Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing Demo Impression

Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing is a kart racing game that seems to be Sega's attempt to compete with with Nintendo's long running and highly successful kart racer, Mario Kart. To be completely honest, I wasn't expecting much going into this demo, seeing how the majority of Sega's attempts to rekindle the flame of their once highly successful mascot usually ends in mediocrity. So I was expecting to find something bland and borderline terrible, but to my amazement, the demo was actually pretty good.

All of the nuts and bolts for a good kart racer were there. Lots of different vehicles and tracks to choose from, lots of random weapons/abilities to use during racing, and a decent selection of multi-player options including both on-line and split-screen. While I can't speak on the quality of everything, (there were only two playable vehicles, one track, and split-screen multi-player options available in the demo) I can say that everything I had a chance to toy around with seemed to be tip-top.

The only thing about the game that annoyed me (and hurt the overall quality of the game) was the way All-Stars were handled. Every character has a unique and powerful ability they can use called All-Star. For instance, Sonic's all-star ability allows him to leave his kart and speed down the track running over everyone in his way, while Dr. Eggman's All-star gives him unlimited rockets to fire at opponents for a short period of time.

What bugs me about the all-star abilities is the fact that they are handed out at random as if they were any other weapon or ability. Throughout the multiple races I played, I was lucky if I received an all-star once every other race, where as some of my cpu controlled opponents would often receive multiple all-stars in a single race. I feel that the game would have been better served if each player all-ready possessed their all-star but could only use it once per race, or have to perform certain actions to build up an all-star meter.

If not for the mishandling of the all-star abilities, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing seems like it would have been a superb kart racer. Still, the game looks as though it will be a pretty good one.