Sonic Racing Crossworlds
I like racing games alot, including Kart Racers, Spent countless hours playing Mario Kart games and Crash Team Racing growing up, the genre is easy to enjoy. Nowadays though, I tend to not think much about them, specifically Mario Kart, I'll have fun whenever I happen to be playing an entry, but I've always craved more from the genre.
...Which is why I've always enjoyed Sonic Racing Games more than It's contemporaries. Sonic Riders, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Racing Transformed, and even Team Sonic Racing are and have always been my favorites in the genre, They play like arcade racing games. If Mario Kart has been about delivering a quality experience, than Sonic Racing has been about delivering a thrilling experience.
When Sonic Racing Crossworlds was first announced, I was naturally excited, months pass, and the hype cycle comes and goes, lots of up and downs when It comes to how the game is looking, but I was still optimistic. Then the game comes out, I pick It up, and I became kind of obsessed with It.
This game is really, really good. I have too much to say.
Not without It's flaws, and you could say I'm more than biased considering what I've written so far, But I really do feel positive feelings when playing this game, but has some really, really weird things about It.
Note: This is a long review, and There are quite alot of Images and Videos in this page. The videos are non essential though.
Gameplay
For modes, you have your usuals, a Grand Prix, Time Trials, and Online play, alongside "Race Park" which hosts a bunch of various modes that shake up the racing formula.
The Grand Prix mode is what you'd expect for the most part, though this game shakes things up with the Rival system, you get chosen a Random Racer to be your Rival, with level attached to them. They kind of put all the stops for the Rival racers, you get special interactions with them at the start of the Race, It's very fighting game-esque. For a series with such an infamously large amount of characters, It's nice to see them get the light of day again and interact with eachother, regardless of whether they know eachother or not.
You can also adjust the difficulty levels of the rivals aswell, up to level 10, but man, even at Level 4 they're able to kick your ass. At the higher levels they straight up cheat, I never had played a kart racer where the CPU's actually give me a hard time, but I guess this is the games way of telling you to get good. You can also just lower them to Level 1 and breeze through the GP's, but that's lame, and I like feeling something, so I played every GP with a level 10 Rival, It was rough, getting my ass kicked by Charmy Bee was incredibly embarassing. Still, It was fun to knock out every character to unlock Super Sonic, who is just the god mode of this game, literally immune to every single hazard, so he's I assume he's great for cleaning up in the offline modes, but I never used him. Your other rewards for beating the main Grand Prix cups are Mirror Mode, the Super Sonic Speed class cups (200cc mode), and a skin for Sage thats based on her cyber-corrupted design.
Speaking of the other offline modes, Time Trials and Race Park are pretty fun, and they also kind of kick your ass too. In Time Trials case, It's the time you need to achieve to get an A-Rank, which range from pretty easy, to really hellish, doubly so If you wanna go for an S-Rank, which require TAS levels of precisions, It's insane... But really fun. I don't typically bother with Time Trials in kart racers but Crossworlds gives you the incentive of unlocking music from previous games that are able to be played during the race, so It was something to look forward too as I whittle down the tracks. They brought back Wave Ocean from Sonic 06, so so I was set. If you hear anything music in the footage I show that sounds really unfitting for the stage, It's just me using the music from the time trials, I for one, enjoy the edgiest song ever.
Race Park hosts other team based modes that add objectives to the main race, alongside being where you challenge, Weird AI Sonic character clones, to unlock Vehicles. They're also under the Rival system, if 1 character that's impossible to beat, Imagine 2, 3, or 4 of them, I did actually end up challenging these things with a lower level, I gave in. These are fun enough modes, cool ways of implementing the kart racing battle mode into the main race.
Oh, for some reason there is also the “Friendships” menu, unlocked after beating all the Grand Prix cups as well. You earn “Donpa Tickets” after each race, which are mainly used for buying car parts, but if you really want to, you can also cough up your hard-earned tickets to the Sonic cast. Lovely What you get are titles, decals, and unlocking the aforementioned Weird AI racer skin that correspond to the character your gifting to. The ticket requirements are tame enough at first, but end up to be ludicrously high as you spend more and more, for context, you can get an average of 10-30 tickets in a normal race, and to get all the rewards for a character you need about 50000k tickets. Obviously this is meant to be a long term goal to spend excess tickets on after playing for a long time... but I see a good amount of people in the online lobbies with the titles you get for spending 50000k tickets on a character, and that scares me.
I've been telling my friends that "Vector is my Oshi" cause that's what it feels like. He's the best Sonic character anyways, the decal you get from him is pretty kickass.
This would probably be a proper time to talk about the roster, It's solid, pretty much just every somewhat relevant Sonic character within the past 2 decades or so. This does mark the return of the Babylon Rogues from the Riders game, Jet the Hawk, Wave the Swallow, and Storm the Albatross, I't be more exciting If I didn't find Jet the Hawk to be such a loathesome character. Other than that, this also marks the return of Espio and Charmy after years of just kind of being in the background while Vector actually gets to do stuff, and Newcomers to the Racing games Sage from Sonic Frontiers, a Generic Egg Pawn, and Zazz from Sonic Lost World to tag along with Zavok.
I mainly play as Vector the Crocodile and Sage. Vector has been my favorite Sonic character for aslong as I can remember, and I think Sage is cute, It's funny seeing characters react to the fact that Eggman has a daughter now. Besides than those 2, I also like playing as characters I like I'd never be able to play otherwise, like Espio the Chameleon, Metal Sonic, and Zazz.
...but I also played alot of Hatsune Miku, and also Joker, from Persona 5. While this isn't a Sega All-Stars game proper, It Is still called Crossworlds, so there are naturally gonna be some Sega crossover stuff, which I think people sorely missed from the older Sonic Racing Entries. That said, I'll refrain from talking about these 2 further, because It foreshadows one of biggest gripes I have with this game...
But overall, the offline modes are fun, and surprisingly substantial, there no shortage of things to do and unlock, kind of refreshing, It'd been a long time since I've played a game where you really need to earn stuff In.
Now, for the actual gameplay, Base Driving feels great, Car feels a bit heavy, Drifting feels tight, you have absolute control over your vehicle, and most importantly, It's fast; the same reasons I enjoyed driving in the previous entries, but It feels so much more better in Crossworlds. Flying and Boat sections also control pretty great, if a bit wonky. Flight allows you to control your vehicle up and down, and your able to perform a cyclone that vacuums nearby rings when boosting, When boating your vehicle controls naturally tight turns; but at the cost of not having a drift, but instead a charge jump, which allows you to chain air-tricks afterwards for a big boost, obtain items or boost panels in the air, or even an alternate route that can only be taken by timed charge jump.
I think the gameplay strikes a good balance between accessibility and depth, I love the previous Sonic Racing games because they were satisfying to play but hard to master, but understandably, I had alot of friends who couldn't get down with the gamefeel of Riders or Transformed specifically due to the learning curve. When they played this though, they got a hang of the controls after just a few matches which I thought was pretty awesome. I kind of detest when developers make a new game in a long-running series simpler/easier to try and cater to possible new players, but Sonic Team handled that design philosophy very well.
That said, you still have to, think, and be good at driving. Maybe this is silly, but one of my favorite things about Sonic Racing games is that you have to actually let go of the accelerator sometimes. It's something thats alot more common place in arcade racers in general. but I've seen alot of people get into this game and be unaware of that, this isn't to shame them of course, but It's just interesting as someone who can already intuit when to let go of the accelerator/lay on the brakes even when playing for the first time, purely because of my familiarity with the series. It's just another layer of depth to the gameplay that I enjoy alot. Most of the tracks have atleast one section that sort of "knowledge checks" whether the player knows to slow down or not, I definitely heard the lightbulb go off in my friends heads when they learned how to take turns.
The Vehicles themselves, of which there are 5, Speed, Acceleration, Handling, and Power cars, alongside the return of the Extreme Gear from Sonic Riders being the Boost type, also play a big factor into the controls.
I really like how each type really is innately unique from eachother, aside from their respective stats stats, they also have modifiers to their drift and acceleration which you can very much feel. A speed car drives like a speed car, you can dump as much as you want into the Speed stat for any other vehicle type, but you can't make It feel like a Speed car, If that makes sense, and So on and so forth for each Vehicle type. I play a little bit of everything, but I play Power vehicles the most, Given that maintaining Rings is so crucial in this game, It's fun to knock people around and make them lose rings while not losing them myself; at the cost of having shot handling (which I like anyways.) Occassionally, bumping into someone and slowing them down can steal me a win which is super funny.
On top of that, theres also the Gadget system, Modifiers that you can equip to aid you in the race, You have 6 Gadget slots, with Gadgets themselves either taking up 1, 2, or 3 Slots. Modifier that can affect mechanics such as Ring Gain, Drift charge speed, Items, and Even stats. It's here where alot of this games depth comes from, You can make a build that goes all in on boosts and outpace everyone, or a build that recovers from attacks quicker and ignore everything, or you can make a build that rides on sandbagging and storing good items until the end, because you hate everyone and yourself.
You can also equip the Gadget that starts you off with the Monster Truck Item, You'll lose, but with the added benefit of becoming public enemy number one.
Somehow, there is player expression in a Kart racer, there are naturally gonna be "Meta" Gadget builds, but you don't need to use them to succeed in a race, anyone can just run anything that suits their playstyle, I personally like to use more "balanced" builds and succeed pretty well, but I'm always experimenting and just seeing what works and whats fun, the Gadget system really appeals to the Fighting game Lab Monster in me, lol.
I made a video that showcases some of the builds I like to use, because It's stuff like this in games that makes my mind run wild.
With gameplay out of the way, I can finally talk about the reaaaally cool main gimmick, the Crossworlds.
At the end of Lap 1, the racers are met with 2 Travel Rings, with whoever in 1st being able to choose the racetrack that replaces the 2nd Lap: 1 option being a dedicated Crossworld track, or winging It and choosing the random select, which can be any Crossworlds or main track.
I'm very impressed at how they handled the Crossworld mechanic, It compliments the flow of the race super well, and adds an extra layer of excitement to each race. No two races will ever truly be the same, It keeps everyone on their toes when the Crossworld gets selected, and so much chaos ensues because jesus, people online really wanna be the one to pick the Crossworld.
Picking a Crossworld is so innately satisfying, very video game-y It's awesome. On top of that, travel rings can occassionally have a "Frenzy Time" Icon hovering above It, adding modifiers to the race, such as infinite boost items, incredibly fast drift charges, or adding an absurd amount of boost panels to the track.
I like to steal the Crossworld selection from others whenever possible, My favorite Crossworlds could be hell for someone else, but even If whoever was in 1st was gonna pick a Crossworld I like, I'll deliberately go and pick the other one just to mess with them.
This mechanic is too much fun.
Compared to the main tracks, dedicated Crossworlds are also designed differently, they're linear; as in they have a beginning and end point instead of looping, and have alot more obstacles. I was pretty skeptical of the design based on pre-release footage; alot of the Crossworlds looked like straight lines (they still kind of are), but It actually works really well. It's like they were meant to be mastered and blazed through, It's so satisfying to just rip through a Crossworld like It's nothing and keep that momentum in the Final Lap.
Tracks
Sonic Team remembered that there are more worlds in the Sonic Franchise beyond like, 5, If your unfamiliar, previous entries based Sonic tracks on just a few setpieces, so there was not much in the way of variety or memorability. Here though, they don't adhere to such a rule, while a few tracks have been brought back, like Ocean view, Market Street, Galactic Parade, And Sand/Sky/Roulette Road, theres now alot more variety.
I was really happy to see the return of stages from previous Sonic games reimagined here, Radical Highway and Metal Harbor from Adventure 2, Sweet Mountain from Colors, the grand return of Apotos, Holoska, and Dragon Road from Unleashed, alongiside more deeper cuts such as Dinosaur Jungle and Kraken Bay from Secret Rings, White Cave from Riders, and even Hidden World from Lost World. There's even a whole "secret" cup dedicated to the 3 most recent Sonic titles, Using Kronos Island from Frontiers (Alongside a Cyber Space Crossworld), Northstar Islands from Superstars, and White Space from Shadow Generations. Oh, and Mystic Jungle from Forces is here, I guess.
Also, They actually made completely new tracks based on original setpieces aswell, which fill up the rest of the stage list. I like them alot, It's a little glimpse into Sonic's world that would probably never be seen otherwise. Mundane locales like Wonder Museum, Colorful Mall, and Chao Park; or more extravagant places like Golden Temple, Steampunk City, and Coral Town. locations that would exist in this world, but would probably never be playable in a main game. It's just nice to see some more worldbuilding in this series, from a Racing game spin-off of all things.
A neat thing is that the Main tracks are generally more modest, and take place in the present day, while the Crossworlds are more "out there", with some of them implied to be simulations or different dimensions. Just a design choice to really sell the "Crossworlds" aspect.
My favorite tracks are Wonder Museum, White Space, Eggman Expo, and Radical Highway, Favorite Crossworlds being Hidden World, Golden Temple, Cyber Space, and Steampunk City. They all contain Aesthetics I like, and good track design.
I actually think compared to previous entries, the actual track designs are a bit compromised; alot simpler, shorter, and even more confined than they used to be, and as I said, Crossworlds are kind of glorified straight-lines, but despite that, It's a compromise that allows the game to flow nicely. Main tracks test you on taking turns, item usage, and shortcut usage, While Crossworlds will test you on ability to adapt, and avoid obstacles, with the 3rd Lap returning you to the main track, but adding more in the way of items, boost panels, or even layout changes.
Not only that, the way tracks are designed in this game also have a hand in just, teaching you things, and this is where I gush again.
There is a lot of decision making in this game, within of every track, there is going to be a clear dichotomy, trichotomy, or even a quadripartition of paths and lines to take, of which you will have to evaluate the worth of. These generally involve
Rings, Items, Boosts, or Shortcuts, and whichever option seems the most worth it can depend on current placing, gadgets, items, etc, and can also be dependant on player skill aswell. I think I'm hyping this up as something more than It really Is, It's ultimately nothing too complex; but It's just another thing put on my mental stack when playing, and Is something you can't ignore once you see It, again, appeals to my Fighting Game side.
Another Video I made to show what I mean. (Maybe I made It too verbose, though)
My only real gripe with the stage selection is a matter of what they chose to represent past games, I'm glad that they acknowledged Unleashed, but I'm not sure If It really needed 4 tracks for Itself.Theres also the odd lack of anything pre-Sonic Adventure 2, Nothing from Sonic Adventure 1, or any of the classic games, I guess Northstar Islands technically counts as a stage from the classic era, but that feels like a cop out. Despite this game marking the grand return of the Extreme Gear Boards and the Babylon Rogues, theres only one Riders stage in White Cave. Why Sonic Team is so hesitant about acknowledging certain games is beyond me.
This would also be a good time to talk about the music in this game, opinions on it seem to be pretty mixed, and I think I'm also of of that opinion, despite not thinking any of the music is bad perse. The music varies between more traditionally sounding "Sonic" music, and EDM, which seems to be the main point of contention.
The EDM tracks are honestly pretty sick, they had collab musicians on board to create all of them, If your at all familiar with Rhythm Games, then Camellia probably rings a bell, alongside others like TORIENA and Laur. I'm kind of under the impression that they let them do their thing when It came to remixing tracks from older games, and It makes for some pretty sick themes. Sand Road,Kronos Island alongside It's Final Lap, and Hidden World are some of my favorite music tracks.
For the more traditional sounding tracks, they either reach greats highs or great lows, You can get some great tracks like Wonder Museum, Eggman Expo, Golden Temple, and Cyber Space, or you can get what I think are pretty "meh" tracks like Crystal Mine, Mystic Jungle, Dinosaur Jungle, and Water Palace. Of course, all just my opinions, but the tracks that I really like seem to be on the more exciting and "punchier" side while the ones i dislike just, don't feel that way.
This is also nothing to say about the Final Lap arrangements, which are faster, more energetic, and even have a crowd chanting in the background, some people think It's annoying, but I think It can elevate the energy of a race alot.
Customization
This game has, alot of customizability with It's Vehicles, I had way too much fun. Way too much.
You can make custom vehicles using the Front, Back, and Tires of the default vehicles withing their respective types, you can also change the paint job, the material texture, give your car a different horn, an aura, stick decals... It's alot, gripes are that you can't stack decals, because you know exactly what people would do if they had that power, and the border of decals just feels too big, so you can't put them as close to eachother as you'd like, at the very least, they display a UV map on the top right, but It's also quite hard to fine-tune the placement of decals. Nonetheless I had so much fun just making Vehicles that are to my own tastes and aesthetics, alongside stuff based on other things. Enjoy my Itasha showroom.
I main Power Vehicles, so this is what I usually rock when I play online, Isn't It Lovely.
Here are my other Lovely vehicles for the other types. The Persona 5 decals having the Velvet Room icon is kind of perfect for me, and Thank you Hatsune Miku collab for letting me add a Megurine Luka decal on all my vehicles.
I Just Really Like Pink Hair Girls.
And a bunch of Vehicles based on other characters...
Even with the limits in place, you still can do alot with car customization, I already mentioned seeing Kirby cars online, but I also see alot of the Mach 5 from Speed Racer, Dreamcasts, and a whole lot of Crrrraaaazy Taxis
and other cars I liked or got a kick out of.
The best part about all this is that you can just run whatever, fine-tuning a car to have the best stats is just not something you really need to do, or something that people do at all. Play whatever character, and make a car that you think looks cool and your golden. Gadgets have more of a play in success but as I said earlier, you can just run whatever build you like and get results- If you care about results at all.
Online
Where I naturally spent far too many hours in.
There are only 2 modes available, World Match, and Friend Match, with a 3rd Mode, Festivals, being available during certain event periods. I haven't really been able to touch Friend Matches, but It's just the option to make a private lobby and invite specific people for free races, or race park modes.
World Match is just the standard online racing mode, race people, points go up, and points go down, the main incentive for playing World Match is have a means of getting tickets, and to unlock the all of the Gadgets, which doesn't take very long whether you place high or low. After that, points are just for queueing up with higher ranked players, bragging rights and unlocking Auras. It's a barebones mode, but It doesn't really need to be anything more than that. Also, theres crossplay among all the major platforms and also Epic Games, so theres never a shortage of people to play against, you can also squad up with 4 friends and queue up together which is nice, though the average ranking of a lobby can't really aggregate to players with 2 vastly different ranks, which can suck for the player with the lower rank.
...the people online are out for blood, if Mario Kart is Chaotic, then Crossworlds is Cutthroat. Win by all means neccessary, So much happens in these races, It's insane. but I really do enjoy the Gameflow for an online match, even if Flow is a vague descriptor. To describe It the best I can...
1st Lap feels almost prelimanary to the race as a whole, this is mainly to get your bearings straight with the track, though of course, race to the best of your abilities, as this is the best time to collect rings or items, and If your Frontrunning, you may be able to choose the Crossworld, a Crossworld you enjoy may be some elses worst nightmare.
2nd Lap is where things really start to heat up, If a Dedicated Crossworld was selected, you will be met with a linear and confined space, with many obstructions, and not much in the way of shortcuts, If any at all. If a main track happens to be chosen as a Crossworld, then you have less of a mental stack to face, though regardless, adaptation is key. Dodge obstacles the best you can, block items the best you can, you can tank hits and still maintain momentum for the 3rd Lap, but If your able to drive flawlessly, you've sealed a good outlook for the 3rd Lap
3rd Lap is "all or nothing", the Track main track has changed, and everyone is out for blood. If your are in the Frontrunning, Drive well, and Survive, especially If your 1st, hopefully you have a boost or defensive item stowed away. If you are lagging in the pack, roll good items, take every shortcut if possible, and screw someone over near the end.
The Final stretch can be a sunday drive, or where everything falls apart. You may or may not get screwed over at the last second, as is the nature with these kinds of games. Regardless of placement, you'll probably queue up again. Everyone does.
It's a very interesting balance of genuine skill, and kart racing fate, there are races where you will win with mostly Player skill, and races where You'll win by getting lucky with items at the last second... But also races where you can win with both, by getting good items at the end of the pack and playing well enough to get to the higher placings, and pop them all at the end to protect yourself, or winning by taking advantage of your Gadget loadouts potential, etc etc. I have to assume that everyones win rate moreso leans on bottom 6 finishes than top 6 honestly. That said, I feel like no matter what, you can always make some sort of comeback most of the time, due to the design of this game, everyone is sort of within the same "pack", even if your in 10th or something, you are still quite close to the player in 1st all things considered, I think I demonstrated that in the Gadget video, but just something to mention anyways.
I don't care much about the Ranked grind™ but moreso just find the game formula that enjoyable, experimenting with Gadget builds is really, really enjoyable for me. If I win, It's a bonus, and shows me the potential of that build, If I lose, than maybe it sucks, or I suck, and If I lose via items at the last second, then this image pops up in my head, and I move on. Item balance could be tweaked a bit, some of them are absolutely evil, mainly the Slicer, and the Slime item. Ultimately I don't take online too seriously, but It's nice to give myself a competitive kick without very high stakes.
Also, Frontrunning is really, really fun, While of course your the most prone player on the track while first, I really don't think It's as bad as people say. Aslong as you believe in yourself.
Some good races I got.
There is something to be said about how addictive this game can get, which very much ties into the arcade racer influence. Bright colors, extreme effects, blaring noises, volume, aforementioned gameflow, the kind of thing that would catch your eye in an arcade setting, but at home instead. Races are just the perfect length to make you go "damn, maybe one more race" (it was not one more.) This would be a good time to mention the fact that alot of the people who developed this game are also a part of Sega's arcade division, notably the developers of the Initial D racing games, and the devlopers of Rhythm Games maimai and CHUNITHM.
It actually kind of blew my mind at how much influence arcade games had on this.
Reading this the first time after playing made me go "dang, they really pulled all the stops for this" and It very much shows. It was recently discovered the the cars in this game have a hidden gearshift mechanic which blew my mind further.
The effort put into this game paid off pretty well I'd say, It seems that alot of people bought and hype up this game, me included of course, I have almost nothing truly bad to say about this game, but with the success of this game comes, alot of weird things.
Sega Crossovers
I can finally talk about Hatsune Miku and Joker after foreshadowing them in the first section. Cool additions, very happy to see the return of Sonic Racing games also having other Sega character in them again, Hatsune Miku's design in this game is very cute, and has done irreperable things to my psyche, she ended up being my most played character, I'm sorry Vector. Joker is here too, It's funny, I don't really care about him otherwise, but It's only him and Miku for non Sonic Sega reps, so I played as him alot anyways, after all these years, they made me actually enjoy playing as him, Atlus won. Revealed alongside them is Ichiban Kasuga from Yakuza/Like a Dragon, now thats a character I'm excited to play as.
Sega is doing the Free DLC thing where they drop a Sega character once every month or so, which I'm "eh" about, but It's free, and I guess It builds hype for them. I can't really complain ultimately, It's a Sonic Racing Game that just happens to also have other Sega characters In It, rather than a Sega All-Stars game. Current DLC practices in video games kind of bother me, but this is inoffensive.
NiGHT's alongside AiAi from Super Monkey Ball were essentially shadow revealed, With NiGHT's literally being on the back of the box art, and both of their Vehicles being in a trailer for the game. Not really surprising considering the 2 of them are always in Sega crossovers, seriously though, where Is NiGHT's, I miss them.
Aside from the character and vehicle, they also come with a Festival event, that mode I mentioned earlier but didn't explain. Over the course of a weekend World Match will be disabled and in It's place is a mode that is exclusively playing the team modes from Race Park, among others unique to Festivals; If your familiar at all with Splatoon, It's kind of like Splatfests. You get randomly picked a team based on one of the character from that Series and try the best you can to cooperate with others and Win and get points for items in whats essentially a battle pass.
I only was able to play the Miku festival with friends, It was really fun to rock Miku in the car that just looks like a hummer, there was only 3 of us, the 4th one in this capture was just a random who understood the objective.
It's a nice change of pace from just racing with no end goal in sight, and these objectives can be fun. Getting decals that are just official art is pretty sick too, I already showed how my vehicles have Megurine Luka decals on them, but something about getting the Hatsune Miku art felt really satisfying.
FOMO content is kind of lame though, It's not the end of the world for people if they can't get a decal of the Kagamine Twins or whatever, or not getting a title that shows you participated in the Persona 5 festival, but you do get a Gadget at a certain point in the pass, something that actually affects gameplay. They've stated that some of these rewards will be available again at some point in the future, but regardless of whether that means a festival rerun, or just giving you the items, It's undoutably just kind of lame that some people are just out of luck if they didn't play for one weekend during the month, or if they bought the game after the event ended.
Also lame is that World Match is disabled during the event period, I like Festivals, but I don't really wanna grind tickets after I get all of the collab items. Granted, I'd just put down the game and do something else after, but I can imagine people just wanna hop on World Match after getting everything from the event, or people who don't care for the event at all, and just wanna get on the grind.
You can also exploit the objectives of these events aswell and just scam yourself into a win without particularly trying, stuff like driving around in circles and collecting rings while everyone else races and focuses on the objective naturally. They can get last place, but have their teammates rank well, and win purely because they got an ungodly number of rings from just, not racing, It's not cheating, It's just uncouth. People do this cause they really wanna get those Top 1000/100/10 titles, I've definitely no-lifed games before, but I don't get why people can get so obsessed over something like a title, and doing everything they can to get It.
Overall though Festivals are cool, problems need to be addressed, but It's nice way to change things up and also make the crossovers feel more grand.
What would make these Crossover feel even more grand is if these guys could talk!
Yeah, aside from Hatsune Miku, Joker and Ichiban don't have voice lines. Joker vocalizes completely in Persona 5 Menu Sound effects and Ichiban just doesn't say anything at all, you just get the announcer saying "GOOD!" or "AW!" depending on your placement. Not really that mad about it or anything, but It's just really, really lame. Sega did acknowledge this and state...
This feels like a cop-out though, even, ultimately, these are still characters the company owns and has the rights for to varying extents, while I do get that even internally there's still a lengthy back and forth approval process to make sure everything is "correct" about a characters appearance outside of their source, but like, even If It's arduous, or expensive, couldn't Sega have just, done It anyways? Regardless of how the Sonic series performs, Sega still is a multi-billion dollar company at the end of they day, so It's just egregious that they didn't want to get voices for the Crossover characters they already own.
I don't think anyone would mind If the DLC didn't have Rival dialogue for racing and interacting against every single Sonic character- I'm sure nobody would care if Ichiban had nothing to say about meeting Blaze the Cat. The bare minimum of generic lines when being selected and racing probably would've been enough for alot of people, but they didn't do that. These don't wholly feel like Crossover character moreso they feel like Crossover skins. If It were up to me, the Sega characters would just have their generic lines during character selection, racing, and victories, and maybe have interactions with a select few of the main Sonic cast, or other Sega characters, that's just me though.
Again, I'm not really that mad at all, I can certainly live with this, and It does not detract from the main experience, hell, Hatsune Miku is my most played character, and I played alot of Joker aswell, so maybe that was all for nothing If I'm still enjoying these character inclusions at the end of the day, It's just, annoying.
Would've also been nice to have race tracks for each Sega racer aswell, whether It be a full track or a Crossworld. The Sega tracks were the highlight of Transformed, super fun, and super fanservice-y, so It does blow that there nothing of the sort here, I'd have no idea what you'd do with Miku, but a track based on a Palace or Mementos from Persona 5, and Kamurocho for Yakuza would've been sick. I'm not the kind of person to speculate, but there Is code for 2 unused cups in this games files both called "Sega GP1" and "Sega GP2", So I can hold on to a bit of hope from that.
Naturally I'm gonna have my own wants for Sega reps; My defaults being Akira from Virtua Fighter (likely), Ryo from Shenmue(maybe), and Billy Hatcher(lol). For characters that had never been in a Sega Racing title before, Aigis and Narukami from Persona would be nice, Arle & Carbuncle from Puyo aswell.
...More music tracks for these characters would also be nice, Miku got like, 5 original songs for this game, but Joker only got 2 tracks in Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out there and Take Over, Nobody told me we moved on from Last Surprise.
Voice and Tracks or not, It will still be nice to get a Sega character in an update every once in a while, they could've paywalled them but they didn't... They reserved that for, other characters.
The Other Crossovers
Games good, It's also $70, though I paid $55 for it via a key site and convinced a few of my friends to do the same. Would've I bought It for $70? Probably, while it's an absolutely steep price, you just have to be very conscious about buying a game at that price. I already have a history of enjoying Sonic racing games, liked what I saw of pre-release, and played the open beta and had a fun time, I really liked It, and wanted to experience the full package. My purchase of this game was worth it to me, but the full price tag makes It a bit hard to reccomend.
..and on top of that, theres $30 DLC season pass, per DLC drop, you get Multiple characters, a vehicle, and a full race track, the monkeys paw is that Steve from Minecraft and Spongebob are here now.
It's not a modern AAA video game without DLC, I've accepted that, I just didn't think Spongebob and Patrick would be in a Sonic game. Maybe I'm being a little dramatic, because, honestly, this does not bother me all that much, Just weird.
It's sort of one of the big discussion points when It comes to this game, that Minecraft and a bunch of Nickelodeon characters are playable in this game, alongside Pac-Man and Mega-Man, which are considered the DLC that make sense. I agree that If the pass didn't have the Nickelodeon stuff, and was just other Video Game IPs the DLC would've been a non-issue even aside from the pricing. But due to the Sonic movies being such a hit, there was the oppurtunity for Paramount Brand Synergy™ in getting not only Spongebob, but also TMNT and Avatar for the DLC aswell.
Alot of people detest Minecraft, and the Nickelodeon stuff, I get why, while I don't really mind them myself, It does just display my distaste of weird crossovers, that this is as much DLC as it is just an advertisement for non video game stuff. But half this pass isn't supposed to appeal to me, It's to appeal to children to happen to like Sonic, and also Spongebob and Minecraft, and also to get a bit of that "Meme Value." Also the Minecraft character vocalize with, Minecraft sound effects, and everyone else still doesn't seem to talk, but I've talked enough about voice stuff.
Does stuff like this in a Sonic Racing game feel kind of like compromised art? It's a strong term yeah, but I think I'd say so. Can I still see the fun in this? also yeah, I can show my general distaste, but I don't like to wallow In It. Plus, I have DLC unlocker for Steam, so I got to enjoy the DLC without spending a single cent, cool.
Currently, Only the Minecraft content is available in the game. As blasphemous It may sound, Minecraft was not something I really played growing up, I played It for a summer with friends during high school, all I did was dig and build very basic houses while my friends were seemingly in the phases of starting the industrial revolution in our server, so I assume I nothing clicked with me. Anyways, the Minecraft Track in Crossworlds is really fun, Oddly enough, It's the track thats most reminiscent of how tracks from Racing Transformed were designed. They seemed to put alot of effort into this track, which I admire. I also played too many games as the Creeper, I find It oddly endearing.
My DLC unlocker also unlocked the Spongebob content early, offline only, but I did like playing as Spongebob, and the Bikini Bottom track is cute, I like the music, nostalgic.
The Pac-Man and Mega Man DLC I'm pretty excited for, pretty sick that they acknowledge the fact they were in other racing games aswell, Pac-Man's car being from Ridge Racer V, and Mega Man's being the Rush Roadstar from Mega Man Battle & Chase. I wonder how much influence Smash Ultimate had on the DLC choices, this would be the 2nd time them, Sonic, Steve, and Joker have been In a game together, funny.
I don't care about TMNT or Avatar much, sorry.
DLC is neat when I stop thinking about it too deeply, but I didn't pay $30 for it, and I think alot of peoples issues with It are still valid. People say you don't have to buy It, but just cause you don't have to buy doesn't make It any less of a gripe.
Oh, and I didn't even mention the actual product placement, honestly this makes me a little bit more mad than anything else I've mentioned, lol. Just in case you wanted to slap an Alienware or Samsung decal on your Minecart. It's the advertisement thing I mentioned earlier, but literal.
Closing
This is probably the longest page I've ever written, and It's for a Sonic Racing Game. A bit embarassing, but It's been a long time since a game had really hooked me this hard, I feel I don't even play many Video Games anymore. It's great in spite of the crossover, product placement weirdness, and pricepoint.
If It wasn't obvious, I like Sonic alot, If this game being good means anything, I have to wonder what the future holds for this franchise.
Kind of reads like a huge advertisement huh, but It was all just for my own enjoyment. I don't care if you buy this game or not, but If you do, then I hope you see In It what I see.
Thanks for reading