Time’s not been too kind to everyone’s favourite blue hedgehog, really. The heady days of the Mega Drive side-scrolling epics has slowly faded into the past, and these days you half expect to find Sonic, Knuckles and company curled up in a corner somewhere, unshaven and begging for change. If there’s one shiny golden ring of hope amongst the otherwise barren future landscape in terms of Sonic titles, it's the fact that the modern range of handhelds seem ideal for revamping the classic 2D formula which has been forsaken, and Sonic Rush on the DS proved that with a little nod to the past Sega’s little mascot was still capable of appearing in decent games.

Hopes were similarly high for Sonic Rivals, too, as a cursory glance at some screenshots shows a game that, for the most part, remains rooted in Sonic’s 2D past. The premise of Rivals is simple enough: players run through a selection of themed levels against an opponent to reach the finish first. The story itself waffles on about Eggman having a magical camera that can turn people into cards, and as recent Sonic titles have done the story itself is multi-threaded, allowing you to play through the game’s Challenge mode a number of times as different characters to get the full perspective on what’s going on.

The racing itself takes place over six stages, each comprising of two levels and a boss battle. Each stage tends to last around the 3-minute mark, and consists of the usual kinds of jumps, spring pads, slide rails and spike pits we’ve all come to know from previous Sonic titles. Now,on paper (or in pixels) this all sounds pretty nifty. Simple, fast one-on-one racing along Aztec ruins and haunted carnivals with a smattering of power-ups dotted around to use against your opponent whenever you see fit.

Alas, in reality things don’t quite match up. The racing itself feels slightly flawed in a way, and the major issue that the game has is that it mostly comes down to luck whether you win a race or not. Skill and quick reflexes will see you being able to reach different routes or shortcuts, but opponents always seem to catch up at some point and will be ruthless when they do. There are plenty of times that you will jump into an early lead, only for your opponent to catch you near the end and either use a power-up or thump you at a completely inopportune moment, leaving you straggling around having lost all momentum. Now, I’m a pretty good loser when it comes to games (heck, I even put up with the blatant catch-up AI of Mario Kart 64 for crying out loud), but to lose in the way that Sonic Rivals sometimes conjures is teeth-grinding stuff. Sometimes you literally feel as if you are completely powerless to win, especially when the game decides on respawning opponents that are too far behind ahead of you. Oh, and no - I'm not making that up.

The boss battles at the end of each stage fair better, and are really rather enjoyable. These involve both characters running around a circular arena jumping attempting to hit a boss character a certain amount of times before the other achieves it. Having to dodge enemy attacks from both your rival and the boss character becomes rather frenetic, and each level differs in terms of platforms and attack patterns to keep you on your toes. It all works very well indeed, and the boss sections provide a nice break between tearing around like a lunatic.

The other main problem that Rivals suffers from is that it’s hugely light in terms of game modes. Apart from the story effort you are left with Challenge and Cup Circuit modes, with the former offering one-off races with performance targets to unlock art cards, new costumes and the like, and the latter pitting you against a rival of your choice in a selection of mini tournaments. Collecting the bonus items does become rather addictive to a point and it is indeed nice to be able to see classic characters and enemies from the series’ past, but you can’t help but wish that Backbone Entertainment (of Death Jr. fame) had slotted in a couple more stages and playable characters, and perhaps some sort of Castlevania-esque Boss Battle mode. A Wi-Fi multiplayer option is available, but unfortunately suffer terribly from lag and so is not really a terribly enticing prospect.

The main feeling I get with Rivals is that I really do want to like it more than I actually do. It looks lovely, with a beautiful mixture of two-dimensional and three-dimensional scenery and bright colours splashed around as if they were going out of fashion, and what little there is packed into the game is actually good fun in between horribly frustrating moments of AI cheating. The problem is, those horrible moments are there and rear their head at depressingly frequent opportunities, and even when you get over those there is precious little to actually do once you’ve spent about ten or so hours going through the three main single player modes. With a little polishing and padding the upcoming sequel could be a true frontline Sonic effort, but what we’ve got at the moment is more of a chaos emerald in the rough.