Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing Transformed Review
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is an enjoyably surreal experience
| Game Info |
| Platform 360, PS3, Win, Wii U, PS Vita, iOS, 3DS, Android |
| Publisher Sega |
| Developer Sumo Digital |
| Release Date Nov 14, 2012 |
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is more aggressive than its unexpectedly competent predecessor Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing.
Developer Sumo Digital's second Sonic take on arcade racing — combining basis, h2o and air travel — is inventive and humorous and fresh. It's a kart game with the same caste of reverence other developers requite to photorealistic racing sims, which isn't surprising — Sumo Digital's roster includes veterans from the Projection Gotham series and arcade racer Divide 2nd, amidst other titles.
Merely it's not just a unique spin on the typically stale kart racing genre. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a reverent ode to diverse characters who have fallen out of favor after a decade-plus of mistreatment past the publisher. Transformed is a far better homage to Sega's past than its recent string of remakes and reboots. In fact, it may be a better game than those original classics I grew upwardly on.
"Transformed" in the title refers to the game's vehicles, which transform seamlessly from kart to gunkhole to plane throughout each race. While the elements affect the race in unique ways — earth is stable, h2o ripples into unpredictable and bumpy waves, and airs adds a vertical-centrality — the vehicles are consistently like shooting fish in a barrel to handle. The cohesiveness of the game is cheers in part to the primal drift mechanic, used to gain boost while cutting tight turns. Drift works on state, over water and in air, and information technology'due south intuitive plenty to make even the commencement time racer feel like an skillful.
If anything, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is more enjoyable free of context
In traditional three-lap races, 10 competitors barrel through lengthy tracks paved in relics of Sega games both iconic (Sonic the Hedgehog) and not-so-iconic (Burning Rangers). The tracks evolve by the lap, floors giving way to subconscious underground water veins or cresting into the open sky. The surprising and unstable terrain makes for a fitting follow-up to Transformed's predecessor, which played with physics, infinite and color to create loopy races that felt more similar vision quests. The addition of boats and air have allowed the artists and designers to become further down the rabbit pigsty.
An instance that stuck with me is a Nights track (based on the cult Sega Saturn game). The racers bounce beyond a pastoral landscape, through a child'southward bedroom and into his macabre nightmares. Non restrained to solid ground, the courses can go practically anywhere, and they practice: dungeons and haunted houses, future and feudal Japan, inner computers and outer space.
Even if you're not a fan of Sega, there's pleasance in how each turn in Transformed reveals something bizarre, surreal and spectacularly imagined. If annihilation, it'south more enjoyable gratis of context. If yous don't know why a ninja, a hedgehog, a infinite pop star and a competitive rollerblader are racing through a child'southward sleeping room in airplanes, all the amend. Who needs drugs? For the hardcore Sega fans in the audience, Transformed continues to soap on the fan service, looping in characters and tracks from beloved, but less successful games like Skies of Arcadia.
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed'south World Tour Mode has been plotted so that even if yous've never played a kart racer, you volition accept a favorable chance of completing the entire campaign. "Rubber banding," a common kart racer design technique in which the computer'due south artificial intelligence makes it like shooting fish in a barrel for the racers about the back to take hold of upwards to first place, has been removed from the formula in Transformed.
In fact, the blueprint as a whole is a niggling unusual. Before each race the thespian chooses how many stars they'd similar to compete for. To win i star, the racer must place in sixth place or to a higher place; 3rd place or above for two stars; and outset place for three stars. When selecting how many stars you're competing for, you're too choosing the overall skill of your competitors from easy to medium to hard.
Here'southward the grab: If you choose to compete for only one star, getting first identify won't reward three stars. You have to pull a Baby Ruth, calling your position earlier the race, if you want to earn the maximum numbers of stars.
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is better with friends.
The star organisation is a lilliputian confusing at starting time, simply ultimately the format skews how you approach each race. Merely placing in the top six or three can be as exciting and fulfilling equally placing first. And because you don't have to place showtime or even third to "win," the game doesn't have to patronize you by slowing down the other racers.
Completionists will eventually want to render to tracks to earn more stars, which are used equally currency to unlock characters, vehicle modifications, and additional races. The star system offers plenty of post-game motivation. At that place's a locked-off bonus loving cup, and yous will eventually need to earn every star if you lot want to unlock every rails and grapheme.
Circuits are speckled with bonus challenges, such equally hitting dozens of boosts in a single lap, drifting over specific lines, or fugitive traffic. None are besides-produced as the straightforward races. They limit the vehicle to either land, air or sea, and rarely include track transformations. Simply they are a welcome break nonetheless. They're cursory, as not to clothing out their welcome, and they have the player engaging with the tracks in different means than "Become from Indicate A to Betoken B the Fastest."
Wrap Up:
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is an enjoyably surreal experience
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed shows daring and passion for the Sega make. Who could take predicted that a take on the most humdrum genre in video games would spice upwards a publisher that, over the last decade, has taken to resting on its laurels? Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a welcome wild card of a racing game, a surreal experience that anyone can enjoy â€" even without knowing a lick well-nigh a certain talking hedgehog.
But for fans of Sega’s legacy, it’due south something more. Sonic & All-Star Racing Transformed allows me to revisit those worlds I loved equally a kid, to grab upwards with those characters in a wash of nostalgia. Hither are all of the corking songs and stars, flush with bright colors and silly in-jokes. It’s all of my addicted memories without any of the overwhelming thwarting of really revisiting them.
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed was reviewed using retail Xbox 360 code provided by Sega. You can find data about Polygon'southward ideals policy here, and see an explanation of Polygon'south review process and scoring rubric here.
About Polygon'due south Reviewsviii.5 360
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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2012/12/4/3724444/sonic-all-stars-racing-transformed-review
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