Look, I understand that you have likely already had a squiz at Kieron’s impressions on the Sonic Racing franchise. You have already read through the lamentations on how Sonic Racing was always considered to be the “We have Mario Kart at home” option in the high-stakes genre of Kart Racing.
But it’s my turn now – and I want to make it clear that Mario Kart has dropped a couple of balls that Sonic Racing CrossWorlds seems entirely too happy to pick up.
Now, to clear something up: I am not a Mario Kart detractor. Quite the opposite. I recognise the tenure and impact that the Mario Kart franchise has had on this absurdly niche little corner of gaming. I love the arcade-style feeling of Kart racing compared to more serious endeavours, where your downfall is often due to something whacky – rather than missing a gear-shift and blowing out your engine. The light-heartedness of it all means you struggle to cross over into any kind of real negativity, because getting mad at a banana peel just feels a tad too goofy to really let it happen.
And to quote myself, “In the world of digital kart racing, Mario is king” – so where does Sonic Racing fit into all this?
Playing other karting games always felt like a pale imitation of what Mario offered – but then I discovered Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. My mate offered me the chance to play it on his Wii U (arguably the most compromised version of the game) and for the first time ever I came away from the experience without thinking about Mario Kart the whole time. I was delighted when I picked the game up on Steam (where the Team Fortress characters were a bonus addition) and convinced some other mates to give it a burl after a cheapy Steam sale. Soon we had racing nights full of voice-call mirth and enjoyment, cursing those that passed us and mocking those that fell behind.
Was it superior to Mario Kart? Maybe not, but it was bloody close to parity with it.
It was a title free of Nintendo platform exclusivity. It did things just different enough to not come off as a cheap imitation of the king. It had Sonic in it. I felt well catered for, and added the series to my internal “Yes” board as something I enjoyed and would keep an eye out for. I could openly enjoy both franchises, and each iteration of either Mario Kart or Sonic Racing would have a place in my world.
Then, Mario Kart World came along.
The penguin of Mario Kart World cometh
For the first time, the Mario Kart formula had shifted in a dramatic way. The open-world focus had meant that some series staples were either scaled back, or gone entirely. Sure, you can still select a kart – but you don’t mix and match a few parts to tailor your racing stats. The larger world map meant that your generic Cup-racing experience had new sprint-to-the-next-track sections that, while enjoyable, can wear a bit thin at times. By no means did the game feel bad to play, it just had some irksome parts to it that felt hard to ignore. In James’s review, he described it as “a complicated two-step forward and back for the series.”
So when I sat down for a hands-on preview with Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, I was relieved to see that those old favorites were present and accounted for. Vehicle building involved mixing and matching a chassis with front and rear ends to create your own racing monster—paired beautifully with racers that had a clearly shown stat focus. Cup selection meant you’d be racing on the tracks you chose, not heading cross-country and missing a lap of Metal Harbor. Where Mario Kart World felt like a pivot for the karting genre, Sonic Racing feels like an iterative, curious experiment, further developing old favourites and introducing new mechanics such as the ‘gadget’ system.
To quote an old favourite – SEGA is doing what Nintendon’t.
(If you want to hear me gush about all this, give our podcast below a click, I promised it is timestamped correctly)
These gadgets serve as a super neat way to customise your race experience without feeling massively game-breaking. Serving as slotted micro-buffs you can pick and choose to impact your own racing style, you can mix and match from a variety of defensive and offensive needs to tweak your in-race experience. Do you feel that you are constantly on the back foot from weapon hits? Grab the recovery booster. Maybe you feel that your ring collecting skills are sub-par – why not grab a booster to generate them when doing air tricks. I fiddled with these for a long while and couldn’t find anything that felt truly broken; instead, they offered a pleasant way for players to cater to individual playstyles.
The portals that grace every square inch of the game’s marketing even do enough heavy lifting to feel a great deal more than a signature title gimmick. They beautifully provide an interstitial experience away from the current track, adding to your race experience rather than taking away from it. A quick jaunt out of a busy mall and into a frozen ice world feels like a treat, and getting to choose the destination as race leader is awesome. Then, in the final race of a cup, you’ll even get a remix of the cup tracks you’ve previously raced on, keeping things fresh.
Another engaging new feature is the Rival system. At the start of a cup, you are presented with a chance to pick a rival for a dramatic face-off on the grid. You and your rival will then trash talk during the race – even going so far as to give you a serve when they beat you, almost like the banter you see in modern fighting games. During my preview time, I foolishly picked the “harder” rival option and learned the hard way that Cream the Rabbit and her chao friend Cheese were more than happy to crush me in their pretty pink buggy. The game even brought it home with a humiliating “Would you like to lower the difficulty of your rival?” option. Is it an essential feature? Hardly, but it’s new and fun as heck.
Meanwhile, Mario Kart World is the same racing experience it ever has been – only, ever so slightly less.
In the history of this goofy (and honestly one-sided) racing rivalry, this is the first time I feel I can confidently say that Sonic Racing is offering something that Mario Kart is not – besides the ability to play as Samba the Amigo. The micro-bummers felt by long time players at what the Switch 2 Mario Kart iteration is missing are genuinely present in Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, so if ever there was a time for the game to get some marvellous new racers it is clearly now. Even the discussion of problematic pricing is a slightly easier pill to swallow knowing the game will be available on many platforms and that it is exempt from the Mario curse of ‘never going on sale’ – heck, history may repeat itself and I will reach out to mates when the Steam sales bless me with an opportunity.
So let this glut of random words serve a single purpose – if you feel a bit disenfranchised with your current kart racer, maybe clear some room on your radar for a certain high-speed hedgehog.
Previewed on PS5 at a preview event hosted by SEGA
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