A streamlined racing game that is still worth your time.
What They Say:
Team Sonic Racing combines the best elements of arcade and fast-paced competitive style racing as you face-off with friends in intense multiplayer racing. Race together and work together as a team by sharing power-ups and speed boosts. Take control of your racing style – Choose from 3 distinct character types and unlock game changing vehicle customization options to suit your racing style.
Content:
Team Sonic Racing is the next SEGA-themed kart racing game that has arrived on the scene. While it doesn’t quite reach the highs of the previous entry All-Stars Racing Transformed, it does stand on its own as a great racing game that is a good alternative to Nintendo’s own Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
The most immediate feature of Team Sonic Racing is its team aspect. While there is an option to race by yourself online, this is primarily a team offering. Whether it’s online or offline, singleplayer or multiplayer, the core theme of the game is to race together with two other drivers.
I initially thought I wouldn’t like this mechanic but I was wrong. For one, the option in some way to have the more traditional racing free-for-all is welcome but the actual team mechanic helps out the game in multiple ways. For one, it helps newcomers, those who aren’t that great at racing games, and players of all ages to enjoy the game better.
This isn’t just a team-based game but it changes up and adds new mechanics entirely. If you aren’t the top racer on your team, you will most of the time see a glowing strip that your teammate will leave behind. If you happen to follow along in their “footsteps” so to speak and follow that path, you will get a speed boost.
In addition, Team Sonic Racing features items that you can collect as you drive and use. These items include shooting a rocket in front of you or behind you, a freezing laser, shield, and so on. The items are the usual offerings that won’t surprise veteran racers but what I did find odd was that the icons for the various items are sometimes confusing and take time to learn.
But regardless, back to the team aspect, a feature that I found nice is that you can share your items with your teammates and vice versa. With the press of the button, you can request or offer an item to your teammates in the middle of the match. It’s a simple procedure and notification that doesn’t distract you from racing.
What’s great is that the AI is generally pretty good in offline play like in the story mode. Your teammates will often offer items to you, making the aspect a pretty useful one, especially if you don’t have any other options at the moment. Last but not least, the other big team feature that I found useful was the team ultimate move.
A bar will charge up as you play throughout a match and then you can execute the ultimate move. It is an extremely powerful move that can honestly change the entire course of a match (forgive the terrible pun). There were several cases in the story mode where I was losing but used the ultimate move in the final lap and my entire team jumped to the top three spots.
The racing itself is good, too. It mostly feels like previous Sonic racing games. It has a different feel to other kart racing games, feeling surprisingly fast and it does take some getting used to even for a veteran like myself. The racing is still tight, though, and provides a surprising challenge to master for players.
It runs really smooth on Switch even in handheld mode with little to no performance issues that I could notice. Though I did notice that Team Sonic Racing doesn’t always look the best on Switch, it does look at least decent when it doesn’t look actually good.
The variety of modes that are offered in Team Sonic Racing are pretty good, too, with a healthy mix of offline singleplayer modes, local play, and online modes, too. There is a lot to play through in the game, especially given its price that is below the usual $60 mark.
Within the main story mode, though, there is a good bit of variety in the different races you’ll find from the normal races to Grand Prix’s to survival races where drivers are knocked off every once in a while. There is a decent bit of customization, too, with cars, skins, and more. My one issue with this aspect is with the drivers available.
There are certainly enough drivers to pick from to give a good bit of variety but it is a little disappointing that there aren’t any options outside of the Sonic franchise like it was with the last game. This is mostly nitpicking at this point but it would have been cool to see other SEGA-owned characters like Persona characters that we haven’t seen before in a game like this. Regardless, it didn’t take too much away from what is a generally great racing game.
In Summary:
Team Sonic Racing takes the series in an interesting decision that focuses mostly on the team aspect. It isn’t gimmicky at all but rather changes up the fast and deep gameplay in some good ways. The amount of modes, both offline and online, allows for a good bit of variety and fun that will keep things interesting. It is unfortunate that no other SEGA franchises get representation here like with the previous game but that doesn’t stop it from being a kart racer worth your attention on Nintendo Switch.
Grade: B-
Developer: Sumo Digital
Publisher: SEGA
Age Rating: Everyone
Release Date: May 21st, 2019
MSRP: $39.99
Platform: Switch (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One, PC
This review was done with a review copy provided by the publisher. We are grateful for their continued support.
