Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (2010)

Played as part of the Grouvee Game Club over on the Forums.

Should start off by saying I'm a bit of a Sega novice and haven't really had any experience with their legacy of games unfortunately. Had a pretty short experience with this, completing the grand prix on advanced difficulty and doing a few missions, clocking in at just over 4 hours. Had a real blast with the game though, it's a super fun kart style racer that's a brilliant alternative to the likes of Mario Kart.

No online multiplayer, but there is splitscreen! Singleplayer was really fun to play through, it really does feel like a Sega arcade game you'd find at the seaside - the announcer delivering short one liners throughout the race, combined with the sound effects and visuals popping off really scratches an itch. It's just pure fun.

The soundtrack especially is a highlight for me, every track is upbeat, pumpin and grouvin whilst you drift around the tracks, even the menu music is poppin'!

I played with a controller and it worked really well, the drifting felt nice and the overall button layout was good. The tracks are all really fun to navigate through and really lean into the drifting mechanics. There's about four or five Sega games that the tracks are all based off, which is nice but I was hoping for more games to be featured as there does feel like a significant amount of copy and paste throughout the game. That being said, the tracks all felt pretty varied as they manage to focus on slightly different areas within the repeated game themes.

If you're into all things Sega, you'll probably really enjoy playing as all the characters, buying new characters, and generally grinding everything for that completionist feel! Definitely worth it on sale!

Steam Curator

I'm extremely excited for Team Sonic Racing later this year, so I figured I would go back and see just how this series began.

The level of quality on display here in this first game is shockingly low, making this one of the lazier Kart Racers I've played.

The core of the game is solid: driving and drifting feels fun, and the all stars are inventive and a great spectacle.

The problem is that everything surrounding this core game is lazy. The same 8 visual themes are spread thin across the games 24 levels. There isn't a single unique piece of music for this game outside of the menus (all of the course themes are just ripped from other games, not even remixed). And the PC version suffers from some technical problems like stuttering.

You're better off playing the sequel.

For my full thoughts, check out the video review:

Placed 1st in all six Grand Prix cups and reached credits

Final thoughts: Really solid kart racer especially when compared to Mario Kart Wii at it's time. The track designs are solid, though I'd love to see more track environment variety (which is completely rectified in Transformed). Some turns are very narrow and are hard to do when playing the game for the first time. While, in my opinion, the all-stars are unbalanced in this game, they really add a lot more personalization to each character in comparison to the all-stars in Transformed.

Also worth mentioning the DS version is a fantastic portable version.

Side Note: I have cleared this game and played some multiplayer races around release date.

This is much better than I expected it to be. The first cup in particular was chock-full of fun surprises and visual delight, a wonderful way to revisit these SEGA characters, locales and tunes. In particular the first Samba de Amigo track really impressed me.

It loses a bit of it's luster once you realize the game recycles its themes and assets, with diminishing returns as it continues. It's fun all the way through, but everything after the second cup feel more like a remix than a full-on new stage.

If you aren't a Sega or Mario Kart fan, this game probably won't change your mind about either. But if you're both, and if you already had this in your Steam backlog somehow like I did, it should make you smile.

Platform: Xbox 360

To me Sonic & Sega Allstars Racing is the better Mario Kart (and I love Mario Kart!). I have no idea how much time I spent playing this game with a few friends (local coop). I just remember the weekend we firstly played this awesome game. I just don´t remember if we forgot to eat something ... I love it. 10/10!