Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is an excellent racing game that will appeal to anyone who is willing to give it a try
Time played = 8:37:03
SEGA Miles = 476532
Missions Completed = 64/64
Positive
+ Fast, easy to pick up gameplay
+ The drifting is pretty fun
+ Fantastic variety of tracks and SEGA characters available
+ Great graphics and sound
Negative
+ No story mode of any kind
+ Frame rate is unstable sometimes
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is a fresh page for Sonic in the racing business. After the unsuccessful attempt in Sonic Riders, SEGA merges Sonic and some of SEGA's most popular characters to create a great racing, not only for Sonic and SEGA's faithful fans only but for any other casual player. It's not a complete game, but this entertaining racing game packs some seriously good times.
There is no story mode in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. This crossover completely missed the chance for a big mash up of SEGA characters and over the top production values and overdone cutscenes. But there are at least ten hours of solid single-player options. The single-player is divided in missions, grand-prix, time trials and single races. The mission mode offers 64 different events where the character already preset by the game. Each event will present different challenges as the level of challenge and mission structure changes further in. Missions may be one on one rival races, cup events, hit or collect objects, drifts, passing through time circles and more to boot. For these events, you must use the appointed character and clear the event by getting a rank from A to AAA to unlock a newer event. The mission mode offers a wide variety of different event, diminishing the repetitive structure of racing only in the other modes. The second primary mode is the Grand-Prix. This is a series of four races to form a cup and whoever gets the most points out of the eight drivers wins. There are numerous cups, unlocked consecutively stretching on three difficulty levels. The difficulty levels; beginner, advanced and expert repeat the same exact cup with the same exact tracks albeit with higher difficulties. Single race is a normal one only race where you choose one of your characters and race in the tracks you have. Time trials offer a challenge against the clock and a test for you against the clock and can also compete against the ghost of another person who has a profile in the game.
This racing game is as simplistic and accessible as pick and play. It takes most of its ideas from games such as Crash Team Racing and Mario Kart, but despite that it's immensely fun thanks to the great drifting that allows you to take corners with ease. While keeping hold of the B button and remove your finger off the A button, you can drift tighter corners which are difficult to do with both buttons held down. It gives an extra touch to the game which will be appreciated especially to the hardcore. The game offers a very good sense of speed and a fantastic variety of well designed track, all different stretching through SEGA's universes. An impressive variety of characters participate including titular Sonic and team, alongside Amigo from Samba de Amigo, Beat from Jet Set Radio, and even going so far to bring Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue and Virtua Fighter's Jacky Bryant and Akira Yuki as a duo. There is a very good assortment of characters available, each riding their own different ride which gives them different attributes such as speed, turbo, acceleration and others. Each character has only one ride and while some have very similar vehicles, most drive different enough that everyone can find a character that suits their style.
In the beginning there are quite a few of fan favorite characters unlocked. But by just by doing every single type of event, from a time trial to a grand-prix to multiplayer the game awards you with SEGA Miles. SEGA Miles is the currency of the game. From the shop you can buy new characters to use, new tracks to use in single races and time trials and even soundtrack. It will take you a long while to unlock all of the characters but luckily the game doesn't force you to buy in an order. All can be bought off the bat.
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing has quite a reasonable difficulty. Though some missions are just plain difficult for the first few tries but quick loadings for restarting current missions will make you stick for one or two more tries. Hit Contests in Mission Mode are most frustrating and unfitting. There are only two events of these, where you (as the given character) have to acquire items from a closed field and hit a gigantic target while maintaining a life of three hits. Plus there is a time limit forcing you to drive fast while dodging smaller enemies and trying to aim precisely with punch gloves or bowling bombs, if not you miss and waste time. You need to deplete the target's HP bar to hope to get an A. The AI put up a good challenge only in later difficulties but the rest they are pushovers. The AI doesn't cheat and aren't cheap and never relentlessly target you. There is the frustration that the AI reaches you if you do a minor mistake that may cost you your match.
When you find yourself struggling at the end of the pack, special items can help you get back to the top. One of them is the All-Stars item. This item is unique for each character and it's rare, only appearing when you're desperately grinding your way up. This item will give a fast autopilot and allows you to repeatedly tap the Z button to use a special power. Some increase speed, some just stomp the enemies in from of you and more. Moreover, most of these look really good and admittedly eager to obtain one. Additionally, when in mid-air you can perform little tricks that if performed successfully with the B button and land correctly earns you an extra boast.
Multiplayer is up to 4 players and offers events that are exclusive to the multiplayer. There is a normal race, battle, knockout, 'Collect the Chaos Emeralds' where you need to have more than your opponents by the end of the time, 'King of the Hill' where you need to stay in the indicated area and using items to force your opponents out to accumulate points. 'Capture the Chao' consists of capturing a giant Chao and take him to your base and do this more than your opponent before time runs out in a battle type match. Surprisingly, most of these suck and aren't much fun almost at all. The complete absence of cups is disappointing, but racing against your friends is fun and still rewards the account user with SEGA Miles.
From great gameplay to great visuals, the game is a very good looking Wii game. All of the tracks are very well designed and the characters are modeled from their respective games perfectly. There are very little graphical sacrifices in multiplayer matches. There are also some infrequent but annoying frame rate issues where the game blocks for an instant which unless driving in a straight line can sometimes ruin your race. It generally happens at the highest of speeds, on busy visuals or certain tracks, but it is nowhere near game breaking. The sound keeps up with great soundtrack all round, especially Samba de Amigo's stages. The game employs a commenter which talks describing the race and characters. He may feel like a needless edition to the game but he gets the lines and timing right and it sort of fits the style of the game. The voice work is well done from all cast but there are no cutscenes to speak of and there are some long loadings between stages that feel so unnecessary.
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is a great racing game. It missed a chance to create a decent storyline for some good fan service but it gets most of the things right. A healthy cast of characters and tracks and entertaining gameplay keep this game in competition with other, wannabe superior racing games on the Wii. Don't be fooled, it is Sonic but this outcome for the blue hedgehog is a successful one alongside his SEGA companions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics = 8.1
A great looking Wii game. The tracks look great and really different from one anyone. Some goes for the instantly recognizable racers.
Sound = 7.8
Great voice acting and some good background music in tracks alongside the good commenter, but nothing special.
Presentation = 8.2
A real treat for SEGA fans with plenty of characters and tracks familiar. Plenty of unlockables and good looking menus. There are some unnecessarily long loadings though.
Gameplay = 8.6
A fantastic racer that is simple to pick up and play and while it doesn't have an excessive depth, the variety between characters and tracks, and the drifting are too good to not point out. Controls work perfectly by the way.
Modes = 8.3
No story mode but there are 64 missions and a good amount of grand prix on three different difficulties, plus a great amount of unlockables which should take you about 10 hours to complete the whole game.
OVERALL = 83 / 100
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is an excellent racing game that will appeal to anyone who is willing to give it a try.