I actually bought a new game this week to review; I shan’t be doing that a lot of the time though, I envisage myself trawling through my current games collection and thinking up new and more interesting ways of accusing them of not being good enough for the while. So I bought Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing, what of it? I bought it as a curiosity and because I have a certain soft spot for “battle-racers”, one of my first ever games was Wipeout 2097 which was a joy to play and fun even to the end of my Playstation’s life and my love of Mario Kart Double Dash has also been well expressed here, so it was interesting to play Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing.

It should be mentioned that, as a battle-racer, The controls for All-Stars are simple, intuitive and perfectly functional… and better than Mario Kart Wii. Everything seems to work and it never feels as though the controls are letting you down, only your use of them. It should also be noted that when you take damage from a weapon your recovery time is a lot less than that of Mario Kart, which is good, it means you only fall back 2-3 places instead of the 4-5 of Mario Kart, which removes the frustration of making a mistake on the last lap. The levels are very well designed and visually sumptuous, the characters all have enchanting voiceovers and the commentary is amusing enough not to get too boring after repeated play throughs. Right, nice stuff out the way, on to the problems.

The racing is actually pretty boring, beginner difficulty seems to be for chimps but then again this game is aimed at children. The game does offer you a tutorial when you put the disc in and I’m glad it did, I wish Double-Dash had a similar feature because I remember being TERRIBLE at that when I first started. The grand-prix side of it is enjoyable enough, it’s just no Mario beater. The levels are pretty enough and it certainly takes a degree of skill but it lacks the “charm” of Mario Kart by trying to ram other franchises down your throat. It’s not the grand-prix segments you should be concentrating on though, the game comes alive in the missions. They’re a little repetitive but they let you play as every character before unlocking (like some of the Super Smash Bros Melee challenges) and are a good way to spice up the normal “race until your thumbs fall off” mantra of most battle-racers. If anything, it seems to be taking its cue from NFS Pro-Street with the campaign what with the drifting, boosting and timed challenges. There are also 2 battle challenges (the last mission being one of them) which don’t serve the game too well, they’re too vague and the graphical quality of the opponents is sadly lacking making for a less than enjoyable experience although the idea is good it becomes frustrating rather than fun.

I would compare this game, in a way, to Smash Bros rather than Mario Kart. I can’t really say why but it just makes me think of melee more, perhaps it’s the campaign mode and the unlockable features, but it just has that feel to it. The unlocking mechanic has nothing in common with either Mario Kart or SSBM. I don’t know whether to hate or love it actually. You accumulate “Sega Miles” by how well you do in terms of speed etc and these can be spent on characters, tracks and music. This sounds okay but since I completed the beginners grand prix all in one go (just so I didn’t look like a cocky prick jumping in at advanced) I could buy a good proportion of the characters straight off and then completed almost all of the missions and bought the other small percentage and a good deal of the tracks along with some of the music, rendering it a little useless. I understand that this is a children’s game, but surely unlocking through beating tracks or cups at certain difficulties would be better? Or perhaps after a certain number of Sega miles you could buy the chance to beat them in a race? I just found it all too easy and thus unlocked most of the achievements by accident meaning I could trade it in almost the next day (along with fucking Risen).

One of the stylistic complaints I want to make about this game concerns the weapons as (along with most of the game) they are mostly quite bland. Everyone’s special move is the Star from Mario Kart with a different animation which is both better and worse than the aforementioned game. When you released a signature move in Mario Kart it was usually something similar to a normal weapon but larger or more of them or stronger which was good fun and meant that although stars were still better and rarer, you had a slight advantage. The weapons don’t seem to tie into any of the games either, there’s a shield which is green and as far as I’m aware shields in Sonic are blue (I know there were fire and other shields in later Sonic games, but the blue one is most iconic), so even that feels as though it wasn’t from that game. The weapons are perfectly functional, and in some cases great fun but don’t “fit”, there’s no link between them and any of the games. There are no weapons from Billy Hatcher or any of the Sonic games specifically so I’m going to assume that this is the case for all the weapons (not having played Super Monkey Ball or Jet Set Radio Gaga or whatever it’s called) and this detracts from the integration, I’m glad that Sega didn’t go for a celebratory circle jerk with the weapons but that’s kind of why people are here and it leads to a very bland but functional playing experience.

The main problem with All-Stars is that there is no real variety to the actual levels. Everything is very pretty and there are obstacles but they’ve made a bizarre decision in having 3 levels per game series (selected games series I should say) and having them all around the same theme. Nothing sets this up more than the sonic levels of which there are 3 within 3. There are 3 levels set in seahill zone, 3 in final fortress and 3 in casino zone, all with pretty much the same features, all with pretty much the same layout and preferred kart types. Also, every level has 3 laps. No differentiation, just 3 laps. Some of the missions have 2 but every single level in grand prix is 3 laps. Double dash had some levels with 8 laps, some with 2 and this made for a slightly more interesting experience whereas All-Stars feels like a slog. The only time it does get interesting is on the FUCKING MONKEY BALL LEVELS! Designing the levels around kart-types is fair enough, but making it virtually impossible to get around the circuit without being that specific kart? Fuck off. It’s this sort of badly designed feature which makes All-Stars racing so fucking annoying on occasion, especially as one of the mission levels actually ASKS you to play through all 3 monkey ball levels… in a race… only one of which I can competently do and I’m no slouch at this game.

Actually, I want to bring this up. I understand that this is a children’s game first and foremost and that the beginner level is for them and that expert level is for people who don’t have brains but small super-computers with central processors equivalent to bugatti veyrons, but it quickly becomes very easy to do (apart from the Monkey Ball levels) and I’d hate to presume that it is any actual talent at the game considering I played the demo with friends and I sucked more arse than a german fetishist. When I say “I’m no slouch at this game”, I actually mean “I have thumbs, therefore I am no slouch at this game”.

Lastly, why the fuck does Sonic need a car? I know everyone has raised this point and I can kind of see why they did it because Sonic racing on his own would be unfair, but it doesn’t combat the fact it’s fucking moronic. Why aren’t there more Billy Hatcher characters? Billy Hatcher was great and even just a little more expansion would have been nice! I’ve tried to keep away from Mario Kart comparisons in this review and I’ve tried to keep away from slagging it off for being a copy and with good reason, this is better than Mario Kart Wii by a long shot but ultimately a little bland. It’s like a ham and cheese sandwich from a sandwich shop, it’s tasty enough and it’ll fill you up for a while but you’ll never say to yourself “this is one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in a long time”. If I was going to describe this game in one word that word would be “functional”, if I was going to describe it in more than one word it would be this review. I can only recommend this game if you WANT to buy it, that sounds like a pretty tautological statement but unless you are actually interested in it then this isn’t for you, and that’s the way it is.