Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Review – Speed of Sound

Sonic the Hedgehog may be known for his running speed, but that doesn’t meant that he isn’t afraid to hop into a racing kart and take on some of his best friends and enemies too. The idea of a Sonic racer started with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and was followed by Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, both of which took characters from not only Sonic games, but the wider Sega universe.

Both of these games were very well received, but the more singular Sonic series, focused on Sonic Team Racing that came years later, was a bit of a letdown. Sega is now trying to see if the formula still works with the much better all-around product, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

On the Road Again

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds offers four different speed class variants to choose from, along with an additional special mode that should sound familiar. Normal Speed is the base speed that would be consistent with 50cc in Mario Kart. Next is the 100cc equivalent High Speed, 150cc equivalent Sonic Speed, and the fastest of all, 200cc equivalent Super Sonic Speed. As always in a game like this, it’s wild to ever go back to the lower speeds once you jump to the higher classes. You are limited to the first three options to start, though, as you must win all seven Grand Prix at Sonic Speed to unlock Super Sonic Speed. The alternate option is Mirror Sonic Speed, which is unlocked just by winning all seven Grand Prix for the first time in the game, regardless of difficulty.

Before starting a race, you have to select which racer you want to use from the roster of Sonic characters that includes all of the staples like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Dr. Eggman, Metal Sonic, and plenty more. I appreciated that they even included Sage from the more recent Sonic Frontiers as well. That is not all, though, as there are a few extra versions of Tails, Knuckles, and Amy Rose for getting the Digital Deluxe Edition, and even the Werehog version of Sonic as a pre-order bonus. I was sad to see the Werehog, especially, be locked behind as a pre-order bonus for now, but I’m sure it’ll go up for sale later. There are also a few unlockables in-game, at least, including Super Sonic as a character and an alternate costume for every other base roster racer.

The developers also have a long list of DLC characters announced for the game, with Hatsune Miku and three Minecraft characters already added at this point. Even more are coming from the Persona series, Yakuza series, and Mega Man series, as well as non-gaming franchise characters like SpongeBob and Patrick. The Sonic Racing series really got its start with a crossover-style game, so it’s cool to see plenty of crossover characters being added, even though the main focus was on the Sonic characters in the base game, as it should have been.

Besides picking your racer, choosing your vehicle, or machine as they are called in this game, is very important in the game. The machines are sorted by categories like speed, handling, and such to show which are best at each category, or you can custom-build a machine to tailor to your exact needs. Building a machine involves choosing the front parts, rear parts, and tires, allowing for a lot of mixing and matching. You can also choose the paint and aura colors, add decals, and even set a horn sound. The majority of the custom parts are going to need to be purchased in-game, though, with the in-game currency of Donpa Tickets. I also like that you can choose to use a hoverboard as your machine instead, as a nod to the albeit less than stellar Sonic Riders spin-off series.

Customize Your Advantage

The Gadget Plate is a new mechanic for the series that will unlock even greater use out of your machines than ever before. To start, you have two slots out of six available, where you can equip Gadgets to help you in each race. The Gadgets can take up only one, two, or even three slots in your Gadget Plate, with over 75 different Gadgets to choose from. These greatly vary in what they do, such as Inventory Plus, which lets you hold three items instead of two at a time, Inventory Swap, which lets you choose the item order, and Quick Starter, which gives +10 to all stats during the first lap. Further slots will be unlocked the more races you play in, with you only needing to do around 40 to unlock all six, which shouldn’t take much time at all if you’re playing through all of the Grand Prix races.

Some of the very useful Gadgets that you can equip involve the various items in the game, which you will collect and use quite often during races. Just like in any kart racer like this, there are item boxes littered across each track that you can run into and get a specific item. There are single-item boxes and double-item boxes, or you can get two singles to stack them, unless you get to three with the aforementioned Inventory Plus Gadget. There are 24 total items in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, which are much better than the offerings that were found in Team Sonic Racing. This does not even include the collectible coins found in each track that raise your top speed during any given race.

Each item has a different use in battle, with many of the staple equivalents you come to expect, like the Boost, as well as the weaponized Rocket Punch, Homing Punch, and King Boom Boo that act like a Green Shell, Red Shell, and Blue Shell from Mario Kart, respectively. There are plenty of unique items, though, such as the Slicer that attacks the machines in front of it and cuts it in half while also making them drop an item. A couple of my favorites were the Magnet that draws in machines that drive by it, and the Tornado, which does just as you would imagine. The Shield item was also very cool to get and hold onto for the end of a race when it seems like you are always getting hit with items just when you are about to cross the finish line, as it makes you invulnerable from attacks for a short period of time. I found the item variety in the game to be really impressive, especially since it doesn’t just feel like a clone of other similar racers with the different options available.

Items are not the only way to get an advantage over the competition, as you can use some in-game mechanics to get ahead. You can get a jump on your opponents at the start of each race by timing the start of your engine perfectly. There is a Starting Gauge that fills as you rev your engine, aiming to land in the green area when the timer hits 0. Doing this will give you the fastest boost from the get go, though many of the other racers likely also will pull this off as well.

Drifting is back again, and you can use it to help get a boost within a race by executing it correctly. There is a Drift Charge meter that pops up as soon as you start to drift, with three levels that you can charge up, with each higher level providing a larger boost. There is even a fourth level you can unlock with a specific Gadget as well, to really take advantage of this. You have to be careful when drifting, though, as hitting an obstacle or other racer can mess this up and lose the Drift Charge entirely. Drifting in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds feels fantastic when doing so, as the mix of the Drift Charge meter and the mechanics surrounding it works great.

The Air Trick Charge is also very useful, which comes into play when your kart goes into the air off of a ramp or something. When in midair, you can press any of the directional buttons to do an Air Trick. This will cause you to spin in midair and get a boost based on how many you were able to pull off in midair. The starting boost, drifting, and boosts when in the air are pretty common with games like Sonic Racing and Mario Kart, but they are still always helpful to use if you want to come in first each and every time.

You can definitely see a little inspiration from the Diddy Kong Racing series in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds in how it implements alternate modes of transport besides just cars for certain sections. Within certain stages, you will enter a ring and switch to a plane or a water vehicle for sections specifically designed for those vehicles. This differs from Diddy Kong Racing, where the plane and hovercraft options could be used in the same races as the regular karts, so these sections are actually tailor-made for them specifically.

When flying as a plane, you can move vertically or horizontally with ease and have some different types of obstacles to avoid while in the air. The water segments have you racing atop the water, with this form of the vehicle even having a special ability. When in water form, releasing a charge activates a special Charge Jump that gives you a speed burst. I really enjoyed how well this game mixed the three styles throughout, with each style seeming very unique to the others when used.

Jump to Another World

The game-changing mechanic that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has comes directly from the title of CrossWorlds. While you start each race on the selected track, the person who is in first place at the end of the first lap gets to select one of two CrossWorlds to jump to for the subsequent lap. After playing through lap two, it will then revert back to the original track for the third and final lap. Making this even better is that the worlds you jump to are not just other tracks from the main Grand Prix cups in the game, but rather exclusive CrossWorld tracks that are meant to be played like this or in some other modes like Time Trials.

This is an incredibly innovative idea, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a racer, and it adds almost unlimited replayability, especially when playing with friends. Even with other racing games like this, the track selection can get a little stale after playing the same tracks repeatedly, but this completely flips the traditional idea of a track on its head by splitting into the different CrossWorlds.

Diving into the individual tracks, the designs are varied and a lot of fun to explore in every race. Some of my personal favorites of the main tracks were Wonder Museum, complete with the dinosaur fossils, the Halloween-themed Pumpkin Mansion that is perfect for this time of year, and Metal Harbor with jets and aircraft carriers galore. The CrossWorld tracks may be even better, with standouts like Kraken Bay, Hidden World, Steampunk City, and Galactic Paradise. You really can’t go wrong with any of these tracks, and having them be intermixed with the CrossWorlds takes them to the next level.

Enter the Grand Prix

The main game mode found in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the Grand Prix, which is made up of seven regular cups and three additional cups, the latter two of which are reliant on DLC in the game. Each Grand Prix cup is made up of three races based on three specific stages, while there is also a fourth and final race that will be made up of three laps, with each lap being taken from the three prior races to combine into one three-lap race.

When you start every Grand Prix, you will also be assigned a Rival that will be your biggest competition in the series of races. These Rivals are ranked by level, with the max being level 10. You will start with a level 3 Rival, but you will be asked from there if you want to increase your level and given the option of an alternate rival with the higher level to keep it going for that Grand Prix. Even though they do pick a Rival for you each time, you can just go right into the menu before the start of the Grand Prix to swap to another one. This is very helpful, as managing to beat out your Rival in a Grand Prix will mark them off on the list of overall Rivals, with the goal being to take down all 23 in the game at some point.

Besides coming in first for each race, one of the goals you need to achieve is to obtain all five Red Star Rings that are found throughout the first and third laps of the stage. If you miss them the first time through on lap one, you can have a better idea of where to look for them on the third lap too. These can be gotten in later playthroughs, too, so you don’t have to worry about always getting them at once, either. The only time these do not come into play is the fourth track of each Grand Prix, where the laps are combined from the prior three tracks.

At the end of each race, you are given race rewards in the form of Donpa Tickets depending on three categories: the rank you came in, the amount of time you spent in first place, and how many of the Red Star Rings you collected during the race. For the fourth track, the last reward will be based on beating your Rival instead of the amount of Red Star Rings collected. Donpa Tickets can then be used to purchase machine parts and decals for your vehicles to add some customization into the mix. These tickets can also be used to retry a round if you did not perform as well as you would have liked, at the expense of 20 Donpa Tickets.

Race Park is where things are turned on their head a bit, as it takes the basic racing setup and mixes them up in different race types. There are six options to choose from, along with the option to create a custom match. These include Triple Team Ring Grab where the goal is for three teams to compete to grab the most rings, Triple Team Tap Boost where running into your allies Ricky Bobby style will give you a speed boost, Double Team Shoot-Out where a 6v6 where the goal is to take out the opposing team with weapons, Double Team Dash Panel where a 6v6 race with lots of dash panels, Quick Match where it’s a typical 12 player race, and Extreme Match where it’s a 12 player race with only the “heavy-hitter” items. Besides the basic Grand Prix, these are the ideal multiplayer modes for up to 4 players locally via splitscreen. If facing off against the CPU in single player, though, you can battle an evil cyber version of Team Sonic, where you can unlock special Gadgets and Machine parts for beating them.

Time Trials are available for each of the tracks in the game, though you are limited to Sonic Speed and eventually Super Sonic Speed once it is unlocked. The goal here is to get an A or higher on each and every track, with 40 total as of this point, with the Minecraft DLC already out. This will be increased as more DLC comes out too, so there are going to be plenty of Time Trials to go after here. Getting A ranks in Time Trials will also unlock additional music tracks that you can listen to at your leisure in the game’s Jukebox.

Online play is fairly limited due to a really weird decision by the developer. Friend Match is always available, where you can create or join a lobby and play against friends. However, the other option rotates based on time, with Festival being the current option as of this review. Prior to the Festival, it was just World Match, which is a typical matchmaking mode for the game. This is the only way to do online matchmaking when a Festival is going on now, so World Match is not available at all. Why World Match is not always an option, and why alternate modes are a secondary option, is baffling to me, but be prepared for more seasonal rotations moving forward.

Besides doing the basic tasks of coming in first in every Grand Prix and such, the game also has some challenges for you to work towards obtaining. Challenges vary by game mode and reward you with additional Donpa Tickets and Titles that you can equip. Titles are the nicknames you can set your profile as, which is something I usually don’t care about, but it’s here for those that do.

Verdict

Far from Sonic’s first foray onto the racetrack, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is arguably the best game we’ve seen out of the multiple attempts to date. In fact, I already know I have plenty of game sessions planned with friends in the foreseeable future. Not only does the game nail the core kart racing mechanics that are vital for such a game, but the unique CrossWorlds mechanic is an incredible addition that helps to set it apart from any other racer out there. Despite the botched matchmaking options with online play, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds really stands tall even against the recent Mario Kart World and could become one of the go-to kart racers in all of gaming for the upcoming years.

Score: 9/10

Pros:

• Large roster of racers with more from different series to come
• Core gameplay is top notch
• CrossWorlds mechanic is a game changer
• Tracks are varied and well designed
• Race Park is a blast with friends and solo

Cons:

• Rotating online mode options is a major mistake

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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