Remember the days when Sega were a console maker, and to set them apart from the competition (i.e. Nintendo) they had that punchy tagline: “Sega does what Nintendon’t”?
Well, looking at the latest Sonic The Hedgehog racing game, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, it looks like Sega is doing what Nintendoes this time around.
The arcade racer has gone Mario Kart, for the better. It has some new ideas, but from what I’ve played during the Closed Network Test, those ideas haven’t quite feel like it’s a big selling point that’s worth a subtitle in the game’s name. But the fundamental kart racing gameplay it has is rock solid. It’s a fun racing game.
Guess We’re Making Sonic Kart Now
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is quite the leap if you played past Sonic racing games before. This time it’s developed in-houd by Sonic Team themselves.
And the gameplay mechanics feel even more in line with Mario Kart 8 than past Sonic racing titles. Any playable character can drive in any car now. The cars themselves are customisable so you can min-max stats by kitbashing a different front body, rear body and wheels together so long as they are of the same car type. The power-up items are more Mario Kart-coded than previous games had, including specific catch-up items to help the backmarkers slingshot their way to contention—rubberbanding at its finest.
Heck, the default control scheme now mirrors Mario Kart controls. The bottom face button is gas, right bumper or trigger to drift, the other bumper or trigger to throw items. Though you can enable Team Sonic Racing controls if you prefer to hit the throttle via the right trigger as most racing games do post-6th-gen-consoles. Or just enable auto-acceleration like most arcade games have these days. There’s no reason to not hold the throttle anyway in these games.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds isn’t beating around the bush: they took many, many notes from Mario Kart 8.
And to be fair, Mario Kart 8 is still the gold standard of arcade kart racers today. That’s a million-selling game across two console generations and still raking in money from DLC releases since 2014. People love that two-decades-old game, and its appeal go wider than the niche racing game audience there is today. It would be silly at this point to not be inspired by the pack leader, especially after Team Sonic Racing’s bold ideas of team racing didn’t quite catch on, like many bold ideas to innovate in racing games have sadly faced. Pour one out for Onrush.
If you’re jumping in an online race of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, expect chaos. Pure skill alone won’t be able to get consistent wins, as there’s so much item shenanigery that you definitely can get Mario Karted. Maybe a bit too much. Where’s my defensive options? The shield thing drops so rarely, and boosts don’t drop as often when you’re in a lead. I don’t know if braking and stopping can stop from some tracking power-ups to lock off you NASCAR Rumble style, but this game needed more defensive options.
The track designs, of the handful available in the beta, are engineered to enable moments like this. There’s always a long straight and before that, a chock full of items drops are available to pickup so you can be the instigator or a victim of a final straight choke.
I appreciate that in the last kilometer the game just hides the position counter, so that it’s a tense wait to see who gets to the chequered flag first. There are so, so many clutch passes over the line, NASCAR-style, where I have no idea if that online player got passed me or not until the official results screen pops out. Because it was that close of a call to the finish line.
On a related note, the online play has been solid. I got into a match of 12 players within a minute of waiting most of the time. But it does take a while to load into a race proper, with multiple loading screens and downtimes before the lights go out.
Still, CrossWorlds has cross-play, and with no requirement of a 3rd-party account to play online (at least not yet, Sega just launched their own account system) players on other platforms have anonymous names. There’s no feeling of obvious lag or instances where I got “netcoded” (racing game parlance for getting a collision hit detected late despite vehicles don’t visually collide). So online play has been a blast, outside of the long wait times before you get to race.
At the CrossWorlds
Don’t think for a second that CrossWorlds is simply a Mario Kart rip-off. It tries to take its own line, out of the groove as it may be, with some new tricks in its sleeves.
The first of which it the big gimmick that gives this game its subtitle: the CrossWorlds. On lap 2, you’ll be transported to a new world via a Travel Portal. Think Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart’s portal gimmick where it can seamlessly load into a completely new world.
The leader gets to decide which Travel Portal to go to: the designated one, or a random one where no one has an idea what world it would be. And you pick that by simply driving on either the right or left side of the road until the chosen portal is locked in.
The presentation is wicked, in that if there’s a battle for the lead as the pack approaches the portal, you can see a tug of war where the portals (and the roads leading up to it) flip-flops as the leader changes places. That sense of dynamism it gives each race, provided there is a battle for the lead, look awesome if you’re part of the battle or close enough to witness it.
The second lap of each race then changes to that new CrossWorld, and it’s technically a point-to-point track. It’s always a spectacle drifting on the back of a dinosaur, or around a comically-large roulette.
But then on lap three, the final lap, you’re back in the same track. Sure, some new paths have open or close, and the music got more intense, but the CrossWorld gimmick ends there.
It’s a cool spectacle, and a technical marvel to pull the seamless loading of new worlds. But there’s not that much gameplay depth to it. There’s no strategic aspect of picking which Travel Portal to go, other than hope that the competition does badly when it’s a track with more flying or a drifty road course lacking wall barriers. And it doesn’t really radically change the outcome of any race as much as the wild power-up items are.
There is still plane and boat segments where the vehicle changes control, but these segments are less emphasised when compared to Sega & All-Stars Racing Transformed. But they’re there in all of the reimagined tracks.
The Real Selling Point Of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
But the real strategic depth comes from gadgets. You can have these in a loadout of six slots made up of two rows of three slots. Some of the game-changing gadgets require two slots, or the entire row of three slots and these truly are game-changers.
How about increasing your cap of rings (they function like coins in Mario Kart- the more you have, the faster you go)? Or add another tier of boost you can get by chaining long drifts? Or have the boost bar at level 1 fills up faster for quicker boosts out of short drifts?
There’s plenty of possibilities to build your loadout, and pair that with the stat-changing car builder and you get some opportunities to buildcraft. I just hope that many gadgets provided here are good enough in different builds, the idea of having everyone figuring out the meta and just stick to a few handful of builds will be a disappointment.
There’s A Livery Editor In Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, But It’s Limited
On a side note, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has a colour editor and a livery editor, like most racing games have. It’s not that in-depth: you have four slots per body part to stamp a sticker, and they can’t overlap so you can’t make Sonic or Hatsune Miku itashas out of the livery editor, sadly. And there’s only pre-set colours instead of a colour wheel albeit a generous amount of them. Different paint textures are available too, so that’s nice.
The car customisation items require a currency to unlock, but from the beta, you will be accruing a mountain of these by simply playing. You’ll get more if you’re good at the game, but simply finishing races still gives you some progress and rewards.
Speaking of, what’s up with the online ranking system? It seems that you only gain points, never losing them. Granted I am experienced with racing games, but I feel like I will have no problems climbing up the ladder of rankings. I haven’t drop a place ever, even my 11th place finishes still make me progress through the ranking up to C rank from the starting E-.
Closing Thoughts
All in all, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds looks to be a return to form for Sonic and his pals in the racing genre. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed was a high mark to clear, that 2013 game is still a fantastic arcade racer, on its own terms. It predated Mario Kart 8 with its land, sea and air racing.
CrossWorlds is leaning more than ever to its Mario Kart inspo this time around, and it should make for a decent arcade kart racer. The online racing works, and it’s as hectic as you’d expect which may annoy the racing purists (I know I feel cheated of a win due to rubberbanding and not able to defend from pesky power-ups). But for the millions of gamers out there just want to have a good time in a racing game without too much fuss and not having to be a car enthusiast, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds looks to be that game.
Sonic R ran, albeit really jankily, so that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds can drive, ride and fly this high. And you’ll be glad to know you can still hear that Super Sonic Racing medley in this game’s soundtrack.
After the series took a left turn in the last game, maybe Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will turn out alright.
Played on PS5. Beta code provided by the publisher