to see your ego's as big as ever, Shadow.
• Nausea Fuel: Literally. There have been complaints about the controls causing motion sickness.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The godforsaken forced motion controls, which are often blamed for singlehandedly ruining an otherwise solid game. For no given reason, it is not possible to use traditional controls, and (partly due to being a Kinect launch title) the motion controls are notoriously finicky and unresponsive, making gameplay a sheer exercise in frustration. Even when a Game Mod that replaces motion controls with traditional button and stick controls^note Though you do still need a Kinect to be hooked up if you're not emulating the game was finally released in July 2023, some players found that, while the lack of forced motion controls considerably improves Free Riders' gameplay, the fact that the game was designed around them at all means that it's still, at best, just OK.
• Sequelitis: Even many fans of the first two games tend not to say good things about Sonic Free Riders, due to unresponsive controls.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Changing the controls of the previous two games was an interesting choice, but the game failed in implementation. If Sega was to insist on using motion controls, the smarter decision would have been to use the Wii Balance Board, instead of the Kinect.

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