Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the latest entry in the Sonic Racing games, with this time a race across franchises like Persona and Like A Dragon.
SEGA and Cosmocover invited us to check out a few games at Gamescom in Germany, among them, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. And we had an absolutely great time playing the game, and can’t wait to see the full release later this month.
So, we played Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, and I gotta say, it’s one of the best Kart Racing games I’ve had the pleasure to have played in recent years. Of course, after the release of Mario Kart World, I can’t avoid comparing it to that as well, and honestly, I had a lot more fun playing this game than Mario Kart. Of course, that is also a great game, but it was just more of the same with open world, but with Sonic? It felt like a completely new experience due to some of the new mechanics, like the gadget system and the world switches that are just so seamless.
The biggest thing Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has to offer is the world switches and the new worlds from the bigger SEGA universe. The game goes over everything from the Sonic timeline with its map…. yes EVERYTHING, even Sonic 06 has a map in there that was honestly a pretty cool map, the new Sonic Frontier has one, and even Lost World was there all with accompanying characters to play as. But midway through a race, something cool happens: you cross worlds! The way this happens is also pretty unique. The player in 1st place gets to pick from the left or the right map, and I think 1 of them is always random, which I ended up picking most of the time. And it gives the races an extra layer of fun because you won’t be going across the same track each round, something a lot of racing games suffer from, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds made the perfect solution for this small issue in a big way.
Another new feature was the Gadget system, but we didn’t get much explaining about it due to already being past all the tutorial stuff and having a bunch of stuff unlocked already, but they did give us a little cheat sheet that I didn’t use. But it’s supposed to be this more RPG-like mechanic that gives you an extra boost or upgrades one of the items you can pick up during the race, like making a rocket bigger, but it can also give you some passives if I understood it right. I think it’s a nice addition for people who really want to get into it to make ur karts that much faster.
In the best way possible, the game feels like a controlled acid trip at times; it’s chaotic fun that seems like a mess but just fits together perfectly in every way possible. When you drive past some of the item boxes, you can honestly expect anything, a big missile, or someone driving quickly past you following a robot chao dropping rings, so to keep it short, there is a big variety of items that get a bit more enhanced with the gadgets. Like any Sonic game, there are rings that i mentioned before, but i have no clue what they do in the race itself, but in one of the modes in Race Park, it could give your team bonus points if you had the most rings, but this was also random becuase there were a few different ways you could get extra points in that mode.
Speaking of modes, we had the pleasure to check out the time trials, which is the mode that is in every racing game these days, where you just try to get the best time, but we also played the Race Park, which is very different. In this, you could do some team races against “rivals” which seemed to be evil versions of the characters. If you beat them a few times, you get some bonuses and tickets to buy new kart parts.
The Karts had a few different categories that each part could impact, and there were a ton. It seemed like each character had its own set of car parts that reflected the character or the game where he is from. I made a cool Persona-looking Kart, but then I ran into a problem…
I only had 1 issue with the game, and that was that Joker wasn’t playable at this build. As a massive Persona fan, this was the moment I looked forward to, so just imagine my disappointment when I saw Hatsune Miku and Ichiban but not Joker as playable characters, but of course, he will be there when the game launches!
Something I love is the amount of characters, just in the base game alone, there are so many, and with the addition of Hatsune Miku, Ichiban, and Joker, it just expands on it, and there are still more to come as well, which I’m really curious about. Of course, you also have the season pass that adds Minecraft, SpongeBob, and Pac-Man, so I have some high hopes of weird and unexpected characters there as well in the future.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds releases on September 25th (22nd if you get the deluxe edition), so make sure to wishlist it or pre-order the game right now on Steam or, of course, consoles. It’s going to be available on basically everything, current and last gen, and yes, even the Nintendo Switch 2.
Looking for more reviews to read? Be sure to visit this page and discover a wide range of informative and insightful reviews. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions.
