The franchise is built on speed, and this year they came out with “Team Sonic Racing†which is like an arcade-kart based game. However, is this game good enough to live up to the popularity and fun of its predecessors?
Team Sonic Racing is more of a team-based racing game, rather than a solo race type of game. Each race has 4 teams of three racers. The individual score doesn’t really matter since the system of scores is based on the placement of each racer in the particular team, so you can score if you are 1st, 2nd or 3rd – like a trifecta bet in horse racing. This is Sumo Digital and Sega’s way of encouraging teamwork between players.
There are a lot of mechanics and systems built into the game to interact in a fun, creative and strategical ways with teammates. Your placement sometimes isn’t enough to win the race, so you will need to help your teammates who lag in the back. When choosing a character, you are essentially choosing a class, meaning you either choose power, speed or technique.
Unlike other Sonic racing games, you do not switch between characters, the other racers are AI controlled. However, there is an option to give control to other players and it becomes a local co-op play that is available in any mode. There are many great mechanics implemented in this game, for example, the Skim Boost. Allies that are crashed on the track, and if you go past them, they will execute a Skim Boost which will speed them up.
This game is solely built on the idea of teamwork. If you pick up an item that you don’t want, you can pass it on to your teammates which they could use. The track maps make this game special, they can even compete with Mario Kart games head-on.
All this is true, and this is a good game, but is it any better or revolutionized the Sega All Star Racing Transformed game? That game was amazing, and it also had a big fan-base. It had so many worlds colliding from so many games that it made the video game feel one-of-a-kind and unique. However, Team Sonic Racing might be good in many ways, for example, the teamwork angle could be a smoking gun.
Sega might have made a bad call when they chose to only feature Sonic’s world in this game. It makes the game look limited in its content. What makes up for this, is the fact that they added something called Adventure Mode. In this mode the challenges are quite hard, you could also change the difficulty to make it even more challenging. Even the story for this mode is quite interesting since they have fully voiced the whole story.
From what we have gathered, the graphics on the map are somewhat inconsistent with the whole game. There are a lot of low-quality graphics, even on the highest setting. Even so, the developers have done an excellent job on the shadows and lighting parts of the game. It makes the cartoonish graphics really pop out and look realistic.
The sound engineers on the game have done a stellar job. Every sound is so beautifully implemented into the game, it’s mind-blowing. The sound of the cars, the power-ups, the ambient, the boost and many other sounds are so satisfying, so you can tell they have paid close attention to details like this.
Upgrades can be made to the vehicles in the game, by random chance system. You can get parts for cosmetic purposes as well as parts that improve the particular car’s performance. Complaints have come in about the constant chatting of the characters in the game, but the developers have put in the option to display text only.
With a variety of modes and tracks, and with its great gameplay, this game could have you hooked on.
Even though it isn’t considered as good as its predecessors, it has amazing graphics, great gameplay, and excellent sound and it is considered a strong racer game. However, it’s not that revolutionary, even if all of the above is true it makes for a weak attempt on creating a better contender to its rivals, even its own predecessors.
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