Sonic may not need a car to get around, but a hedgehog has to rest his feet from time to time, and Sega's mascot has amassed a fairly hearty collection of racing games over the years. While most of these racers have struggled to escape the shadow of a certain mustachioed rival's racing efforts, a few have managed to stand on their own and carve out respectable fanbases. Now, only a few months after the big release of Mario Kart World, the blue guy is also hitting the asphalt again in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.
Is this one of Sonic's more successful turns behind the wheel? Or is Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds an easy one to cross off your list? Read on to get up to speed...
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds mostly sticks to the modern mascot-racer formula, with vehicles that seamlessly transform whether they're on land, water, or in the air, a large collection of different items to frustrate your opponents with, and a focus on earning boosts by drifting around corners and doing tricks.
Past Sonic kart racers differentiated themselves a bit by offering somewhat more realistic driving physics, but that largely goes out the window with CrossWorlds. This game’s vehicles don’t feel like they have much weight or momentum as you take corners, with even Mario Kart's vehicles feeling like they have more inertia. To be clear, Sonic Racing: CrossWorld's controls are perfectly responsive; they're just very arcade-y and can take some time to get used to. Thankfully, the game still delivers a proper Sonic-like sense of speed, with even races played on standard middle-of-the-road speed settings feeling pretty peppy.
Players also have some new freedom to customize their rides and abilities (yes, characters and vehicles are now chosen separately). Prior to races, players can mix and match vehicle parts and a variety of "gadgets" that offer an array of buffs. The latter goes deeper than the former, as there are a fairly limited number of vehicle parts, but around 70 gadgets that can alter your racing experience in sometimes rather novel ways.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorld's array of items are very derivative of recent Mario Karts -- the red and green boxing gloves are just Red and Green Shells, the Blue Wisp is a Mushroom, the drill-like Yellow Wisp is a Bullet Bill, and so on. But hey, Mario Kart's items are generally pretty fun and well-balanced, so, by extension, this game's items are also pretty fun and well-balanced. While you will get those occasional moments when a sure victory is snatched away mere feet from the finish line, I didn't find CrossWorld’s weapons too overbearing.
Much like Mario Kart World before it, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is somewhat fixated on changing the way individual races and Grand Prix cups are constructed. After completing the first lap of a race, whoever is in first chooses between two Travel Ring portals, upon which all racers jump to a CrossWorld track with a totally different theme for the second lap. Sometimes, these CrossWorlds will even have a Frenzy modifier attached, which may make the lap more difficult, or simply more intense, by doing things like flooding the course with warp rings. For the third lap, you return to your original course, although you’ll find it's now been modified with new hazards, shortcuts, and other changes. Each Grand Prix offers three unique courses, with the fourth race consisting of a single lap from the previous three races smashed together.
The CrossWorld gimmick is a neat-enough trick (albeit one that’s pretty much directly lifted from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart) and it does introduce some unpredictability to races. That said, while there are 24 regular tracks in the game, there are only 15 CrossWorlds, and in my experience, certain ones came up more often than others to the point they become a bit over-familiar.
Speaking of over-familiar, there’s no getting around the fact that Sonic Team was doing some heavy cribbing from Nintendo, particularly Mario Kart 8, when designing this game’s courses. While Sonic Racing: CrossWorld's tracks are perhaps a bit narrower, their loopy, gravity-defying designs are very Mario Kart 8, and many of the themes feel almost directly copy-pasted — here's the treetop track, here's the spooky track, here's the dinosaur track, and so on. It's honestly a bit shameless and makes Sega's decision to revive their old "Genesis does what Nintendon't" era marketing tactics for CrossWorlds a bit questionable. More like Sega does what Nintendid a decade ago, amirite?
That said, all snark aside, while they're a bit obvious in their inspiration, Sonic Racing: CrossWorld's courses aren't bad. Quite the opposite, really. Mario Kart 8 is a great game, so it's a good source to take notes from. CrossWorld's tracks are intense, sometimes trippy, and fairly visually impressive (a move to Unreal Engine 5 mostly pays off, with only occasional stutters when approaching Travel Rings on PS5). In fact, I’d wager some of the folks disappointed by the more open and breezy approach of Mario Kart World may appreciate these Mario-Kart-8-flavored courses, particularly when combined with CrossWorld’s amped-up sense of speed. Ironically, Sega is offering an alternative to Nintendo by cribbing from Nintendo's own past.
Unfortunately, while Sonic keeps pace with Mario pretty well when it comes to on-road action, CrossWorlds lags behind pretty badly when it comes to content and ways to play. Unlike many earlier Sonic racers, there's no story mode here, with Grand Prix being pretty much your only single-player option. With only 8 cups available at launch, you'll be able to see most of what Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has to offer within 3 or 4 hours. Of course, there are different speed classes, difficulty levels, time trials, mirror tracks, and a roster of rivals to best, but it all comes down to replaying CrossWorld’s somewhat modest collection of tracks and Grand Prix cups over and over. The Race Park multiplayer mode allows teams of players to tackle races with various extra objectives attached (collect the most coins, etc.) but this is just more somewhat transparent remixing of the same limited content.
More Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds racers, vehicles, and courses are coming, but almost all of it, particularly the crossover content featuring the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants and others, is locked behind a $20 season pass. Of course, racing game season passes are nothing new, but it's hard not to be a bit put off given how quickly the core game races to the finish line.
This review was based on a PS5 copy of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds provided by publisher Sega.
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