Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed – Game Review

Released in 2010, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing was Sega’s response to Mario Kart, and while it never truly met the standard set by the plumber over the years it was neverless a really enjoyable racing game with well designed tracks, a nice character cast and strong gameplay mechanics. Fast forward to November 2012 with Sumo Digital and Sega having released a sequel to the game – Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Coming back to multiple consoles, they have retained many aspects that made the original good and added a few new twists including vehicle transformations to cater to terrain changes. But do these new additions benefit or hinder the experience? Even so can it keep up in a month with a number of racing game releases? Read on to find out my my review of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.

From when game was originally announced it was made clear that they would be altering the racing system. No longer would gamers be limited to the road but can now take to the skies and traverse the seas intermittently throughout a race. While this may be seen as taking a leaf out of Mario Kart 7, I thought this was a nice touch to the game and given their implementation both air and sea segments were some of the more memorable moments in the race and provided you with more room to move around and take out/bypass the other competitors. Despite this, you remain limited to the road for the greater part of the game and while it is a solid system greater use of the other vehicular styles would have been appreciated.

Other than this addition, the gameplay handles similar to the first game which requires you to travel around the track several times all the while drifting, getting ahead of other racers and using an array of items provided to you through item boxes on the field. Many of the weapons and defensive equipment (From automated drones that latch onto your opponents to the ability to unleash a swarm of wasps to a baseball glove which serves as a one-time-use defense tool) are new to this release, and worked well overall. The gameplay itself is solid and what you would expect out of any racing game. It works well with no noticeable issues in my playthroughs.

That being said, all the courses new to this game are well designed and are based of a vast variety of games from the many Sonic the Hedgehog stages to ones based on NiGHTS into Dreams, Jet Set Radio and Samba the Amigo to name a few. They incorporated the three modes of transportation in these well and as something you don’t usually see in a racing game – have each lap of the track different from the previous. This includesd having sections of the track crumble and disappear, being redirected to a previously closed off route to just having more hazards on the track. I can envision (Especially on the easier difficulties) not everyone enjoying the prospect of going around the same track three times so this decision was a nice touch.

Additionally, the game also throws in four returning tracks from the original. I know games like Mario Kart do this to highlight the past tracks from consoles gone by – but considering Transformed is only the second installment in the series and these tracks were not altered to incorporate any of the new features in the game I would have personally preferred to see four additional new tracks added to the mix. That is not to say they are not great tracks but they were less exciting to drive around and they surely could have come up with four further track designs.

So we now know about these tracks…. so how well are they used? As you would expect from any racing game you have a “Grand Prix” mode where you take part in a tournament of four tracks which pit you against other competitors with your goal being to obtain the coveted Gold Trophy. There is also modes which allow you undergo Time Trials and take part in single races – which differ from other games in the medium. However on the single player menu before these is an additional button which is new to this game… World Tour Mode. While in the previous game you began with a set of characters and were able to lock them through points obtained by racing – a sizable number of characters are locked until going through this mode.

World Tour Mode involves “travelling” through branching events which involve anything from normal races to undertaking particular tasks. Depending on the difficulty you will be able to obtain up to three stars which you can use to progress through the events and eventually be able to unlock new characters and other goodies. There is quite a lot of challenge and time to be spent in this mode, but may prove tedious to some – especially those who want quick access to the sizable character roster the game has on offer. The game comes with a handful of difficulty settings, and I think the difficulty is spread over them appropriately although to reach the top tier unlockables you do require harder difficulty settings which will require practice.

For the purposes of this review I only had limited hands-on time with the online functionality, but it was a no-frills experience that provided you had some good rival racers against you proved really fun and challenging with minimal lag. Split-screen multiplayer was also as expected. 

While there are other SEGA series I wouldn’t have minded them digging into a bit more for characters and track inspiration, for the most part Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed is aesthetically pleasing in regards to both with bright and vibrant visuals across the board. The characters are mostly based on Sega series with a few cross-over characters – Avatar (XBox360), Mii (Wii U), Wreck-It-Ralph and so forth, and their overall character and vehicle designs suit them. Stage designs are once again a highlight, with most bringing something unique to the games repertoire of 20 tracks and suiting the series and/or title they are based off well.

Unfortunately the music and voice acting departments dipped down a bit from the previous game. The music was once again well suited to the tracks and by no means bad, but lacked that appeal the music from the previous game had. In addition, while the narration for races were once again present (Throughout the whole race – sometimes annoyingly again), I found the original narrator to be more into the racing and more interesting to listen to if I am going to listen to one at all (Still, this would come down to personal preference).

Overall, while I don’t think the game will have me dedicating as many hours to it as I did the predecessor, Sega and Sumo Digital have produced and published a great racing game that has built upon what worked with the original game and added their own tweaks which I feel worked in their favor. Going into this Christmas season, it looks like Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed may be one of the better racing games to pick up.

Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: N/A
Design: A-
Music/Voice Acting: B-
Gameplay: A-
Replayability: B+
Personal Opinion: A-
Overall Score: A-