Nintendo did it first, Sega did it best.
It had been established at one point that Nintendo's Super Mario Kart franchise was undisputed king of the Go-Kart racer. While the original Super Mario Kart would clearly be surpassed in terms of quality by Crash Team Racing which starred Sony's Crash Bandicoot. The franchise would go on later to plant its flag as the premier Go-Kart racer anyway. There were very few that could equal or surpass it as each sequel managed to get a little better despite the game having some annoying game play elements. Well in 2010, Sega took another shot at Mario Kart's throne with Sonic & Sega All Star Racing. I have no problem admitting that this game is a blatant Mario Kart clone. Hell, I could imagine developer Sumo Digital just taking notes of Mario Kart while their production stuff was playing the game and saying, "add that, add that, definitely that one, oh hell no drop that damn thing people hate that". But does that make this a bad game? Certainly not especially when compared to either Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart DS. Sonic All Star Racing nearly completely does away with the annoying game play mechanics found in Nintendo's racer. Nintendo may have done it first, but Sega did it best.
Game Play:
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing is a multi-player racer with some solid extra modes. The cast features many faces from Sonic's neck of the woods such as himself obviously, Shadow, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Dr. Eggman. The character roster reaches into Super Monkey Ball for AiAi, Amigo from Samba the Amigo, and many unlockables coming from games such as Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighters Jacky and Akira, Ulala from Space Channel 5 and other games. For the most part, it's a Sega fans all star line up but they could have went for more familiar faces as racers, in any case, there's just nothing to really complain about here.
The grand prix is made up of 24 tracks broken into 4's across six cups with three difficulty levels, beginner, advance, and expert, and believe me, you will notice the upgrade in difficulty as most of these races will end in some close shaves. One thing that stood out to me immediately, and this is clearly what determines All Star Racing the better racer in comparison to Mario Kart. Mario Kart could be tough, but it was mainly due to cheapness through some very unbalanced special items and a huge penalty for falling off track. There were too many ways the CPU and even very poor players could gain an advantage and put more skilled players in bad positions. This game does have various items, however, there's more of a balance. There are also drop offs but these also won't dig you a deep grave. All Star Racing tends to focus a lot more on skill, and even when a character picks up a completely unbalanced item they still have to work on their skills because if they suck, they will be right back in a bad situation.
One of the things new players will have to master quickly is the "drift" move. This adds a huge burst of speed to the kart, and this will give you that fighting chance. Seriously, once I had this move down to a science, there wasn't much of a need to rely on items for me to catch up or maintain first place; Drifting is the most important skill in the game, without this move you will never come in third place on the Expert skill setting nor will you be much of a threat on-line. The items add to the fun with many being similar to Mario Kart. There's a green punching glove that bounces off walls, red heat seeking missile, the speed shoe from Sonic games, overly loud horns to blow someone out of their groove, and a cool star that literally turns everything upside down for the victim. Each character has an All Star move that can be picked up where the kart runs on cruise control and allows the player to attack the other drivers. There are some nice specials to be found such as Sonic harnessing the power of the Chaos Emeralds for super speed, Amy bashing anyone in her path with the Piko-Hammer, and Eggman blasting everyone with missiles; there's some cool stuff here as well as lame but the great part about it is that although you will move up in the race, you're not going to cripple victims to where they're stuck in last place. There's always a chance to catch up if you become good.
The tracks are influenced by some of these characters games, and some of them are a bit too linear with minimum obstacles. People very familiar with Mario Kart may find this to be a flaw, because there just aren't enough hazards cluttering your path. I actually like this because it focuses on the racing; when I play a racing game I want to race, and there are plenty of very sharp turns and more than enough very aggressive driving to keep you occupied with the racing. The most difficult courses are found in Super Monkey Ball which really shouldn't be a surprise since those games are so hard anyway.
The racers have their own attributes chart with some of theme focusing on speed, turbo boost, handling, etc. They're very well balanced for the most part and I was able to win first place with some of them; I do have my favorites such as Amigo, Sonic, and Shadow, plus I have some I hate like Jacky and Ryo. This area comes down to the player's preference.
The extra modes have quite a bit to offer; single mode you can select any track you unlocked and you can practice there. Time trial finds you racing for time, and Missions which is by far the best, will put you on a track with stipulations that must be met. Missions is an excellent mode for practice and it helped me a lot preparing for other players and the higher difficulty when I first got this game. The game will choose a player like Amy for example, and you will race Sonic one on one without any items to help you, or you will be put on a course where you will have to drift constantly for a higher ranking. This is definitely the mission you will need the most. The best part about the extra modes and even online play is that you earn Sega Miles during your many play throughs. Sega Miles are used as money to unlock extras such as new courses, new characters, and new music. If you have people to play with, then you can unlock this stuff pretty quick.
It's not easy to find a game now online because people are likely still playing the sequel All Star Racing Transformed, but it was indeed a lot of fun when it was really live. It ran very smooth and I can't remember any type of lag. However, the four player split screen was quite weird. If you had a full house playing, for some reason the stages hazards would be gone; there will be no jumping fish, zombies or anything, no big deal to me anyway.
There are some flaws to this game I can think of. I always felt there was too much of a Sonic presence here. Sega created many characters over the years that developed a solid cult following such as Wonder Boy, Streets of Rage and Golden Axe characters. It would have been cool watching someone ride a fire breathing dragon on wheels. There also aren't enough settings from different games, although there are several variations of the tracks found here, I would have appreciated more scenery. Still, the game play is very solid and loads of fun.
Controls:
The controls are so smooth and very sensitive towards drivers with top notch handling. I think drifting and turning performs very well with characters that excel in certain areas. Others whom are weak at handling can be tough to control. I never grew a liking to those characters. The in-game tutorial teaches you how to drift, and it's easy to learn but just difficult to master. For the most part, there's no serious learning curve here and anyone can pick up and play. I also noticed being familiar with Mario Kart helped a lot. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but this game just felt so natural to play.
Graphics/Music/Sound:
This game has an amazing amount of depth in its visuals. The graphics are clean and I didn't notice much pop up, if any at all now that I think about it. The darker segments such as racing in the mansion found in House of the Dead were well handled, and it just reminded me of the Halloween holiday for some reason. Perhaps it was due to the glowing spiders that hang from the ceilings. It's just a cool track to race on. The beach segments has some nice set pieces that I noticed when the racers hit a take off ramp, and you can just take a good look at all of the scenery, and catch some good details in the mountains and ocean. The only problem here, and it can be quite disturbing too is that some times you will be moving so quickly and there's just so much depth in perspective, you may not know where to go and you will either hit a wall or just go off course. It can be a bit frustrating at times during the tighter races.
The details in character designs are present with some nice animations with characters leaping and even dancing while driving, but I enjoyed the attention to detail in regards to the vehicles. The characters of the fantasy world are riding their wacky looking vehicles, like Ulala for example, in her little flying saucer with wheels. While truly human characters like Jacky and Ryo are driving a realistic convertible and motorcycle respectively.
I was very disappointed with the audio here. It's very difficult to really hear the music because the action is so in your face. It's a shame since there are some nice tunes. It was a downer to waste Sega Miles money for the Sonic track Back 2 Back, and I was barely able to hear it. There just isn't a good cohesion between audio and game play. Sumo reused plenty of sound effects and some can sound quite out of place. This is very noticeable with Shadow, nothing he says makes sense. He would sometimes shout "Chaos" for no reason, or complain "How can this be?!" despite getting an excellent power up. I just didn't get this. The race commentator is said to be annoying for some people, but he was fine for me since he alerts drivers when someone picked up an All Star power-up. He also tosses out some funny lines.
Final Thoughts:
There's no story here in this game whatsoever. Everyone is just racing and that's not a bad thing at all. I appreciate that Sega listened to the complaints of Mario Kart fans and kicked out a Go-Kart game that focuses on racing, and not the gimmicks or penalizing those whom put in effort to get good at the game. It's a shame that Nintendo didn't bother to look at what Sega did here when they had put out Mario Kart 7 awhile back, with the same game play issues that had been plaguing it for years. Personally, when I play this, Mario Kart begins to look worse. I'll say it again, Nintendo may have done it first, but Sega did it best. If you're in a position to choose between this or Nintendo's racer, I recommend this if you want a tough challenge were skill is mostly required.
Rating: 8/10
Pros:Solid single and multi-player game play, visuals
Cons:Very weak audio, some small problems that effects game play