

These limitations permeate Team Sonic Racing’s characters and content. There isn’t a whole lot of Sonic, let alone good Sonic, to go around. This makes sense, but it leaves Team Sonic Racing with an insular aesthetic and a limited focus. Logic may reveal that Team Sonic Racing’s targeted audience wouldn’t recognize any of these relatively ancient characters and instead chose to focus on an active brand. What was once a diverse wonderland of beloved IP- Transformed had impressively faithful courses for Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon, and Nights-has been cast aside in favor of a pure Sonic & Friends experience. Gone is the Sega-wide influence on courses, themes, and characters. Team Sonic Racing could also be defined by what it does not have. Simple aerial flips risk crashing out but reward with a boost. Drifting through corners and curves, identical to its Mario Kart inception, is a skilled maneuver than can provide a turbo boost is performed successfully. Characters spout familiar catchphrases and odd traces of modernity-Sonic assumes poor play is a result of texting while driving-as they pass each other on the course. The latter, in the form of Sonic Colors’ versatile Wisps, contain familiar offensive firepower like straight missiles, a homing missile, turbo boosts, and rotating spiked balls. Courses are littered with boost pads and item pick-ups. Up to twelve characters board four-wheeled vehicles and compete in three-lap races to the finish line.

Team Sonic Racing, once again from Sumo Digital, has the unenviable task of creating another entry and closing a de facto trilogy with Team Sonic Racing.Īt a basic level, Team Sonic Racing conforms to the model of a mascot kart racer. In the hands of Sumo Digital, Sega eventually found stability in 2010 with All-Stars Racing and an All Time Top Five Kart Racer with its 2012 sequel, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Sonic Drift had more in common with Out Run than Mario Kart while Sonic R was a wackadoodle foray into bipedal sprinting and obtuse pop melodies. Sega’s attempts to do the same with Sonic-a being literally defined by speed-are as variable in quality as they are in style. The whole team aspect, which is the core of Team Sonic Racing, doesn’t make it feel like you really are part of a team and mostly isn’t all that fun.As the progenitor and king of Kart Racing, Super Mario Kart is allowed single-console iterations with minimal disparity. I never saw one race where I did poorly, and they finished even in the Top 5. When I was doing poorly, they never picked up the slack. The few times they weren’t dragging me down, they’d use my drift to boost past me and secure a number one slot in the last couple seconds of the race, which matters in say the story mode, but is also just a pretty jerkass thing to do. Maybe that was a cool idea on paper, but in execution, it just really feels like your team is a constant drag on you.Īt least playing on normal, I consistently was at or near number one for example, but my teammates were quite often placing near the bottom, and since your total team score is the most important thing (especially in say Grand Prix races in story mode that consists of several tracks), my team just usually was an albatross around my neck. How does that work in a racing capacity? You can ride a teammates’ drift to catch up and speed ahead, pass them items, and you can ideally help them this way. controlled offline, and you get randomly assigned to a team online). The setup sees you and two other racers are a team (A.I.

#Team sonic racing all characters update#
