Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (2025)

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds delivers. It's fast, it's crazy, it's fun.

While it doesn't offer the same polish and production values as Mario Kart World (yeah, I got this far before making the comparison), it's focus on good, memorable tracks and very SEGA-esque drift-heavy arcade racing makes me prefer it. The drift mechanics took some time to get used to and the gameplay feels really chaotic at first but, after a while, things start to gel. Once you get in the swing of things, pulling some crazy drifts and fast laps in the fastest class feels great. Tha game also has pretty nice progression, where doing different game modes unlocks you different things. For example, doing time trials opens up new tarcks from past Sonic games to listen to during races.

Also, the game has some nice original ideas. The big new thing is, of course, the "CrossWorlds" mechanics, where you do one lap, then teleport to a new track for the second lap, and then return for the third lap to a slightly different variant of the track you started in. It's works quite nicely, and makes races more varied. Then there's the badges you can equip, so you can make a different "build" for your races. The game also has a "rival" mechanic, where your character gets a rival for each cup you play. Basically this amounts to your character and the rival thrash talking to each other, but there has been quite a lot of effort put into the interactions between different characters. Also, while it's not a totally new thing, it still feel kind of novel to switch between a car, a boat and a plane during the races.

To top it off, the soundtrack of the game is immaculate, and the game doesn't look too bad either. At least the Switch 2 version is pretty solid. The game also has some pretty cool cross-over DLC characters and tracks with various SEGA and non-SEGA franchises (although the DLC characters are completely silent).

Recommended.

Played the demo for a bit. I like Mario Kart World but have enough issues with it that I am definitely open to a competitor. Compared to Mario attaching open world roads to the “real” tracks, it could be argued that Sonic does a slightly better job at adding variety with its cross-world mechanic. The second lap seems to always be replaced with a lap on another track, then the final lap is back on the original track but with some slight changes to further mix it up.

It’s cool but IDK. Call me crazy but I just want these games to do 3 normal laps on one dang track that I can sit there and have a predictable self-contained experience with. Otherwise I find the game slightly less nice to interact with in small ways compared to Mario Kart—it’s hard to evaluate that for real when I have 25+ years experience playing MK, but things like the boost at the start of the race, the trick system, drifting, customization, they’re different in ways that just don’t feel as good or simple.

All stuff I could get used to easily enough, but as someone who plays a kart racer only pretty infrequently with friends and family in a local setting, I think I’d struggle to really sell this to those groups as a replacement for Mario. I do think that those who play these games a lot more or who prefer Sonic’s characters will enjoy it. It’s a fun-feeling game generally and has some nice colorful tracks, nothing really to say against its fundamentals.