GOTTA GO FAST! AGAIN! FOR THE FOURTH TIME!
Yes, this is the fourth Sonic kart racer. The first was Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing in 2010 which was a fun Mario Kart clone starring Sonic and friends as well as characters and courses from other SEGA franchises (and a few guest characters) and it was good, but its main draw was that it was a great kart racer available on non-Nintendo platforms. The second game was Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed in 2012 which was a celebration of SEGA, did some really neat changes for each lap of the race, and had an in-depth mission mode that was quite challenging and was a real competitor to Mario Kart but I think was overlooked by a lot of people because the first game was good but not exciting. This would be the last game in the SEGA All-Stars series (with two non-racing games predating Racing and Transformed) and the developer Sumo Digital would shift directions to Team Sonic Racing which was fine. I wrote a review of it and gave it an 8 but the price to entry was $40 so I was far more forgiving of it not being a great sequel to Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed. That was 2019 and Sumo Digital is not the developer of Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, Sonic Team is. So, does it meet expectations?
Yes. It surpasses most which is why I’m going to start with my one and only criticism. There’s 24 courses and this is a full-price game. Team Sonic Racing, while not as fun or as feature filled as Crossworlds, came with 21 courses for $40 and a big part of kart racers are the courses. I have finished all the currently available Grand Prix challenges (on all difficulties), all Rival battles, and have moved onto online play as well as soloing AI teams in other modes and I see a lot of the same courses which is a good criticism to have because I guess that means I’m having fun and want more, but for a better idea of what I would hope for or even expect, Mario Kart Wii has 32 courses with no DLC and is from 2008. I’m not expecting the insanity that is the course selection of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but I think a few more Grand Prix cups would have helped because while the Crossworlds function is neat (the second lap is randomized and then chosen between one of two courses by the player in first place) it doesn’t really increase the count of courses because at a certain point the second lap can be chosen from other courses and not just the Crossworlds options.
PLATFORMS: PC, SWITCH, SWITCH 2, PS4, PS5, XBOX SERIES
MSRP: $69.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $69.99
In short, playing online you will very soon see how often you will race the same courses a lot and I see it as a weak point in the longevity of Crossworlds because I can see this game being played for way longer because it’s really good. Like quite possibly the best kart racing game I’ve played. I know the term rubber banding comes with negative connotations, but I’ve played a lot of Mario Kart and I never feel challenged by the actual racing portion when playing against AI even on higher speeds/difficulties so to have a kart racer that expects me to learn to be the best driver I can be to remain competitive is a breath of fresh air. Sure, last place will always get more intense and helpful items to keep them competitive but Crossworlds allows smart players in first place to save and use items to dodge certain attacks and there’s a lot of variety in comparison to Mario Kart that has very few options for players to avoid the blue shell. When I win in Crossworlds it feels like an accomplishment because the competition is never far behind.
There’s a wide variety of characters and karts to play as with an in-depth badge system that allows badges to be equipped that compliment your playstyle. I found that because I generally get close to the pack and that other races like to bump me because I mostly play Sonic (a speed character) in a speed vehicle that I am somewhat easy to push around, so I frequently use a badge that gives me a boost every time I run into another racer. I found this aspect far more engaging than the kart customization which is a returning feature from Team Sonic Racing but more compelling. There’s a half-baked friendship meter where you dump the tickets you earn from all modes into characters to earn decals and costumes for them and some titles to unlock but I think more content to customize character looks would be neat but what’s here is fine because there’s still quite a bit of it and having a custom kart to show off online is really neat.
Speaking of online, they do free events where there’s essentially a battle pass that can be completed to earn certain bonuses. For the recent release of Joker (from Persona) they had an event, they also previously did one for Hatsune Miku and the Minecraft DLC. I completed the Hatsune Miku one and it was fun but the lack of tracks sort of wore down my interest in finishing all of them, but they are fun and I at least recommend trying one especially because they are team races (returning from Team Sonic Racing) where bumping into team mates boosts them and the placement of all members as well as a secondary goal that changes every thirty minutes adds up to the final score to determine the winning team. These are wild to play, but for those who want to do standard free for all racing, that’s available online as well. The crossplay works really well too as I played with people all over and never found any real issues. I am extremely impressed with how well online works over extremely different platforms.
I paid over $100 Canadian for this game, and it was worth every penny. I wasn’t sure what to expect with Sonic Team taking over but I’m extremely impressed. I wish there were more courses (especially ones based on other SEGA properties) but there’s still 5 more DLC courses to be released and I’ll be there every time one launches to take part in the accompanying event. My hope is that once this season pass is done, they won’t simply drop the game because their only real competition is still Mario Kart 8 and with the effort this could definitely surpass it as the best kart racer. A lot of love and detail went into every inch of this game, and it shows… It’s just really blurry because I’m moving so fast.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
