Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

Should have been called "SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed."

So I picked up a Wii U a couple of months ago, and had a list of the games I planned to buy. Rest assured, there were no Sonic titles on that list. The most recent good Sonic game was Sonic Generations, and before that? Let's just say it's been a while. Sonic recently celebrated his 20th Anniversary. But does it really count if there are multiple years where there was nothing but half-assed, poorly planned crap?

Anyway, I kept reading more and more good things about Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Naturally I was skeptical, but most everyone had good things to say about it. I took the risk and picked it up. Turns out those people were right on the money.

Biggest pet peeve? The fact that the word SONIC is the first thing in the title, and he's on the cover five times. A little behind him is Dr. Eggman, and wayyyyyyy off in the distance is a tiny Aiai. This cover is a terrible representation for what the game actually is.

Simply stated, it is a showcase for SEGA's history in the form of an excellent racing game. There are a ton of characters and stages selected from past SEGA titles. They pulled a page right out of Nintendo's book. Someone looked back and said, "Hey, we've been around a long time, right? Why don't we make a potpourri out of what we've got and put it in one game?"

Characters include selections from Golden Axe, Skies of Arcadia, Samba de Amigo, Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Shinobi, Space Channel 5, NiGHTS Into Dreams..., Alex Kidd in Miracle World, and Sonic 1/2/3/CD/Adventure. When you look at it like that, SEGA did pretty damn well in creating original ideas, they just faltered at other steps in the process of getting a finished game out to consumers (many times, I might add). And in newer versions of the game (PC), they keep throwing in more characters. I would be having a blast looking through the SEGA history books and trying to decide who I wanted to include.

Stages also pull from all around SEGA's past. Aside from titles listed above, they also include After Burner, Panzer Dragoon, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, House of the Dead, Burning Rangers, OutRun, and Sonic Heroes. Just seeing things like Burning Rangers pop up makes me laugh, as I still remember playing the hell out of it on my Saturn. SEGA did a nice job.

The tracks themselves are very well designed, and there are a ton of shortcuts to be found, and locating them all (and being able to navigate them effectively) isn't a walk in the park. Most of the courses also change every lap in some way. For example, in the Golden Axe stage, fire rains down and shatters the road during the third lap, causing you to stay as a plane for a part you were previously a car. Or in the House of the Dead stage, monsters break out of their holding containers to wreak havoc, all while the level of slime rises every lap. Or in Burning Rangers, destruction is rampant during every lap, causing pieces of the building to fall around you and flood waters to rush in. It definitely keeps you on your toes, as most laps will not be the same as the one before it.

Another aspect that really sets this game apart is its single player World Tour mode. You have to complete events to earn stars, which in turn unlocks characters. Higher difficulties yield more stars. But it's not just racing. There's Traffic Attack, where you have to make it to a certain number of checkpoints on a track with a crap-ton of neon cars all over the place, and running into them makes you lose all your speed. Another is Drift Challenge, where you have a very limited amount of time to complete a race, and the only way to gain seconds on the clock is to drift on a marked path in specified zones. Or Boost Challenge, where you have five seconds to complete a race, but while you're boosting, the clock doesn't count down, meaning you pretty much have to continually find ways to boost through the entire race. There's quite a few modes, and most of them are on every track, so if you really want later unlockables, you're going to just have to get good at the game.

There are a thousand and one ways to get speed boosts, and you'll need to learn and utilize them if you're going to beat other players or computers on higher difficulty levels. Boosting from the starting line (small, medium, or large), boosting after drifts (small, medium, or large), boosting after doing tricks on jumps (of which there are billions), boosting after evading offensive items, boosting while transforming (car, boat, plane), etc. There is so much more skill involved than in Mario Kart games.

The game is definitely not a poor man's Mario Kart. Far from it. Mario Kart has an easy control scheme that anybody can really pick up and play, which is part of the Nintendo charm. Racing Transformed is not that kind of racing game. There are similarities, like items you can use offensively and defensively, but most of them require strategic planning and placement. The entire game has a much more sensitive feel compared to Mario Kart's more chunky, forgiving, slower-paced gameplay. The mods for characters (each mod affects Speed, Acceleration, Handling, Boost, and All-Star Mode) actually affect the racer quite a bit, whereas in Mario Kart it's pretty much, "Choose your favorite Nintendo character!"

I don't regret buying this game. On the contrary, I'm really glad I picked it up. It's a lot of fun, and presents a good level of challenge for the completist. It has replaced the multiplayer fallback that is Mario Kart when people come over and just want to play something. But I admit it was a difficult sell just to get them to try it. Once we got into it, though, it was smooth sailing.

Sure, there are a couple of bugs/glitches here and there, but it's SEGA, and honestly I was surprised there weren't more. I only wish they didn't shove Sonic and only Sonic in the title and on the cover. The game really celebrates SEGA's colossal history. If the game is good and worth playing, then SEGA shouldn't be worried about anything. Their compulsion to slap Sonic all over the place just to make sure a game sells to somebody has been a lame practice for years, and it needs to stop. Hell, Sonic is the last character I plan on playing as in this game. When you've got a VMU that rides around in a Dreamcast controller, what else can you ask for?