No matter how good or bad this game is you really can’t look at this game without questioning why Sonic is in a race car. I don’t care if he can’t fly or naturally run on water, it just doesn’t feel right for Sonic to be in a race car. Whatever reason Sega and Sumo decided to keep Sonic using a race car I’ll never be quite sure about, but they could have at least added like Super Sonic in as himself or something like that. In fact, a lot of characters from the first game are actually missing in this addition, and that’s fairly disheartening. Billy Hacther, Bonza Bros. , Opa Opa, these are characters I love to see come back because they just have so much to do with Sega’s history. Not to mention that Sega missed a lot of great characters they could have been included into this series just out right, like the girl from Phantasy Star, Bayonetta, or Vector Man. Going into Transformed there are just so many familiar faces from the last game, and a few newer ones, but the cast ultimately leaves with desire for more diversity of racers from Sega’s library.
Thankfully despite a rather disappointing diverse cast, the gameplay itself is the main focus of what Sumo enhanced between the first and second games. Instead of just regular kart racing akin to Mario kart, Sonic and All Stars Racing kicks it up a notch and makes the game about transforming between land, sea and air. Going through all the different motions of how a kart controls can sometimes be a bit baffling, especially starting out, but once you got the hang of transforming your kart during the race it becomes a seem less transition. The only real problem with this style however is the boat and water physics being combined to make it far more difficult to control compared to land and air. So a lot of beginners will have to deal with learning how to use the waves to their advantage or learning just how to drift or drive through certain water parts. This new method of driving race karts across the game really changes the way the game is meant to be played and it almost seems awkward when a track doesn’t have any transformation in it. Stunts are still here as well, but not nearly as loose as the first game made it out to be. While a lot of the drivers in the first All Star Racing wouldn’t stay in there karts mainly due to all the trick making, transformed tone down the tricks and adds more strategy to the stunts instead. Not only are they used for speed boosts now, but pending on how you direct your trick with the joystick your kart will move accordingly. This helps bring in some much needed adjustment when you are doing a trick in the air, but also makes those that were used to the old system having to adjust to the better stunt system.
As for the All Stars in Transformed , the series’ main gimmick, they are extremely toned down in comparison to the first one. While the first All Star Racing had a lot of the karts changing into certain things, like the Bonza Bros’ air balloon of doom, The majority of Transformed’s karts just turned into slightly bigger karts that go a lot faster than normal karts and usually have an attack you can do while driving. While the All Stars certainly have become more balanced between the two games though, their creativity went down as well. The biggest improvement however, between Transformed and All Stars Racing, is the ability to pretty much competitive/co-op nearly anywhere in the game. While this game does have a bit of a campaign and big grand prix mode, the fact that nearly all 1-4 players (5 for those lucky Wii U Owners) can join in and try to beat the mode along with the first player effectively making this game a lot easier for everyone and making unlocking things easier to do. The only real downsized to this is the game forces you to play as the other characters in order to unlock every mod for them before they can choose which ever mod you want. On the upside however, unlocking mods isn’t nearly as tedious of a grind compared to Sega coins in the past game, and it gives the players a chance to try out other people more often. As well, the only place where people really can’t use any extra players is time attack, which is fairly acceptable considering how tedious and picky this mode can be, having another player would likely be more of a hindrance rather than a benefit.
Aside from racing and time trials, Transformed also includes some newer and somewhat gimmicky races like traffic jam, tank attack, Ring challenge, battle races, and boost challenges. Traffic Jam is probably the worst of them all as it requires you to be nearly precise with drifting and avoiding cars on the road in order to get the highest rank. Tank attack also gets a bit tedious on the higher levels as its constantly shooting at a tank you’re following along one of the tracks with items. Ring challenge and boost challenges are fairly similar and somewhat more fun with learning track layouts and learning to drift properly in all the vehicles. Battle races are pretty much races where you try to either outlast your opponents by racing further than them till they get cut off by the timer, or take out your opponents one by one with items on the track till you’re the last one standing. Each mode is fairly fun to a certain degree, and it gives a nice break from just constantly racing in the Grand Prix or single races. Although having to do them all again just to get more stars via elite mode just seems like filler. Having to unlock elite mode to began with is already a taunting task, but then having to do all the modes and races over again just to earn an extra star? Just seems like more needless work considering they already give a hard mode to work with. Pretty much the only difference in Elite mode and hard mode is the game actually starts cheating with rubberband AI, but thankfully unlike a certain Plumber kart, the AI in this game is easily exploitable by having another driver simply do nothing throughout the race.
The Wii U version of Transformed also as a few more extra nicks and nacks to it to that make it more define version compared to the other consoles. Boosting 5 player local play thanks to the Wii U gamepad, and two extra multiplayer modes means a little more fun for everyone. Although the two extra multiplayer games, Ninja Tag and Banana Heist, really just end up being pretty much the same kind of game, with only a few rules changed around. On top of that the PC versions get a bunch of 3rd party characters to pick from. So really if you were to pick a version, either the Wii U or PC versions would be the best bet. With PC having more actual content, and the Wii U being able to support 5 player local play. At the very least each version boosts a good soundtrack and pretty graphics. Not to mention that this game is still great either way.
Final Thoughts:
Sonic and All Star Racing: Transformed may have sucked out a lot of diversity and originality out of the first one, but in return we got an even better kart racing game mechanic that makes even Mario Kart blush blue shells. With the ability to virtually do anything with a group of friends, an extensive campaign, large amount of unlock-able content, and the stellar stunt and drifting controls; Transformed really lives up to its name sake by changing the way we should look at kart racing. Overall this is one of the most pleasant games to not only imitate a formula from a previous series, but also improve greatly on it’s premise; if you have any interest in this game get it.