Sonic Racing Crossworlds Review - Lackluster Racing At A Frustrating Pace

 

Sonic Racing Crossworlds is the latest entry in a long running franchise of "Sonic Racing" games, where for some reason, Sega continuously insist that Sonic & friends should drive in cars. The last Sonic game, Team Sonic Racing, was released in 2019 and probably contains the final Sonic soundtrack with new music composed by Crush 40 and Jun Senoue, probably so after 2024 lawsuit filed by lead singer Johnny Gioeli over unpaid ownership rights to the Sonic Adventure 2 song Live & Learn was dismissed in court. It's unlikely that the fan favourite Sonic rock band Crush 40 will ever make new Sonic music for the games again after this. This is why we can't have nice things. 

Why am I mentioning this specific fact with the music? Because the music for Sonic Racing Crossworlds is just not very good in comparison. The audio mix is wacky, while some tracks are a hit or miss, and unusual annoying choir with oddly fast AI generated sounding drums in the background. We can already see Sega were really trying to stay under budget with this one.

So what does Sonic Racing Crossworlds have to offer that is different to Team Sonic Racing, or Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed? The hype for this one was that levels were split up into different mini-"Crossworld" tracks (sorry SRC, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart did this long before you did). While some stages look mildly interesting, and it's nice we have stages all the way up to games like Sonic Frontiers and Shadow Generations, some of the generic non-Sonic related tracks like "Colourful Mall" and "Coral Town" make me wonder why they are here. Explain this canon, Ian Flynn.

I don't really get all the hype to this game. Mario Kart World on the Nintendo Switch 2 may have been empty and disappointing so it is nice that Crossworlds has a change. But it's not perfect. Crossworld's biggest marketed feature is the new Rivals system. It isn't revolutionary, it's been in other racing games before, but in Sonic Racing Crossworlds, Rival mode is the entire game. This is frustrating because it makes me feel like racing against the other 24 or so characters is pointless. You just have to focus on beating the rival, who unfortunately has unfair advantages against everyone else. 

 

The game has serious rubber banding issues that Sega never bothered to phase out. Many people on Youtube have found they can use this to their advantage to win every track. It feels like only the last 20 seconds of lap 3 actually matter. Which is what people do online on this game as well. They let you win until the last 20 seconds and all hell breaks loose. When I noticed this I stopped playing online after that.

In several interviews Iizuka mentions that Sonic Racing Crossworlds has no stressful items like Mario Kart, and no Blue Koopa Shell alternative but this is not true. I have found a few items that act just like the Blue Koopa Shell. One is a giant Anvil and the other is King Boom Boo who only hits players that come out in first place. Other items have really bad aim and it's difficult to throw them at other players.

The rivals that I mentioned before have a really unfair advantage compared to everyone else in the track. The gameplay is quite often stressful and chaotic, which is something I do not enjoy. This game is certainly not for the casual Sonic racing fan, for fans of games like Sonic & All Stars Racing. The rivals have different character interactions, but it's a shame that they do not quote famous catchphrases from past games, instead the dialogue is just some generic slop like "I'll beat you" or "You think you can win against me?" 

While I do like some of the "Crossworld" tracks, you can actually play them all in Time Trial mode separately which is pretty cool. But there isn't enough to keep me going.

 

Though every car and kart is different they don't have very different stats and they all feel  the same to each other. While it's cool that the Extreme gear from Sonic Riders makes a comeback, even they feel not as exciting as the original Sonic Riders games, and certainly no where near as fast. You don't even air board with them.

 

If you purchased the Digital Deluxe version of this game, you get additional characters and tracks. While the additional characters are a nice feature it's a shame Sega cheaped out again and decided not to gain the rights for the voice acting. They didn't even bother using sound clips from these characters. So the DLC characters are mute which is pretty lame.

I don't really enjoy Sonic Racing Crossworlds as much as the other Sonic Racing games in the series. 

Sonic Racing Crossworlds is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch 2. No review copy was provided for this review.  

Final Score - 4/10 Average

Pros -

• Large variety of Characters from Sonic & co.
• Some stages, especially the Crossworld stages, are enjoyable
• Customizable gadgets and badges for your kart helps you gain an advantage during the race but nothing is relatively new or interesting

Cons -

• Soundtrack is a hit or miss, with wacky EQ levels and annoying EDM and electronic vocal chants
• No quirks like "Team Ultimate" or "All Star" moves,  making catching up to other vehicles more difficult 
• The vehicles don't feel so different to each other, despite having a mixture of karts and extreme gear.
• Gadgets mode in the game feels like nothing new
• Some of the tracks feel smaller than previous titles
• Rival Mode being a requirement instead of a separate feature makes me feel I have less to do with the game