Sonic Racing Crossworlds review: Speeding to the top

A few months ago, SEGA released a few tests for their latest racing game, Sonic Racing Crossworld, to make sure that the game runs smoothly for the final product. With a few test weekends and a lot of work behind it, the game is finally out, and you can tell that this game used its time wisely to fix the mistakes of the network tests. Through hard work, sheer determination, and tons of surprises, Sonic Racing Crossworlds is perhaps SEGA’s best racing game they've ever made.

 

Race through 8 different cups from the base game as you traverse through different Sonic courses, some throughout the franchise’s 30+ anniversary, including courses such as Apatos from Sonic Unleashed, to Kronos Island from Sonic Frontiers. All the way from White Space from Sonic x Shadow Generations, and even crossover tracks like Minecraft World or Bikini Bottom via the game’s DLC. There’s even some original tracks to tackle, like E Stadium and Colorful Mall. But that's not all, as the second lap of each race sends you to a different track, showcasing its crossover nature. While a lot of these crossworlds mesh together pretty well, at times, it can get confusing when you have to switch from road to water or to jet mode suddenly. 

 

With a racing game of this size, there's bound to be some racers who are bound to step up to the wheel, including 23 racers from the main game, with one unlockable if you beat all the courses on a very high difficulty. There are also two different takes on DLC racers. Some are free, like Hatsune Miku, Joker from Persona 5, and Kasuga Ichiban from Yakuza, with the game’s updates. The other take is that it takes the form of paid DLC, including some characters from the Netflix series Sonic Prime, Sonic the Werehog from Sonic Unleashed, a few Minecraft characters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, PAC-MAN, and more on the way. Each character, including the DLC ones, has its own special stats that help make racing a bit easier. For example, Sonic is proficient in speed-based stats, while Omega is proficient in defensive and offensive stats. There is a small gripe I have with the DLC characters, it's that besides Hatsune Miku, none of them speak in-game, so it’s a bit awkward to have them silent the whole race or being picked in the main menu.

 

The online version of the game has already been tested way before the game’s release in the form of Open Network Tests, but now that the game is out. It’s clear that SEGA has learned its lesson from those events and managed to outperform them with the time they had developing it. Doing quite a few online matches, and I can tell that there was no lag or any stuttering of any kind. They offer you a chance to race with other players in this game, and while the difficulty spike is kind of there, it’s not as bad as wanting to quit the game due to the extreme gap in skill. Plus, there’s even a ranking mode that lets you unlock more gadgets as you level up in the game.

 

Besides racing in the grand prix mode or the online mode, there is also the addition of a multiplayer mode, up to 4 players on the same system. These multiplayer modes include short races, 4v4v4 attack modes, and much more. I have not gotten a chance to play through these modes a lot during my time with the game, but I like the inclusion of other modes to help you not burn out over the main races of the game. Plus, you can race against teams of corrupted AI NPCs in these modes, and by defeating these corrupted teams, you can unlock new cars for you to race with, which is always a cool thing to do.

 

The overall gameplay of Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is second to none, especially given that the game was made by the same developers as SEGA’s Initial D arcade machines. They know, through alot of their titles, what makes a good racing game work, especially when going from the grounded, realistic races of their Initial D games to the sheer goofiness and off-the-wall racing of Sonic Racing Crossworlds. You have your main 4-course races of Grand Prix, the endless fun of online racing, and even some fun multiplayer events that you can do alone or with your friends. 

 

When it comes to the sounds and graphics of the game, I can say that this game makes full advantage of UE5 and how the sounds mix well into the game’s soundtrack while racing. For example, when racing on Apatos, you get to hear its remixed ost while collecting rings and dodging obstacles from other players, and suddenly you get whisked off to E-Stadium and its high-end soundtrack. The sounds all hit pretty well, the game looks and runs spectacularly, and the OST, while it has some stinkers, a very good majority of the music in this game that is very enjoyable, with new tracks getting added for every DLC or update that comes our way. 

 

In conclusion, Sonic Racing Crossworlds was made with the fans in mind as they learned their lessons from not only the past online tests, but also from every Sonic Racing game, all the way back to Sonic R. It’s a fast-paced marvel that showcases fun throughout every race, even if at times the CPU can become a bit unforgiving to the other players. It has a ton of customization for the cars and for your gadgets, 24+ courses to race on with 15 additional crossworld courses to traverse through, and an impressive character roster filled with Sonic legends, SEGA All Stars, and Nickelodeon icons. My final thoughts here are that if you want a fun arcade racing game featuring tons of iconic characters, then Sonic Racing Crossworlds is what you need to pick up.

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9/10