Review: Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing

All together there are twenty selectable racers from Sonic and SEGA franchises (excluding the avatar as well as Banjo & Kazooie on the 360) but only ten racers are available from the get go the rest of the racers you’ll have to unlock., these racers also have different stats such as acceleration, handling and speed. As we start-up the game you’re given your very own SEGA licence, you’ll start of with a green one and soon work your way up to gold, the way to do this is race be it online or offline, multiplayer or single, time trial or missions. That’s right every mode awards you SEGA Miles these miles also double up as your cash. Over in the shop menu, you can use those miles to buy racers, courses and even music tracks to listen to, though once you got them all there’s no reason for the miles but to boost your license to that gold status.

Now onto the racing, firstly you can use the trigger buttons to drift (in turn power sliding) and accelerate the vehicle. Luckily there are other setups to use encase you have some sort of dodgy trigger that makes the drift stick (personal experience here.) As you drift you’ll build up a boost, there are three levels starting with blue and ending with red for a maximum boost. It’s also possible to chain up another boost while boosting.

There are also crates that you can collect that will give you items or weapons to use against your fellow racers, including the “All-Star” move which unleashes that racers special ability for a short while. You can also turn this option off or set it to a basic set of items, the races themselves can take place on a variety of tracks from different franchises such as Jet Set Radio or Super Monkey Ball which have their own style and hazards complementing that game, such as SMB tracks having ninety degree turns.

In Single Player there are four different modes; Single Race, Time Trial, Missions, and Grand Prix. Single Race is what it states a single race around one track give or take your race settings, which allow you to pick the number of laps (up to nine) turn off hazards, catch up or weapons as well as select the A.I difficulty. Time Trial is where you can compete for the fastest time against a basic “Staff Ghost”, a “Rival Ghost” (someone who’s top of the leader board) or a combination… once you cross a certain threshold you’ll find yourself up against a hardcore “SUMO Ghost”.

Mission game play is a set objective such as boosting or drifting and ranks you up to a AAA rank, you need at least an A to unlock the next mission but you’ll need those triple A’s for an achievement. Grand Prix mode is separated into three difficulties: Beginner, Advanced and Expert. The gist is that four different tracks with three laps make up a certain cup, with a points system with the most going to first places and the least to last, to unlock the next cup you must finish in first place overall.

Now here’s something new, I have some things to tell you about the multiplayer modes. Online Multiplayer has eight player support (and only does race) and local is as always four but comes with a few extra modes, these modes in question are as follows: Race, Battle, Capture the Chao, (Chaos Emerald) Grab, and King of the Hill.

Both online and local races can have the difficulty set to off to take away the A.I. Battle is a weapons battle over three mirrored maps this is the only map choice and is the same for all other modes. Capture the Chao has a giant floating Chao balloon and whoever grabs it first will get a slow supply of points but you can also take it to a drop zone for a quick five hundred points.

Grab or rightly should be called Chaos Emerald Grab sees racers racing around to collect emeralds, there’s only seven and the more emeralds you hold the faster you’ll gain points, don’t expect to hold all seven and see racers turn super though (shame) if you are attacked you’ll drop the emeralds and they’ll scatter around the map from where you was hit.

King of the Hill is where racers drive to a certain spot and have to be the only one inside that spot to gain any points, so no one will earn anything if everyone is inside only the lucky winner who wins the battle inside the circle will gain the points, with all the modes, excluding race the winner is the person with the most points.