History VideoGame / SonicFreeRiders

* TookALevelInKindness: The Babylon Rogues are still arrogant, but far less condescending towards their rivals in ''Free Riders''. Jet even compliments Shadow and Rouge on their skills.

''Sonic Free Riders'' is a 2010 racing video game for the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 and the third game of the ''VideoGame/SonicRiders'' series.

* Team based tournament: The plot of the game involves four teams of racers competing in a tournament for a cash prize. Each team's story mode has you switching between members of that team between races.

The game was developed to be used exclusively with the 360's Kinect peripheral, and as such it is controlled by players physically miming the movement and actions of their character.

The game was developed to be used exclusively with the 360's Kinect peripheral, and as such it is controlled by players physically miming the movement and actions of their character. Players generally found the controls unresponsive, fatiguing, and sometimes even nauseating. Combined with a much more barebones and cheaply-made story than the previous two games, ''Free Riders'' was very poorly received. [[FranchiseKiller There hasn't been a new]] ''[[FranchiseKiller Riders]]'' [[FranchiseKiller game since]].

* GameMod: Most notably, [=Rei-sanTH=]'s "No Kinect Patch" ([[https://youtu.be/xSJu_QK3kSY trailer here]]) attempts to make ''Free Riders'' more playable by removing the Kinect controls and substituting them with a standard controller scheme.

* LandOfDragons: Gigan Rocks and Gigan Device have a distinctly ancient Chinese theme.

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The game has four story modes and it has a mostly re-cast voice cast. It has no [[GuestFighter guest characters]].

* AbsenteeActor:
** Team Dark lacks their usual "power" character, Omega. It's never explained why about his absence, but [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006 another game]] suggest he doesn't tag along with them frequently. The out-of-universe explanation is probably that he (and Big) would look pretty silly on a hoverboard.
** Team Rose is missing their third member Big The Cat, with Vector The Crocodile filling in.

'''Sonic Free Riders''' is a 2010 racing video game for the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 and the third game of the ''VideoGame/SonicRiders'' series.

* AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield: Mobius Strip, the final track in ''Zero Gravity'', has you riding through a track in the starry sky full of red and purplish eclipses.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: CPU racers will typically use five kick-boosts in a row for every one the player uses with no apparent drawbacks or consequence despite the steep consumption rates for boosts. Somewhat subverted in that them doing so doesn't really give them that much of an advantage over the player as consecutive kick-boosts don't stack and the course layout is such that they'll run out of open road long before they can ride out their boost to it's full extent.

* GravityScrew: Metropolis Speedway and [[spoiler: Metal City]] includes wall and ceiling running of the same style as Zero Gravity.

* LargeHamAnnouncer: Omochao.

* LightningBruiser: Any character with the Power attribute, in addition to being as fast as the other racers, can punch obstacles away effortlessly. Other characters are bumped backwards, but Power characters not only don't slow down, but gain Air (or Gravity Points in ''Zero Gravity'') for doing so.
* LuckBasedMission: The final boss of ''Zero Gravity'' can only be damaged if the player is in 1st place during the automated Gravity Dives, but the race takes place on a straight, barren track with very little the player can do to overtake other characters if they get hit by an attack and fall behind. Sometimes the AI will just suddenly overtake you for no discernible reason. The only way to get a decent lead again is to hope that you get a generous pattern of debris to bounce off of during the gravity dive, or an item box gives you a speed boost. What makes this particularly frustrating is that the other characters have narratively the same goal as Sonic during this stage, but if they hit the boss, all it does is prevent Sonic from doing so for another attack cycle.

* NostalgiaLevel: [[spoiler:Metal City]] from the first Sonic Riders appears in Free Riders.
* PaperThinDisguise:
** The World Grand Prix organizer in ''Sonic Free Riders'' looks like a hairier Dr. Eggman in an Eggman-red carnival ringleader outfit voiced by Mike Pollock. One guess as to who he really is.
** "I'm King Doc! Of, uh, Toreggmania!" Played with since ''no one'' falls for it.

** A number of characters undergo this. Justified due to the competition being SeriousBusiness.
** While Shadow and Rouge are usually [[AntiHero far from the nicest folks around]] it is a little jarring to see them be quite so callous and mean, especially regarding to their mistreatment of E-10000B compared to their usual teamwork with [[RobotBuddy E-123 Omega]].
** Amy also qualifies in ''Sonic Free Riders''. She behaves perpetually rudely and obnoxiously to her teammates, compared to the high spirited if temperamental leader she was in ''Heroes''.

* TronLines: Final Factory from ''Sonic Free Riders'' is packed to the brim with this.
* WalkingSpoiler: [[spoiler:Metal Sonic]].

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The game has four story modes and it has a mostly re-cast voice cast. It has no GuestFighters.

* MadeOfExplodium: All objects affected by gravity shifts in ''Zero Gravity'' will either explode immediately or will be flung far away, then explode, regardless of what it is.

* AwesomeYetImpractical: Boosting/Diving becomes this with Super Sonic. Reason being that Air/GP consumption is tied to Rings while playing as Super Sonic, and attempting to do either chews through a ''massive'' amount of Rings. Especially Gravity Dives in ''Zero Gravity'', which will practically send you from 200 Rings to empty in a single Dive sequence. It's much easier to rely on the Super Sonic Boost to go fast, which is always active once you hit the Ring threshold needed to trigger it and doesn't burn Rings as quickly, despite being slower.
* BackgroundMusicOverride: The ''VideoGame/HangOn'' and ''Super Hang-On'' bikes will replace the background music of the track you are racing on with themes from their respective games.

* BoastfulRap: Jet's theme "Catch Me If You Can", especially the ''Zero Gravity'' version.

* BraggingRightsReward: [[spoiler:The Chaos Emerald]], which basically states that you've beaten all of the Mission Mode stages.

* JungleJapes: Forbidden Tomb in ''Sonic Free Riders''.

'''Sonic Free Riders'' is a 2010 racing video game for the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 and the third game of the ''VideoGame/SonicRiders'' series.

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