Sonic

A fun arcade karting experience is often too chaotic for its own good, but a tight handling model with a high skill ceiling offers surprising depth.

I’ve recently decided to embrace my interests more, so I binned all my old polo shirts that made me look like a lower-middle class wannabe golf pro who works as the manager of a regional carpet store. To replace them I bought a Pac-Man baseball cap and a truckload of image-heavy t-shirts, most of which make references to video games, films, and popular culture. OK, so this sounds like I’ve become the fashion embodiment of Ready Player One, but some of these shirts are pretty nice. Long story short, my daughter wanted me to buy a Sonic the Hedgehog shirt to match her Sonic hoodie. I did. I am a Sonic fan – there, I’ve admitted it!

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds review

A side-effect of this is how popular I am at parties for pre-schoolers – an age group that, it seems, absolutely adores the Blue Blur. A few months back I happened to wear my Sonic t-shirt, completely coincidentally, to a Sonic-themed birthday party, and at points I was more popular than the magician. Kids parties are always a lot, but this one had an extra level of chaos. Not dissimilar, then, to Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, a kart racer that has the unpredictable energy of someone unintentionally wearing themed merch to a five-year-old’s party. To use a phrase that probably died off at least two generations ago: this pops off.

CrossWorlds at its core is as you’d expect a fun-focused kart racer to be: you pick your character and vehicle (cars and hoverboards) to determine your basic stats, such as how strong you are, your top speed, acceleration, and all the rest, and then duke it out over a grand prix of four races alongside 11 other racers. Speed and a good racing line only go so far, with there rarely being more than a few seconds between power-up attacks or on-course obstacles. So far, so kart racer… but one that’s even more unrelenting than the norm with its power-up fueled carnage.

Rivals appear at the start of each race, smack talking in an age-suitable way. | Image credit: SEGA/Eurogamer

More options to shape your vehicle come from purchasable items (using the easily obtained in-game currency) that can be equipped in the customisation menu, plus a load of perk-like gadgets that give you stat boosts or special abilities. While these gadgets are simple at first and your options are limited, you’ll quickly unlock more and be able to equip extra in each race, making them more useful than they initially appear to be. While I found a gadget that gets you going quicker after falling off the track to be quite useful as I was learning the tracks, I ended up focusing more on stat boosts and didn’t tinker too much once I had a set I was happy with.

Classic karting is the core driving style, complete with power-sliding, boosts, slipstreaming, and more, but at points you’ll also transform into planes and boats. Planes are fine as brief moments of respite from the more frenetic grounded racing, but the boat sections are exceedingly flat in comparison. A tweaked boost mechanic while on water sees your craft also hop into the air, which does open up some shortcuts when used correctly, but compared to Mario Kart World’s boat sections this is less dynamic and is almost devoid of thrills.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is visually bright and bold, but it’s rough in places. | Image credit: SEGA/Eurogamer

The CrossWorlds from the title, then, might be the game’s headline feature, but while racing it doesn’t really add all that much to the experience. For the second lap of each three-lap race the leader gets to choose if they want themselves and the entire pack to be teleported (via a large golden ring) to either a specific CrossWorlds track (there are 15 of these that are separate to the core tracks found on the course selector) or a random track, in a left or right choice not dissimilar to the branching course selection in Out Run. There’s no obvious benefit to the leader, here, outside of some minor gains from having a vehicle potentially suited to what’s chosen, and the teleportation is handled in a rather unspectacular way, but it’s a neat enough gimmick and the CrossWorlds are enjoyably more on the novelty end of the course spectrum.

The same mechanic is used in the final of the four grand prix races, with the three laps comprising the trio of courses you’ve raced up to that point, the course changing as you teleport at the end of each lap. I don’t love repeating previous courses to end a grand prix, nor is the course-swapping handled in a particularly unique way, so I found myself zoning out during many of these final races – which cost me a win on a handful of occasions. A rival system, which pits you against a foe for increased rewards, adds some extra spice, but once I’d won each of the grand prix my interest quickly waned.

It’s all good fun, though, with the chaos made more enjoyable when playing against real people – either online or in local four-player split-screen. Multiplayer isn’t limited to grand prix, either, with a slightly oversold Race Park offering a bunch of team-based events that twist the races. One, for example, gives you a speed boost for driving into one of your team mates, another gives bonus points for rings collected, and another only includes the heavy power-ups. Rewards can be earned for performances against the other teams, but this is still essentially a set of custom game modes.

Make your choice over the CrossWorlds track you want to be teleported to. | Image credit: SEGA/Eurogamer

While I’m not bowled over by the Grand Prix mode (which, to be clear, is the key offering here – there’s no open world to explore, or story mode), there is a Time Trial mode complete with ghost racing against the world’s best players. I’m a sucker for these modes, and CrossWorlds offers a very tidy handling model that only really comes clearly into view when you aren’t swearing endlessly due to being knocked off your stride. I appreciate that purely racing for the fastest times isn’t for everyone, and highly likely not a reason most people care about kart racers, but there’s a lot to learn here if you are that way inclined.

Forget about the slower race speeds, though, as they can feel like you’re driving through treacle. Sonic Speed (the third option in most of the modes) and Super Sonic Speed are your only choices in Time Trial, which is fine as they are what I’d recommend you choose if you truly want to feel alive. Combine this speed with some high-level boost controls tied to drifts and tricks, circuit shortcuts, and optimal racing lines and you’ve got everything you’ll need for a jolly good time. Simply put, drifting builds your boost meter, to a maximum level of 3, but you can retain your boost meter while changing directions if you go from one drift directly into another, and also boost via simple tricks performed in the air. To get the best times you’ll need to know when to build a boost and when you use it, and when to take a route that offers trick potential, even if it’s not the most direct path forward.

I really didn’t get on with the on-water sections, finding them dull compared to the rest of the racing, but the flight sequences are fun. | Image credit: SEGA/Eurogamer

Hardcore Sonic fans may wish ill on my Sonic t-shirt for saying this, but I’ve always found the modern soundtracks to be wildly uneven. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds features a broad selection of classic songs which run the gamut from annoyingly catchy pops to almost causing actual damage to my ears. This inelegant mix is true of the visuals, too – the courses are big and bold, but details are rougher than I expected for a game releasing onto modern consoles in their fifth year on the market. Similarly, the aforementioned CrossWorlds portal rings are presented with lower frame rates than the rest of the game runs at, at a lower resolution, and end up feeling hamstrung by needing to function on the now ancient Switch hardware.

A small point, perhaps, but I’m also not enamored with the way all the crossover elements with non-SEGA games are tied to paid DLC. Pac-Man, Minecraft, and SpongeBob Squarepants are all announced, all tied to the Season Pass – racers and tracks. Free updates are coming from SEGA, but thus far that is only said to be new racers, including Joker (Persona), Ichiban Kasuga (Yakuza), and Hatsune Miku (not SEGA-owned but SEGA has developed games using the character). There’s not a shortage of tracks or racers in the core game, but the crossover courses look to be some of the more visually interesting of the entire lot.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds accessibility options

Subtitles,Steering assist, Auto-accelerate, Trick assist

How much you are going to enjoy Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds really depends on what you want from an arcade racing game. If Mario Kart (let’s say World, but all of them work) is Jaws, a refined and lauded take on the shark attack film, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is Under Paris, a more ludicrous entry in the genre that pushes excess without a modicum of restraint. That comparison might feel odd, given Mario Kart World is a rather joyous celebration of kart racing, but CrossWorlds at times feels like you’re playing a proper arcade game, strapped into the hydraulic moving seat, but also having to contend with the wheel being turned by an overly enthusiastic small child. A child that loves Sonic and anyone who happens to be sporting a high-fashion Sonic t-shirt.

A copy of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was provided for review by Sega.

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