If you’ve heard of Mario Kart you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing is like; a mass of Sega mascot characters racing around absurd locals and hurling items at each other to race for first place. Developed by European developer, Sumo Digital, known for developing Sega Superstars Tennis and porting Outrun 2 to consoles, Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing attempts to correct the problems that Mario Kart had while providing it’s own additions to change up the character kart racer genre. But as a result, the game fails to address some of the major problems with character based racers in general, as well as its own problems.
Concept
Obviously with a name like Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing (You get a special prize if you count how many times that name is brought up in this review) there is a major pull of Sonic characters in the mix, along with an odd assortment of somewhat recognizable Sega characters. Each character also hosts their own ‘All Star Move’ which a player can use to make a comeback during a race as characters perform a signature move to advance ahead of the competition easily. Chances are that Sega fans will cry fowl of the omission of certain other Sega franchises, such as Phantasy Star and doesn’t even cover any of Sega’s racing games such as Daytona USA or Sega Rally. But even to the casual gamer, the Sega stars featured are probably going to have a hard time standing out just because of how noteworthy they are. Franchises like Shenmue, Crazy Taxi and Super Monkey Ball are going to get some notice, but who is going to remember the likes of Billy Hatcher, Alex Kidd or even the characters from the Japan only House of the Dead EX? In addition, the 24 courses in the game fail to match the diverse line up of the mascots as levels carry themes from only six different games.
Graphics
All the characters and locations in the game are fairly well represented, with a few small problems. Each game represented features locations and characters lifted directly from them. As a result, certain characters will vary in scale and detail. At worst, characters will appear as if they’re floating above their vehicle as they leap and flail in the air and still perfectly align with their car.
Sound
Sonic and Sega All Stars racing foregoes any original music in the game in favor of a fine list of Sega music spanning across the late nineties and early 2000’s. Mostly featuring tunes from a number of games during and after the Dreamcast era of gaming. If you loved the music from the games represented, Sumo has done a fine job collecting appropriate and fan favorite songs to accompany the racing motif of the game. The songs that round out the package in the game’s menu’s consist of some fairly average techno music that’s not very catchy or noteworthy.
Playability
Controlling your vehicle works the same as just about every kart racer out there. You accelerate, drift around corners and fire weapons. The All Star Moves which allows each character a specific action that allows players to help catch up to the competition or break away from a pack of racers. Not everyone’s All Star moves are as effective as others. The ones that pull head of the competition the fastest have a better advantage over ones that are designed to shake up the pack and fail to catch up to the lead. Power sliding in the game carry the same Mario Kart tradition of allowing racers to boost. The longer the drift is held, the more powerful the boost. Mastering the power slide technique is a MUST in order to stay ahead of the other racers, and learning how to constantly chain together boosts is imperative to win against other players. Most players who start out are more likely just to turn without making use of the drift button, and they’ll turn at the same radius as the other player who is executing a drift. The real deal breaker is the existence of snaking, or getting boosts by drifting on straight stretches of road as made popular in Mario Kart DS. While drifting, a player can pull against the turn, get a high level boost, then switch directions, pull against the turn, execute a high level boost and so on. Another unique addition is the use of tricks after making your vehicle leap in the air to get a turbo boost. If you attempt to pull off a trick too soon after you land on the ground, you’ll interrupt your chance of getting a boost. This feature is a bit problematic since certain character’s trick animations take longer to execute against others. Otherwise, you’re hunting down capsules to retrieve one of the regular items that tie in very little with Sega’s games. Sometimes these items prove to not be very effective against others, as they’ll only slow rivals down or break them from their drift, allowing them to recover quickly and get back in the race. Some items will also blur the screen with a flurry of colors or rotate the screen upside down. These items prove to be the least effective to those who can easily adjust themselves through these minor hindrances.
The one problem out of all of this is that some characters have a better chance of performing better in a race than others. Certain characters are able to get power slide boosts much quicker than others, as well as perform trick animations much quicker than others, most notably the lightweight characters. This makes the heavyweight characters less effective to use due to their slow boost ratings, low acceleration and slow trick animations. In addition,. It doesn’t help matters that the game has a pretty steep learning curve. Certain tracks can become hard to follow, especially without an on-screen map, and the CPU can be pretty unforgiving with the items or All Star moves they use against players.
Replay Value
Even if you don’t get invested in the multiplayer options, theres a fair amount of Single Player content to hold you over. Besides the main Grand Prix mode comes a Time Attack mode complete with leader boards and allows you to download ghost data from the top racers. The game also comes a Mission mode that tests your ability to drift, boost, use items or staying ahead of the other racers.
Local multiplayer options feature a number of gameplay modes aside from racing including a battle mode akin to Mario Kart along with variations on those game types such as Capture the Chao (Or Flag) Tag, King of the Hill and Knockout.
Most versions of the game also feature an online mode for up to 8 players which works fairly well. But the features are surprisingly lacking, as none of the multiplayer modes in local multiplayer (Outside of racing) are available. All Star move items are also not available, which makes catching up for novice players very difficult. Match setup is also cumbersome and unintuitive for a number of reasons. The game room browser is unable to scroll through available matches if there are more than 10 games going on. Only the host can set up race specifications and choose the tracks, and the game disallows players to pick the same character causing users to scramble for overpowered or even favorite characters. Players wanting to flaunt their win/loss record will feel remise as the game does not keep track of that information.
Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 owners can also get access to a trifle amount of Downloadable Content. Unfortunately the amount of content available to download is small. Plus, the only DLC for sale thats not located on the disc costs an absurd amount of money. That being the Metal Sonic character with one level: Death Egg Zone that costs about $8. It’s also rumored that no additional content is planned for release as the developer has already moved onto a new project.
Bottom Line