ScrewAttack can Screw Themselves - Free Riders SAGY '10

[Barry the Nomad]

This is in response to ScrewAttack's Shitty Ass Game of the Year awards.

In itself, the concept is just plain stupid. Rather than focusing on the good things going on in the industry, ScrewAttack goes the ever increasingly popular route of tearing into forms of entertainment. Now I love the Angry Video Game Nerd videos, however I'm smart enough a person to know that those videos are made purely as entertainment. James is playing a character whose anger and frustration towards bad to mediocre NES games is amplified for comedic effect. The trend continued with Nostalgia Critic and his many "me too!" affiliates. Again, all (mostly) entertaining videos that are for laughs, not to be treated as a method for creating a valid opinion of something.

Had I used AVGN and the videos at ThatGuyWithTheGlasses as the basis for my opinions of games, tv, movies and comics that I've yet to watch, read and play, I'd assume that 99% of the stuff out there is rage inducing content that is pure shit and is worthy of a 20 minute video rant.

Anyway, point I was getting at was ScrewAttack's SAGY awards are pure nonsense and only hurt the gaming community. It's of my opinion that the gaming community has had an increasing trend towards being snarky and hateful rather than positive and hopeful. Case in point, a forum topic discussing Sonic '06 will be amazingly popular, as the typical gamer enjoys tearing a five year old bad game a new asshole. Meanwhile, a great new game like Vanquish will generate a few pages of positive impressions and then will slowly sink to the bottom of the forum list.

Shit, I'm still not getting to my point! Well, my point was that Sonic Free Riders has been awarded the Shitty Ass Game of the Year award for the 360! All thanks to the lovely readers over at ScrewAttack. ScrewAttack even made a loving video in honor of the game receiving "worst game of the year" status: http://screwattack.com/videos/Worst-Xbo ... 2010-SAGYs

Now what grinds my gears, and prompted this post, is that Sonic Free Riders is simply being eviscerated thanks to the community's love for tearing into something even when they haven't played the game or owned the hardware. Sonic Free Riders is not a fantastic game, however it is far from shitty. The game is fully playable, it is filled with a variety of modes and unlike any other Kinect racing game it actually provides a real sense of speed and a large variety of in-game actions. As a Riders game it's a step up, as a Kinect game it's on the good side of average and as a racing game it's unique and provides a fun arcade experience. Most importanly, Free Riders strived to do a lot more than other Kinect launch titles did.

If ScrewAttack wanted to stick with choosing a Kinect game, they could easily have gone for Fighters Unchaged. FU (great acronyms) was universally panned for being completely unplayable, simple and boring. Another poor Kinect title was MotionSports, which failed at many sports Kinect Sports succeeded at. Hell, theres even a game called Adrenalin Misfits that does what Free Riders did but with a lot less actions, no-name characters and far slower speeds.

Moving to 360 games not on the Kinect, there are a number of poor games which released in 2010. Might I remind you all of SEGA's Iron Man 2? Or how about the latest Harry Potter game which featured badly implemented on-rails Kinect support? Both of these games were scored far lower than Free Riders and were very bad.

Conclusion (finally):

The gaming community loves to hate on SEGA, the community loves to hate on Kinect and the community REALLY loves to hate on Sonic. Sonic Free Riders combines these three popular topics of hate and provided a great punching bag for the idiots who frequent ScrewAttack. I very much doubt that those who voted actually played Free Riders or even owned a Kinect. Rather, they just chuckled at the idea of giving a Sonic game "shit" status during a year when all of the other Sonic games were generally well received. What more, they could take a dump on the Kinect. When the community stops taking the opinion of internet video personalities (such as Angry Joe's 1/10  Free Riders score) as fact, the community might start growing up a little and will begin to form their own opinions.

[ROJM]

I've never been big on Sonic really though he had some great games past and present. As for FREE RIDERS you get what you paid for, this was only really a filler game until the real titles that fully use kinect gets released by Sega. Its no point wasting time on hating it but then again as you said its an obvious target.

[SOUP]

How is Final Fantasy XIII their worst multiplatform title of the year?

[Barry the Nomad]

How is Final Fantasy XIII their worst multiplatform title of the year?

Apparently because there was a lot of hype? We should be thankful that it wasn't Bayonetta.

Really though, a game is not shitty if it is hyped to be groundbreaking and turns out simply good. That might be a disappointment for the fans, but it is far from being "shitty". Again, blame the idiot ScrewAttack readers.

[George]

Easiest way to get people to talk about your award shows is attack big fan bases. Sonic & Final Fantasy fans are easy to rail up.

[CosmicCastaway]

How is Final Fantasy XIII their worst multiplatform title of the year?

Apparently because there was a lot of hype? We should be thankful that it wasn't Bayonetta.

Really though, a game is not shitty if it is hyped to be groundbreaking and turns out simply good. That might be a disappointment for the fans, but it is far from being "shitty". Again, blame the idiot ScrewAttack readers.

I think this is one problem with the current game community. There is so much hype riding behind the big titles that people expect a godsend when it finally arrives.
I agree with all the points you made in your opening statement Barry, and it is unfortunate that "angry" reviews have such an effect on the community. =/

[Ben]

...on the other hand, Sega and Square-Enix can certainly help to remove the targets from their backs by improving the quality of their games.

Sonic Free Riders was nearly-universally trashed by critics and many gamers. Sega should have fixed these things like poor controls and high learning curve before the game went out the door, a game like this, especially one people will be buying for the control scheme, shouldn't have these control issues.

Regarding FF13, it's pretty well-known that the game disappointed many people who were looking for a "traditional" FF game, which it was not.

I agree that it's unlikely that everyone who voted Sonic Free Riders for getting that award has played it. But if the game was a quality game (which it was not, says its metacritic score of a 47, the lowest score a new Sonic game's gotten since Sonic '06....so much for all-quality Sonic games, Sega! And its 3-star average on Amazon.com shows that the casual audience isn't really going crazy over it either) it would be less easy to kick around.

It's that simple, really. Sonic Colors was not kicked around, the only site who did, Destructoid, was basically humiliated, because it was widely-known as a good game. That's all Sega can do to fix this issue. If they say they will only be releasing quality Sonic games in the future, then they should stick to that promise. They shouldn't rush out a Sonic game for the Kinect just to make $$ on its launch.

So eh....I will agree that Sega and Sonic has been beat up at times, but in this case I don't have a lot of sympathy.

[SOUP]

I don't think anyone could legitimately argue that Final Fantasy XIII was lacking in quality or polish.
It's definitely not as predictably the same as it's predecessor, like many sequels out there, but I applaud their courage to mix things up.  I can honestly see it being one of those games down the road that will get a lot of retro-active praise. Like God Hand for example.

[Ben]

Well yeah I mean I definitely agree that FF13 was a great game, I enjoyed it.

But my point is that you are always walking a tightrope when dealing with industry icons like Sonic and FF..Sega and SE need to take care to make sure that releases starring industry icons are meeting fans' expectations.

Do people really think FF13 is the worst multiplat game of the year? Probably not, but if fans think that it being given this title will send a wake-up call to SE to bring back the FF they want, then they'll do it.

As for Sonic Free Riders..... eh. Honestly, a game that's averaging a critic score in the 40s really kinda leaves itself open for this type of thing. I admit I haven't played it since I don't own a Kinect but CLEARLY Sega did something wrong.

[CosmicCastaway]

The reliance on Metacritic is also another thing I think is wrong with the game community.

[nuckles87]

Only thing really wrong with it is that it's not easy to pick up and play. It works, but it's very physically demanding.

Game should have had a casual mode that simplified the controls and allowed you to stand normally, though much like Colors' navigation mode I'm sure at least some critics would ignore it.

[Sharky]

This doesn't really bother me at all... Sonic Riders does look like a load of shit imo. Sorry any Sonic Riders fans out there but I think the premise has been stupid from the start and this latest game was of course just a quick cash in title. There was never any reason to believe that it would be good.

Was it the worst game of the year or what ever? I very much doubt it but hey 'SONIC SUX' right... As someone said it's an easy target.

Now if it had been Sonic Colours I'd have been pissed off... That was actually a great Sonic game for once.

[Barry the Nomad]

As nuckles said, Free Riders isn't an easy pick up and play game as Kinect Sports or Kinect Adventures are, though I don't think that makes it "bad". After my second race I consistently placed in the top 3. Had the game been "broken" as some folks claim, I would never had been able to place that well. Definitely not shit in my opinion, I'd more deem it "harder than it should have been, but still a good game once you put in the effort". And remember the SAGY games were chosen by ScrewAttack forum members, not those who actually played the games  :roll:

@Sharky
I agree, I was never a fan of the premise or new characters in the Riders games. Especially the noodly designs and the "Eggman is holding a race... again!".

[ROJM]

This doesn't really bother me at all... Sonic Riders does look like a load of shit imo. Sorry any Sonic Riders fans out there but I think the premise has been stupid from the start and this latest game was of course just a quick cash in title. There was never any reason to believe that it would be good.

Was it the worst game of the year or what ever? I very much doubt it but hey 'SONIC SUX' right... As someone said it's an easy target.

Now if it had been Sonic Colours I'd have been pissed off... That was actually a great Sonic game for once.

Maybe ok but it still doesn't change the simple fact that Sega themselves cannot produce a good Sonic game lately. As long as that problem presists their "star vehicle" is always going to be a target to fan rants.

[Ben]

The reliance on Metacritic is also another thing I think is wrong with the game community.

I'm in support of Metacritic because it shows you a couple sentences from the review and invites you to click on, unlike Gamerankings, which is all numbers.

Developers can scan the Metacritic page to sort of see what people generally didn't like or did like about their game and improve these issues in future games. They can also click on any review and read it. It's easier than having to scan everywhere to look for critic reviews, this puts them all in one place.

Anyway, regarding Free Riders, like I said, it may not be "the worst game ever made," but it's widely regarded as being a bad game. People are getting tired of bad Sonic games already. This is how they feel they can let Sega know this. By voting it in things like this.

It works, but it's very physically demanding.

And so who's that supposed to be targeting? Who wants to play a video game that's "physically demanding"? A "fun" Sonic hoverboard racer should not be frustrating and physically demanding. That's always been my problem with the Sonic Riders series: I've never found them to be any fun.