Review – Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

Not only is Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds a dark horse rising to take on some massive kart racing competition, it’s more than up to the task. As the first fully cross-platform kart racer (the game is on everything from PlayStation 4 to Switch 2), it takes pole position as the most accessible, customizable, and deep kart racer ever made. 

If you’re a Sonic fan, you’re no stranger to winning lately. Shadow Generations and the Sonic 3 movie both made The Year of Shadow a global success with more eyes on the Sonic franchise than ever before. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds feels like Sega and Sonic Team taking a deserved victory lap and ends up being the biggest celebration of the Sonic franchise to-date. 23 characters from across the series’ 30+ year history are playable and have built-in interactions with each other, including everyone from Silver to Jet and Zazz in-between looking to participate in the CrossWorlds Grand Prix. There’s a reason for the massive roster. You see, this time the races are multidimensional…

 

 

Developed in-house by Sonic Team for the first time ever with the help of Sega’s arcade team that’s done work on the Initial D series, this iteration of Sonic Racing is its grandest. As a longtime fan of the Sonic franchise, I was thrilled to see the return of Sonic Riders’ Extreme Gear in addition to transforming cars, trucks, ATVs, and more comprising several vehicle classes with tons of mixing-and-matching customization. This feels like taking what worked with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Team Sonic Racing, and the Riders series and combining them. Couple this with the Initial D influence of adding in a Rivals system for Grand Prixs that can make the game as easy or intense as you wish plus, items and frenzy modes to turn the tide and an equippable gadget system that can add entirely new, optional mechanics to gameplay; and you have a compelling setup for both single player and multiplayer. However, there’s a great amount of accessibility here as well with customizable controls, steering assist, auto accelerate, multiple camera options for those motion sensitive and more. It feels like Sega has created a game that both seasoned racing game fans can enjoy and those who play casually can appreciate. 

True to its namesake, CrossWorlds certainly takes its racers across worlds. Races begin across a large selection of iconic series locales like Ocean View from Sonic Heroes and Apotos from Sonic Unleashed before giving way to a choice between two Travel Rings in lap 2. The racer in first place selects a specific locale that’s popped up, Cyberspace from Sonic Frontiers or Galactic Parade from Sonic Colors for instance, or a location determined at random and that is where all 12 racers will travel to. In lap 3, the initial track is returned to but has undergone changes. This is where the much-loved influence from Sonic & All-Stars Racing comes in — What was once a road can shift to a waterway or flight section like on Chao Park and Crystal Mine or a new shortcut can manifest like on the Green Hill-adorned E-Stadium. The track design across all 24 tracks consistently takes advantage of the transformation mechanics, especially in the CrossWorlds. While the CrossWorlds are almost always flashier and feel like you’ve stepped into one of Sega’s arcade cabinet racers with all of the dinosaurs, lasers, and giant centipedes you’ll be seeing, the tracks contain numerous routes with lots of eye candy themselves. This allows CrossWorlds to provide a stimulating change to the 3 lap formula while still keeping the necessary muscle memory and narrative continuity of racing around the same track multiple laps. The tracks themselves are an ongoing story you witness unfold over two separated laps while the CrossWorld is the pace-changer in-between that keeps every race engaging and ensures mixing up strategies. Every track technically gets a third lap in the fourth race of a Grand Prix that sees you re-tracing all three tracks you just raced on in a three lap format, one lap through each track, seamlessly. In a way, this allows Sega to have their cake and eat it too, in a way that Mario Kart World both is and isn’t designed to accommodate. 

 

 

So we’ve covered that races, vehicle customization and racing mechanics are not lacking in any way here. The number of modes and ways to engage with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds similarly doesn’t disappoint. There are eight Grand Prix’s to finish in Single Player with three initial speed classes and two additional unlocked after completion of them all. There’s a noticeable difference from High Speed to Sonic Speed. Sonic definitely earns his namesake here. Rivals are exclusive to Grand Prix mode and any of the 23 characters can be your rival. While the game itself will randomly select one or a choice between two with differing difficulty levels, you can choose your rival and their difficulty level yourself. This is crucial considering you must beat all 23 characters in Grand Prix once to unlock Super Sonic. In addition, all 24 tracks have five red rings hidden through their layout and once all 80 are collected, you get rewarded. This took me back to Diddy Kong Racing’s silver coin challenges which similarly pushed layout mastery to its the forefront as an additional goal. Crash Team Racing also did this with its CTR challenges. And both of those games are great too, so we might be on to something here. 

Speaking of layouts, tracks like Coral Town and Pumpkin Mansion have some of the most unique, diverging track design I’ve seen in any kart racer and I still don’t think I’ve navigated all of their possible routes. There’s so many twists and turns to all of these tracks and this becomes important in Time Trials where beating times unlocks fan-favorite Sonic tunes for the game’s Jukebox. While you can’t customize which race tracks these songs play on, you can create playlists and choose final lap variants which was appreciated. Another layer of unlockables comes in the form of Race Park, a series of team-based and single races that see you racing against wireframe forms of the Sonic Heroes teams like Team Dark and Team Rose. Beating them unlocks vehicles and character skins. Cleverly, this brings back the team racing mechanics from Team Sonic Racing while housing them in an optional mode. Race Park is also the location of Custom Races where everything from items to speed class to laps to track and CrossWorld selection are able to be tweaked to your liking. 

 

 

Character interaction is pivotal to the Sonic franchise so I was delighted to see that accrued Donpa Tickets AKA currency can be gifted to all 23 characters. Doing so unlocks new titles and decals that are specific to that character. I think it would be cool if in the future new Rival interactions could be unlocked this way too. It is DoDonpa that we have to thank for this Grand Prix and it’s worth noting Donpa Tickets are how you purchase new vehicle parts too. The amount of character-based customization you can unlock for your vehicles is pretty sweet and really comes into play when you get to Online Races. As much fun as Single Player and couch multiplayer are, CrossWorlds is one of the most fun online multiplayer games I’ve played. Crossplay across ALL consoles ensures there’s always a lobby easily found and turnaround from voting to racing is quick. It’s also very simple to join a friend by searching their username, no matter the platform they’re playing on. There’s an addictive feedback loop of going up in letter ranks as you place higher in races unlocking you new gadgets for your license. A total of six gadget slots are able to filled with multiple licenses available for saving load-outs.

The Gadget system lends CrossWorlds an insane amount of replay value with an RPG-like build quality. Want to focus on speed? Equip a gadget that lets you hold 200 rings instead of 100 rings, effectively raising your top speed cap. Do you drift often? There’s a gadget that challenges you to release a drift just as the meter fills to get a bigger boost. Do you find that you fall off the track frequently? There’s a gadget that gifts you a boost item every time you do. There’s dozens of choices and no two races feel the same. Best of all, this allows for a player meta that is more open-ended rather than easily solved. While I hesitate to call the wacky item system balanced (Is it really in any kart racing game?), the gadget system is impressively flexible. This, more than anything, has kept me coming back to an already attractive multiplayer game that lets me utilize my years of kart racing skills. 

 

 

As a Nintendo fan playing Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds on a Nintendo Switch 2, I have to admit I was impressed with the Switch build of the game. While I’m eagerly anticipating the release of the Switch 2 version that Sega has promised is going to show the full potential of Nintendo’s new console, I had a smooth seven hours of Super Sonic Racing. 60 fps is prioritized over better lighting and draw distance I’ll admit, but the game plays smoothly especially given all of the rapidly changing action ongoing with most of the visual effects intact. The sound balancing was also admittedly much better than expected. You’ll hear a lot of the ring grabbing sound effect laid over the top of Silver shouting a one-liner like “You’re in the past!” while passing Amy Rose and Big The Cat, all while the pumping techno beats of Digital Circuit from Shadow The Hedgehog blare. All of this is a plus in my book. 

Kart racers have stood the test of time as simultaneously being one of gaming’s friendliest genres to newcomers and most competitive genres for veteran players. Sonic Racing CrossWorlds adds to this legacy by taking what was (and still is) beloved about the consistently entertaining, larger-scale track design in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and adds more depth to the gameplay. It perfects a beloved formula that unfolds across land, air and water while adding space and time for the hell of it. Boy, am I glad it did because this entry in Sonic’s racing career has set a new standard for him AND his competitors. 

 

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