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After time, most characters in the gaming world who achieve a certain level of buzz and popularity will be blessed with a variety of spin offs to commemorate their status. This also tends to continue the momentum in the hope to prove just how entertaining the source material is. This go around, Sonic has been given the star treatment with Sonic Riders Zero Gravity in an attempt to rectify the spotty history of Sonic's racing titles, and try to improve on the failings of the first Sonic Riders as well.

As a long time Sonic fan, I feel it necessary to state that storylines and Sonic have always worked best when they operated at only the most basic level and not much else. Unfortunately, this isn't the direction that Zero Gravity took. The single player mode revolves around the Sonic gang and the Babylon Rogues in their separate but linked goals of finding out why MeteorTech's robots have run amok and what exactly the "Ark of the Cosmos" has to do with it all.

To save any paragraphs of extensive complaint, I'll sum all up of the single player campaign as painful, with any attempts at dialogue and cinematic as a goofy failure at best. All of the missions are an exercise at rephrasing "get first place" as many times as possible, as the endeavors never develop beyond relentlessly racing against the AI again and again on separate tracks, doing nothing for the continued narrative at large. Why the entire thing wasn't staged as a grand prix once again without the bad story elements is beyond me, as it would have saved a lot of unneeded negativity and just cut to the quick of racing which is what the game is about in the first place.

The racing for the racing's sake is a better experience, as there seems to have been quite a lot Sonic team was trying to cram into each level. The core mechanics from the first title have been changed a little, as the player now has two new techniques to utilize and an upgrade system to work with. The gravity elements allow the player to utilize the Gravity Dive and the Gravity Control. Outside of the three basic attributes of each hover board (Speed, Fly, and Power), any characters can use the Gravity Dive and Gravity Control by amassing enough GP through means of tricks and challenges provided within the course.

Gravity Dive is based around moving at high velocity in straightaways, while finding any advantage you can in terrain dislodging and smashing into the debris for added speed. Gravity Control is more of an attempt at a drifting aspect - as when tight corners present themselves - as the control helps you stop your board on a dime, and re-direct to the desired direction without losing any speed. While the Gravity Control was useful, the dive was my overall favorite, as it did a better job of increasing speed and I found it more helpful in the racing experience.

The upgrade system allows you to improve your board with rings as the race goes on, using only the simple press of a button. Top speed, improved vehicle specs (according to board mechanics), and grinding on rails for shortcuts are all up for grabs and add better variety for people who find themselves in multiple playthroughs on each track - catering to entertainment between first time players and rewards between multiple replays of each level. With all the new systems for each player to use, it creates a unique sense of a re-arranged track with each lap as you collect more and more rings for upgrades, a definite plus in terms of time trials and general multiplayer fun.

There are more than a dozen courses, and unlike its predecessor, each track has a wide array of shortcuts and multiple paths to choose from. As well as offering differing ways to pull off a trick correctly at the height of a jump, each course is designed to take advantage of the upgrade system. Depending on which class your character is, a new way will open up when enough rings are acquired. Railings are peppered throughout the track to grind on as well for an even larger variety of already existing shortcuts to choose from.

The visuals of the tracks are a delicious irony in that some overcompensate and actually provide a visual overload, forcing the game to give you several indications of what is around the next corner, and might befuddle those with slower reaction times. The themes fall along the over-generalized (mechanic, jungle, snow, etc.) and do the best they can to remind the player not to let the upgrade system go to waste.

Though multiplayer does exist, having no online for the PS2 means that it will require the player to wrangle a friend to enjoy the action. The multiplayer enjoyment is definitely there, as multiplayer specific modes (such as racing survival and literal football on hover boards) sweeten the deal. Extra attention seem to have been given to the multiplayer aspect beyond just letting the player race on already existing tracks, which is nice for the amount of characters and boards that can be chosen coupled with the multiplayer centric content.

Yet, for all the good the game has to offer, the bad still seems to outweigh it. Some stems from poor choices in design; others I admit are personal preference and a burning question I have in general. Starting with the design, I felt that the controls improved. My biggest complaint from the original that wasn't fixed was the turning mechanic on the majority of the characters. Two of the classes seem underpowered because the turning is either too stale or too twitchy; special adjustments should be made so that none of the characters in general seem superfluous at anytime. Storm and Knuckles especially (any of the power class) would be thoroughly out matched on most of the tracks because of how loose the turning is (even with Gravity control) and the Speed class doesn't always balance how fast and how tight turning is consistently.

My biggest complaint of this offering is the lack of speed that is conveyed throughout the game. This of course, is mind boggling to me, as the entire point of Sonic's existence is to make sure the player appreciates the sense of speed, the unmatched velocities, and the overall hyper-dramatic sense of inertia the blue blur is suppose to possess as the fastest thing alive. When an entire game is underlining how much fun going so fast is suppose to be, the saddest thing imaginable is to have the feeling completely absent from the experience. I never once was amazed with how fast I was going, and on occasion wondered why there was never a faster option available or why Sonic would confine himself to a machine that seems to actually move slower then what he was capable of. A severe let down to be sure.

The racing isn't broken, but I didn't find a lot of fun to be had. The small instance of multiplayer was one of the game's only redeeming features, but I felt that if the entire experience missed the mark in defining exactly what speed is. It seems any racing game with Sonic's moniker can't quite cut it, and Sonic Riders Zero Gravity is no exception. I was a long time Sonic fan, but my love ceased to exist sometime after he entered the 3-d arena, and this game only reminds me of all the reasons why I'm not a fan of Sonic anymore. And why the franchise has continued to suffer from such poor quality in recent years, and will continue to do so if it keeps trying to build different experiences off of the consistently bad source material.