I generally wait for games to go down in price before I buy them (I am frugal like that). Recently I bought Sonic Rivals and I must say that it wasn't what I expected but it is enjoyable. I did read the reviews, and knew it was a racing game before I bough it, however I guess I was not prepared for how much of a racing game it was. I still have not gone though all of the manual, but it just seems like I only need to press the analog stick forward and then press the X or O buttons whenever necessary.

I am sort of stuck on level two (with all the characters) - I keep getting attacked by my racing opponent, and even though I have weapons I don't know how to use them yet...I guess I need to RTFM. This game has some pretty nice graphics and it fun to play. The one thing that really annoys me is the half-baked attempt at dialogue. When your racer (whoever you choose) interacts with Robotnik (Eggman for those of you who don't know Robotnik) or with another character there is text based dialogue, which is fine. What is retarded is the fact that the two characters involved in the dialogue speak the FIRST word of that sentence!

example of what is on screen: "Hey! You stole my Chaos Emerald! I will get you for this!"
What is spoken: 'HEY!'

It gets annoying when you realize that they won't speak the whole thing and you have a series of evocations or retorts for no reason at all... all things considered though, thus far, this seems to be a good game. I am still waiting for a 'real' sonic game for the PSP!