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No: In Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, it still doesn't make sense that Sonic the Hedgehog would need to race upon a hoverboard. That's like Cyclops from the X-Men buying a laser gun, or Iceman a snow cone. And even though there are a couple of speedy thrills, with only a two-hour campaign, overbearing plot, and lame course design, you need this hoverboard racer about as much as Wolverine needs a new set of Ginsu knives.
The story is obviously ludicrous. After all, at the core Sonic games have always been about the battle between a talking hedgehog in sneakers and a fat, mad scientist. But Zero Gravity is ludicrous in unexpected ways. The game begins with a rampage ripped straight out of I, Robot, of which Sonic and company are caught in the middle when an ancient artifact they stumble upon turns out to be a prized possession of the robots' mother. The team investigates, and quickly crosses paths with Dr. Robotnik, who swears he has nothing to do with the calamity, to which Sonic says, "Well I guess for now we'll have to buy that Eggman isn't involved."
Yes, it's that head-slappingly stupid. Even worse, when you finally discover that Eggman is involved, it's revealed that the reason he's trying to gather the artifacts and stop the robots from rampaging is so that he can...cause the robots to rampage. But wait, it gets worse. The artifacts are part of this crazy legend involving the Babylon Rogues (a rival hoverboarding team composed of--what else?--birds), and they eventually lead you to a place referred to as "The Crimson Tower," which is, of course, blue.
Not only are the plot and dialogue bad even by Sonic's standards, you have to sit through huge chunks of this garbage every time you complete a race. Ironically, the story mode itself is very short, and only takes about two hours to beat. You simply jam through a handful of courses, bang your head against whatever hard object is nearby during the cutscenes, and then, suddenly, the credits roll. After that, your only option is to race through survival, time attack, or world grand prix mode, which earns you credits to purchase "Extreme Gear."
The racing itself is all over the place. The basic Wii tilt controls are imprecise, and it's easy to find yourself ping-ponging between walls. You can and should use the D pad, although you can't disable the tilt controls. This means that if you're tilting the remote at all, you'll drift as though you were driving a car with bad suspension. As a result, the Wii version is distinctly less fun to play than the PS2 version. Still, there are a couple interesting ideas at work. If you need to make a real sharp turn, you can hold a button, which slows you down but lets you rotate freely. Once you're pointing in the direction you want to go, you release the button and burst off, as if you were fired from a slingshot. This is an interesting mechanic that is put to creative use in only one level, where you must make hairpin turns over a cliff. The only way to pull one off has you actually hanging in space, before dashing back onto the road. It's thrilling when it works, but it only works half the time. You're also likely to shoot yourself down into the abyss, or up into the ceiling, both of which cause your racer to reset.
