Sonic Racing: Crossworlds review

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is so messy and frustrating that I sometimes question why I like it so much. Items are horribly balanced, and online matches are rife with players sandbagging and hoarding all the good items until the final stretch—that is, if you can even get to that point before the game throws an error at you and boots you back to the lobby.

For a game that feels so heavily centred around its online competitive scene, it should be a dealbreaker. But Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds hoists itself up with some of the cleanest, most robust kart racing I’ve seen on PC, tracks that leave a ton of room for experimentation and optimisation, vehicle customisation I could only dream of in other mascot-centric kart racers, and an abundance of unserious trash talk that feels so on-brand for the Sonic cast (Big: “You look tense, buddy. Wanna go fishing after this?” Shadow: “No.” Excellent. No notes.)

Gotta go-kart fast

It’s certainly a game propped up by three decades of history: A roster made up of your go-to franchise mascots paired with lesser-seen folk like Zazz, Vector, and even Frontiers’ Sage. Levels from the likes of Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Unleashed have been given the “what if a bunch of cars and hoverboards were whizzing through this place?” treatment, and tracks from Sonic’s older races are back in slightly altered forms, too.

It’s basically a Sonic-themed who’s-who, with a dizzying number of easter eggs that would go right over the head of a basic bitch Sonic fan like myself (I just really like Shadow the Hedgehog), but will have longtime blue blur nerds going wild for it.

(Image credit: SEGA)

Even as someone who can’t deeply appreciate every wink-wink-nudge-nudge, I absolutely loved CrossWorlds’ tracks. I was expecting a linearity similar to Mario Kart, but was instead met with a multitude of off-road paths, verticality, and not-so-obvious shortcuts that afford loads of different ways to experiment and shave precious seconds off each lap time.

There’s a chaos in the constant-shifting nature of CrossWorlds’ tracks—bog-standard on-the-ground driving is regularly cut by segments that require more finicky drifting through the air or fighting against rip-roaring currents as I constantly jump and trick across the water.

As if that wasn’t already enough, CrossWorlds has another gimmick tucked up its sleeve: a portal that whizzes me to a totally different track mid-race. A lot of these second lap offerings only exist as just that, meaning you can’t do a full race on them. It’s a bummer, and since that’s the case I wish Sonic Team had gone more experimental with how these short, snappy offerings pan out. Glimmers of it appear in Hidden World and Magma Planet, but it never pushes them far enough.

(Image credit: SEGA)

It doesn’t help that it didn’t take long for the CrossWorlds’ novelty to wear off. Some of them are far worse than others (I hate Galactic Parade with a passion), and the transitions between regular racetracks and CrossWorlds are jarring and, more upsettingly, boring. It’s the same every single time: straight road into the portal (split into two choices), drive through the portal, a flash of white and boom. Next track loaded in. It’s uninspired, for one, but it also makes mastering each course significantly harder when there’s one less lap to practice.

It’s a crossover

Thankfully, there’s been plenty of opportunities for me to rinse the tracks over and over again, mostly thanks to the ridiculous level of customisation CrossWorlds has. It sports five different vehicle types—Speed, Power, Acceleration, Handling, and Boost—each with different designs and playstyles.

I love that the roster isn’t bound to one particular machine either, so I can happily stick a beast like Big the Cat on a dinky little hoverboard without CrossWorlds trying to stop me. There’s a ton of cosmetic stuff I can do to them as well, creating bespoke cars or monster trucks for every single racer I use. Does that mean Guy Fieri-ing the hell out of every single machine I use when I play Shadow? It sure as hell does. I love ways to make characters feel like my own, and kart customisation is absolutely the way to make that happen.

(Image credit: SEGA)

It’s not just aesthetics that CrossWorlds gives you free reign over, either. Gadgets are one of the core parts of crafting a build, and I was given a ton of options to tailor-fit my playstyle. It’s overwhelming at first—a gadget board is only six slots, and I have to unlock each one by simply playing more. There’s such a huge mix of generic and niche modifiers (like starting the race with a particular item, or increasing the chances of certain ones spawning) that I wasn’t sure where to start.

Once I started figuring out how different gadgets could synergise with each other, though—like pairing gadgets that would quickly fill up my ring count from things like tricking and dashing to give me a nice acceleration boost—it felt like I was finally able to find ways to complement my way of playing.

Of course, as is the case with these kinds of things, it suffers from a bad case of meta-brain when it comes to online play. It limits the scope of what I’m able to do significantly if I’m not toying around in a Grand Prix or Time Trial which I don’t love, but balancing something like this is always going to be tricky. It’s something that, as far as I can tell, Sonic Team has been working on making a little less meta-heavy too, which I will forever appreciate.

Error 1-2-2

Honestly, my biggest problems really do lie with the online functionality. It’s pretty poor for starters—in my time with the game I was constantly plagued by errors and booted out to the lobby mid-race for seemingly no reason at all. That makes it hard enough to stomach as is, but item balancing is by far the biggest issue plaguing Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds right now.

(Image credit: SEGA)

There was nothing more frustrating than when I was doing well in a race, only to have a slew of power-up monster trucks decimate me because those who’d snagged the items early on had held onto them until the very end of the race. It’s a balancing system that encourages sandbagging, hanging around the back of the pack and hoarding good items until it’s time to let ’em all rip and fly to the front of the pack before first place knows what hit them.

It’s a crappy strategy, one that brings the skill ceiling a number of storeys lower than it should be. It makes playing online hardly any fun at all, and I couldn’t help but find myself wanting to go back to CrossWorlds’ offline modes or close the game altogether.

I’d also argue that CrossWorlds, as it stands, is a touch on the expensive side. I have to sit here and ask myself if, had I paid full whack for this game, would I be happy about it? My stingy tendencies aside, I’d have to say no. Asking $70 for a Grand Prix, Time Trial, and barely-working online mode feels cheeky at best, insulting at worst.

(Image credit: SEGA)

Pair that with all of the DLC racers Sonic Team is chucking in like Pac-Man, SpongeBob, and Minecraft Steve (cool characters, but none of them voiced which really dampens the whole “rival beefing” system) and the price starts racking up even more. I’m not one to declare what pricepoint a game should ship with, but it would certainly be a far easier recommendation if it shed 15 to 20 bucks.

Ultimately, whether or not you should pick up CrossWorlds depends on your priority. Want robust netcode and a kart racer with a high skill ceiling? Maybe wait for a sale. Want a fun, Easter egg-laden Sonic racing game that’s ridiculously chaotic and packed with ways to fine-tune things to perfectly fit your playstyle? Those 70 dollars might be worth it.