Sonic Racing Crossworlds Review - Giving Mario Kart World A Run For It's Money

 

Sonic Racing Crossworlds is the latest entry in the Sonic Racing spin off games from Sega & Sonic Team. The latest since 2019's Team Sonic Racing. With the recent release of Mario Kart World for the Nintendo Switch 2, it feels like the 90s again with Sega and Nintendo competing against each other to see which racing game is the best.

Mario Kart World received mixed to average reviews upon launch, players complained about lack of any innovative changes, interchanging tracks in the middle of stages while removing the traditional 3 lap track race, and a big open world area with not much to do. Now Nintendo have made online mode difficult as people are forced to sometimes do the interchanging tracks only instead of traditional lap races and have limited track options for people to race on. I got Mario Kart World when I bought my Nintendo Switch 2 (it came with the console) and after completing 150cc without being rewarded anything I was severely disappointed. In general the game felt like a big tech demo for the Nintendo Switch 2. It feels incomplete and missing a lot of potentially needed updates. I gave up playing it, and haven't touched Mario Kart World in about a few months.

Unlike previous entries in the Racing series, Sonic Racing Crossworlds is developed by Sonic Team instead of Sumo Digital, who developed 2019's Team Sonic Racing, 2012's Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed, and 2009's Sonic & All Stars Racing. It's a shame because Sumo Digital developed those games well. There are 24 main tracks in Crossworlds, as well as 15 extra “CrossWorld” tracks. During the regular 3 lap races in the main game, whoever is coming first can choose between a Crossworld track or a random track to transport to, because of reasons. Think of it as how the Dr. Strange mechanic from the Marvel film universe works. It's basically that (the Sonic movies parodied this too, with the Rings transportation system). There is a large roster of playable characters. It's the biggest for a Sonic racing game, with 24 in total. Though Mario Kart World had more, it was mostly either random characters such as enemies & Cows or whatever, or variations of main characters wearing different clothes. I found this to be really annoying, because the character slots could have been used for other characters. Sadly in the new Mario Kart World, Gold Mario & Silver Mario don't seem to exist but Super Sonic is unlockable in Crossworlds  In Sonic Racing Crossworlds, we have a more simplistic character selection screen, but it is easier to access than in Mario Kart World. Every character has a rival, that you can race against. You sometimes have a choice of racing against one rival between two characters, or you can select your own. Every character's rival has their own recorded dialogue, except for the bonus DLC characters which are muted, mostly due to copyright reasons, except for Miku and Ichiban who are Sega characters. A shame it can't be a similar scenario to the Nickelodeon Kart Racers saga, where people complained about the lack of voice acting in the games, eventually GameMill Entertainment managed to get the rights to add the voice actors into Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3, and future Nickelodeon games that they also developed. I wonder if the same could be done with Sonic Racing Crossworlds' DLC?

 

The interactions between every character that you play as is interesting, although can get to become a bit tedious over time. It's a shame they don't say any catchphrases or throwback references to past games. Just a generic script of how they're aiming to beat you. Over time, the Rival system in this game feels really overdone. I don't always want to race against Rivals, I want to have a general race with everybody but sadly, you can't change it. The Rival feature is always on by default in Gran Prix mode. It does get very annoying. You can mix and match different characters to see what they are going to say to each other. I feel like Rival mode and Gran Prix should have been two different options.

Sometimes, during races, things can get a bit too chaotic and everybody smashes into you at once, or you get hit by a bombardment of items at any given time. It is very hard catching up once this happens and can affect your position. To me it seems the entire race doesn't matter, only the last 20 seconds do. This is where I learned that Crossworlds has terrible rubber banding issues. You can use the last 20 seconds of the track to your advantage. If you come last for most of the game and catch up right at the end, it's usually a good chance you can win every race this way. I noticed this in the playtest as well, in Online mode, people would let me win for the first 2 laps and on the last track, they'd all burst out in front at the last minute, so that wasn't fun. Be prepared to do a fair amount of grinding if you want to unlock all the trophies. I find most items in this game to be really useless and they don't do much to help you knock out the player in front of you, which did negatively impact my gameplay experience. 

Gadgets are basically unlockable upgrades for your vehicle, with quirks and gimmicks that can help you progress throughout a stage but they don't do much either. The advertising campaign for this game boasted that upgrading the games' gadgets is a revolutionary addition to a Sonic racing game, but i've seen this kind of feature in many other racing games before, from Gran Turismo, to Forza Motorsport, Need For Speed and so on. It's just a regular racing mechanic that they haven't used in a Sonic game before. It's nothing special. 

While Crossworlds doesn't feel as “revolutionary” as first hoped, I still ended up having more fun than I thought I would in this game. I do enjoy the traditional arcade racer. It's just a shame that there isn't any story mode in this game, but I guess we already found out who Dodon Pa is in Team Sonic Racing. That would have been a good way to unlock specific gadgets or create new ones, instead of grinding every mode on every Gran Prix cup..

 

The Extreme Gear from Sonic Riders makes a much welcome comeback in this game, although balance wise they don't feel as different to the karts.  

The music soundtrack is questionable at best and mostly annoying but it does have a couple of glorified bangers, (Cyberspace & Holoska Night Remix for myself in particular), as well as but not limited to Sweet Mountain, Mystic Jungle, and Aqua Forest. The rest of the soundtrack is a bit hit or miss and the game's audio suffers from massive compression issues. I do miss the rock music that Team Sonic Racing had let's be honest, due to the current situation & lawsuit with the ownership rights to Live & Learn, it's uncertain if Crush 40 would be doing music for a Sonic game again in the future. And that is a shame.

Basically, I found the controls of Sonic Racing Crossworlds difficult to get used to. I usually prefer the traditional racing controls, driving with the R trigger which was present in every other Sonic racing game up until now. Sonic Racing Crossworlds only uses the A (or X) button to drive and there's no way to change the controls to your liking. I found this frustrating, especially difficult when you are selecting items and driving at the same time. I recall interviews featuring Iizuka where they say they don't have anything frustrating like a Blue Koopa Shell item from Mario Kart to cause problems for players coming in first place but this is untrue. I had found several different items that played exactly like the Blue Koopa Shell in Crossworlds. One is a giant Anvil, the other is King Boom Boo from Sonic Adventure 2. If you're coming first place, King Boom Boo will launch out at you from someone else, and you'll get hit by him and his tornado gust moves, King Boom Boo only hits players who are in first place and you can't avoid his attacks.

 

The game has several different modes to offer, from regular Racing, Online, Race Park and Time Trial.

Racing is where the main game is held. Online you can play against other players. Race Park is a custom mode where you challenge AI characters. I didn't really care about this feature, and Time Trial is where you can compete in Time Trial matches against yourself. I ended up enjoying Time Trial the most after playing regular mode, because you can do the main tracks in the game in 3 traditional laps and then choose to play every Crossworld track – in full length! So from the 24 main tracks you get an extra 15!

In the next few months, if you purchased either the Digital Deluxe Edition or the DLC Content packs, new characters will be added to the main game from different franchises. These include Hatsune Miku (available now), Minecraft Steve, Alex, Creeper, Joker from Persona, Ichiban Kasuga from Yakuza, Spongebob and Patrick from Spongebob, Pac Man, and Mega Man and Proton Man from Megaman. There certainly is a lot more to offer than what Mario Kart World has, and despite some frustrating moments I ended up having more fun with Sonic Racing Crossworlds than Mario Kart World.

If you were disappointed with Mario Kart World, give Sonic Racing Crossworlds a try. It'll give Mario Kart World a run for its money.

Sonic Racing Crossworlds is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, PC and coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 later in the year.

Final Score - 5/10 Average

Pros -

• Large variety of characters from the Sonic universe to choose from
• An interesting mixture of main stage & Crossworld tracks
• Classic arcade style racing
• Time Trial mode features tracks between the main game and Crossworld tracks in full length
• Character interactions between each player and rival is entertaining, but I wish they'd say more throwback references to each other instead of regular taunts
• Better than Mario Kart World with more things to do and upcoming DLC characters

Cons -

• Driving with “A” button instead of the “R” Trigger with no way of changing the controls
• Soundtrack is a hit or miss
• No quirks like "Team Ultimate" or "All Star" moves,  making catching up to other vehicles more difficult
• None of the vehicles feel that 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