Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds review: "Even more frantic than Mario Kart World, this has the mileage to be a karting favorite"

With Mario having just shown how karting is done with Mario Kart World, and so very fresh in the mind, Sonic Team has its work cut out to make Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds a success. When the kart racer sub-genre is perhaps the most universally playable of all racing games, you'd expect it to be immediately fun when you start to play – but this actually isn't. It takes a couple of hours to really start enjoying it, but it gets better the further you get from the starting grid.

Whether it's Disney Speedstorm or, indeed, Garfield Kart, most karters have you picking a favorite character from the represented series to tear it up on the tracks using offensive and defensive items, all while enjoying series references and cameos. In Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, however, the relationship is a little strange. Outside of the blue blur, representation of other Sega series is limited. Not even NiGHTS waving a flag. This isn't (yet) a Sega All-Stars game in the slightest, so those expecting the thrills of the all-timer Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed that had racers drifting around exploding Skies of Arcadia levels and rocketing down Jet Set Radio stages may begin disappointed.

Instead of tracks themed on Panzer Dragoon or NiGHTS into Dreams, you only get modern Sonic themed main tracks, almost as if 1998's Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game to exist. That's actually a problem because a lot of the 2000s Sonic games' reputations are questionable, and love for them isn't exactly universal. And with a 12-kart grid comprising bosses from Sonic Lost World on Wii U, Cream the Rabbit from Sonic Advance 2 on Game Boy Advance, and Espio and friends from Sonic Heroes (though of course I know they technically appeared on 32X first in Knuckles' Chaotix), it's a bewildering band of rather niche characters on less-than-iconic tracks. More Sega (and Atlus) characters are coming in October, so the focus will widen soon as more monthly characters are released across free updates and paid DLC, but right now you might baulk at the choice of content.

These misfits do at least talk to each other properly, which makes a big difference to how the game feels. There's a big emphasis on rivalry so, before the races, the characters talk to each other with commendable scripting that references previous run-ins. They also shout out little soundbites as they race, like Sonic mentioning how great the chocolate sundaes are in Apotos from Sonic Unleashed. While some voice clips are over-used (how many times must we hear Espio talk about being a leaf on the wind?), generally it's all well voiced.

Nailing the fundamentals

On the track, the driving's decent but not amazing. Basic control of your kart is simple enough, if a bit slow to begin with, and features a drift button that you hold down to charge three levels of boost, just like in Mario Kart World. However, you can't take every corner flat out like in that game, which is annoying at first as you clatter along the guardrail on the outside of turns, dropping rings in your wake. Knowledge of the 'racing line' will actually help you here, which is rare in a kart racer, and nailing a sequence of corners feels great.

There is a start line rev counter microgame where you aim for the green segment to get a boost start, just like in Disney Speedstorm. Rings work like Mario Kart's coins too, only you can collect 100 or sometimes more to increase your top speed. Collecting them doesn't otherwise count towards anything, which is odd. Instead you collect 'Donpa tickets', which are awarded for ticking off various criteria like beating a rival, collecting the most items, or finding all five red star tokens in a single race. The shop lets you buy kart decals and upgrades and there's a 'friendship' feature where you can gift tokens to a character to unlock various levels of prizes like decals and player titles for displaying online.

But as with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, there are sections on each track that let you take to the sky or drive a boat. Some of these sections are optional or can be extended past the first vehicle change gate, which is nice. The flight controls are excellent and easy to get to grips with, but the boats are cumbersome when turning tight corners. You can charge up a Hydro Thunder-esque jump out of the water, too, which is necessary for collecting all the red star tokens and for hitting shortcuts. The water effects are great, especially when rushing down the rapids towards a dinosaur-filled jungle, complete with a view over the tree canopy at the start. The game certainly knows how to make a spectacle, constantly throwing something new your way.

There's a perk system of 'gadgets' that expands as you complete races, where you can add special traits like a 4th level of drift boost, increase the chances of attack power-ups, or start the race with the monster truck (which is the equivalent of Mario Kart's invincibility star). It's fun to manage the available slots on your ever-expanding gadget plate and you can save several different load outs for quick access, which works well.

Sonic rivals

After a while, it becomes clear that the single-player experience is all about beating your rival, who will zoom off ahead for the first two laps. The rival is chosen for you before each race, though you can switch to someone else if you prefer, and also raise or lower their skill level, though that means less in the way of rewards when you beat them. You have to beat all 23 rivals to unlock Super Sonic, who is predictably impervious to attacks and thus can't be used online. But it does make finishing up the rest of the game that much easier.

It took me some 13 hours to win every Grand Prix on every speed level – though you don't have to play slower speeds if you can win faster ones – and to collect all five star coins on every track. After that, all that's left is removing the Donpa ticket icon from every Grand Prix you retried, and trying to get the 'cup with handles' icon by winning outright. That took me to 17 hours, which didn't yield any further rewards except my own satisfaction. Not even a PlayStation trophy, though that might come when the two greyed-out Grands Prix are added in a few weeks.

It must be said, the experience does start to get samey as you replay Grands Prix to do all this. The grind is real. But at the same time you do enter a sort of trance state, starting to perfect your driving and item use and it's always enjoyable enough. I've had a lot of fun just careening through lines of rings, flipping over every jump and absolutely smashing up the opposition as Super Sonic. Yes, he's invincible – I earned the right and I'll enjoy it, OK?

It's important to note that the initial three speed tiers are all quite slow. But when you unlock the fourth speed class – Super Sonic Speed – suddenly the game is extremely fast. The third tier should really have been somewhere between the two because the leap is incredibly pronounced and makes the old fastest tier seem sedate. But it is a welcome literal change of pace as you start to become overly-familiar with how the game works. Despite the speed, the racing never feels as chaotic as Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 or Disney Speedstorm, but certainly more frantic than Mario Kart World or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Porous and yellow is he

So what of the 'CrossWorlds' hook? It's a nice idea, reminiscent of Ratchet & Clank's world hopping on PS5. At the end of the first lap, the leader gets to choose either a different, set track to race for Lap 2, or a random world. The transition is impressively seamless (except if you fire a weapon that should land on the other side of the portal, it sometimes doesn't). The variety is cool, and returning to the original world for the final lap comes with some exciting changes to the environment, like museum exhibits coming to life, or new portals opening up granting access to hidden star tokens that makes it feel like the race continues to evolve.

But these mid-race excursions are not the only use of the 'CrossWorlds' idea. Locked away at launch are tracks and characters from different intellectual properties, namely Minecraft and SpongeBob Squarepants. This gives Sega the ability to keep adding to the game over time, crossing over with other game worlds and bringing in fans from non-Sega franchises.

Hopefully there will be more Sega series added too, because levels like the After Burner carrier from Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed are sorely missed here. It's nice in a way to just focus on Sonic at launch, but without Green Hill Zone or Chemical Plant, it does feel like classic Sonic has been retconned at this point. Surely that won't be forever.

The online servers were only switched on late in the review process, and so far they work well, though matchmaking understandably took a while due to the pre-launch player numbers. A couple of gadgets have been disabled for online matches at present due to problems with them in online races, but the vast majority are present and correct. Races so far have been lag free, and it's interesting to note item boxes respawn almost immediately, like they do in Mario Kart World, whereas there's quite a long pause in offline races. That at least means plenty of weapon-throwing action. There's a ranking system based on point accumulation, and the various alphabetical tiers should make for skill-based matchmaking once it all shakes out. You can invite up to three friends to play online with you, and offline sports a four-player split screen mode for local play for traditional multiplayer karting fun.

From a technical standpoint, the game runs perfectly on the base PS5, without any slowdown or noticeable draw-in, resulting in a very good-looking game. It isn't always beautiful, however, with some of the art style looking a bit naff, and it arguably doesn't look as good as Mario Kart World overall, even with the extra power of PS5. Nor is it as obviously wonderful as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which is essentially a Sonic version of OutRun 2, so you might want to try before you buy. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is good, but before more content is added it's harder to recommend the high entry price.

Inflation aside, this is a very playable, well-designed racer that should only get better with time. It's not quite as convincing as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Mario Kart World, nor as polished and over-the-top as Disney Speedstorm, though at least this one isn't obsessed with loot and microtransactions. It's just as Sonic himself would declare after a celebratory bit of breakdancing and a flip before freezing his pose in place: "Yeah, not bad."

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