In the completely, uh, whelming film Star Trek V (it is no longer the worst thing Trek has done, by several light years), Captain James Tiberius Kirk asks a simple question:
…Okay, so maybe he doesn’t ask exactly this, but it’s something I found myself asking whilst playing the demo for Sonic Racing CrossWorlds. There are apparently eight(!) Sonic the Hedgehog racing games, though I am only really familiar with a previous well-regarded entry, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. I think I probably played a demo of that one too, back on the PS3. CrossWorlds has a similar system of vehicles that transform to suit the needs of the course, moving through boat, plane and of course, car forms automatically (I always thought this was a missed opportunity), but only now the whole world transforms–well, you go through to different parallel dimensions I guess–and this can sometimes be chosen by the leading racer.
Otherwise it has the usual complement of power-ups and shortcuts and twisty courses that have come to define this genre of “kart racer.” None of these are bad things, and I’m sure that in a group or online, this game is chaotic (but not Chaotix) fun. It’s just that as a single player experience, while it’s perfectly serviceable, I found myself often feeling that everything was moving a bit too slow. Sonic games were founded on the sensation of speed, so that’s an odd thing to feel. I suppose it has to do with leveling the playing field and giving players a sense of risk and penalty, but for the most part I was pretty sure that an, ahem, Lore Accurate Sonic should ditch the car and make short work of the track.
Anyway, I made a recording of my time in the demo and that is here for you to see. If you’re all through Mario Kart or whatever the latest WipEout spiritual successor is (now those games have speed), give this a shot. It did not hold my attention for long, but I am an old man, and we used to have standards. Blast Processing, even.
– VKB
