Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing

I feel bad for ignoring this game for as long as I have. I mean the game has two kisses of death upon it: it heavily features Sonic and its a kart racer that star Mario characters, but the game actually manages to join the extremely small group of kart racers that could give Mario Kart a run for its money. The large cast of characters from Sega's history is delight despite the fact that I'm only familiar with the more recent franchises and it actually makes me wish that Nintendo would do something like this with their characters. The only downside to character selection is that the 360 version gets a third party bonus character in the form of Banjo-Kazooie, the Wii and PS3 get Miis and absolutely nothing, respectively. Also there are roughly 12 franchises on display in the form of playable characters, but there are 24 tracks to choose from and they only comes from the series of Sonic, Billy Hatcher, Super Monkey Ball, Samba De Amigo, Curien Mansion and Jet Set Radio. It's too bad that more series didn't have their own tracks and Sonic has 9 of em (all taking after Sonic Heroes) while the others have 3. It's not too big of a deal though, because these tracks are actually very well designed. Each one is unique and feels like the game their representing (like the loops in the Sonic tracks, or crazy twist and turns on Monkey Ball tracks) and all of them are a lot of fun to race on.

The A.I. is actually pretty smart as they are competitive and not only know how to use items, but they sometimes take short cuts too. Also unlike Mario Kart, it doesn't feel like A.I. is cheating...too much. Like every other kart racer, you can pick up items to destroy your opponents. The items are decent put there's nothing too special. There's a missile which locks on to your rivals, a boxing glove (kind of like the green shell from Mario Kart), and mines which you set behind you. However, each character has their own All-Star move which you only get if you're behind and can be used to catch back up. For instance, Sonic gets the chaos emeralds which he uses to turn into Super Sonic and knocks everyone out as he runs into them, Ryo ditches his motorcycle for a forklift and tosses everyone in the air. The main effect is mostly a boost but each have a unique side effect and the All-Star move in general is surprisingly not as unbalanced as you might think. One more thing this game offers is drifting, which you use to turn corners easier. Holding down the drift button will put you in a drift and will charge your turbo which gives you a boost upon release.

The game has some decent replay value thanks to the online option. It's fairly easy to jump in and play a few races, but I do have some problems with it, though. First off, there is a lobby and host system for the online, which feels completely unneeded. Second, you can only choose the course you want to play if you are the host. Why couldn't they have done what Mario Kart Wii does and let everyone vote on the track we all want to see? Also, the All Stars Special moves are not online for some reason. I don't know why, it would of been a nice option. Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing is an incredibly fun game and probably the biggest surprise I've had in of my expectations of a game.