Kart racers are usually a sign of a company not knowing what to do with a franchise anymore so I rarely pay attention to them. With the exception of the granddaddy of them all, Mario Kart, they are usually sub-par. If they aren’t, then you usually don’t care about the franchise anymore. I never played a Crash Bandicoot after Crash Team Racing came out, I haven’t played a Bomberman since they had one (except the XBLA version which wasn’t really “new”), etc. This is not one particular franchise but SEGA as a whole, so should I be worried about the end of the company?
I know what a lot of you are saying “But SEGA has been going downhill and made crap for years.” I can’t argue that at all, and this is coming from a HUGE (at least before) SEGA fan. I have seen a recent resurge in good games with releases like Madworld, Yakuza, House of the Dead: Overkill, The Conduit, and Valkyria Chronicles and it looks like Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing could be a part of that list as well. SEGA hired Sumo Digital who did the fun Outrun 2006 to make a solid kart racer staring many different characters from various SEGA games.
The demo has single player and multiplayer. You can only do “single race” only and multiplayer is limited to just 2 player split screen (although the full release will have up to 4 players split screen and have Xbox Live play as well). Sonic and Banjo & Kazooie are your only 2 choices for characters in the demo. SEGA worked out a deal with Microsoft to include Banjo Kazooie in the Xbox 360 version of the game. Each has their own special they can do outside of the regular power-ups found throughout the levels. Sonic is golden and runs really fast and banjo and kazooie drop puzzle pieces everywhere blocking people or crushing them. All tracks locked except Sonic The Hedgehog’s “Lost Palace” level. Other levels shows are for Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio Future, Samba de Amigo, “Curien Mansion” which is from House of the Dead, and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg so it looks there will be a lot of variety in the full game.
The controls are nice and simple. Outside of steering you have gas with the right trigger, drift/trick with the left trigger, horn/item with A, and look behind with X. The drifting works much like Outrun 2006 to no surprise, and if you drift properly you get a nice speed boost. The graphics are colorful and detailed and runs smooth with nice lighting and water effects. This is great since a choppy running game or something that is hard to see the different paths would break a game like this, so it’s good to know it’s well done.
In the end I think that this is a ton of fun and after dreading the release of this game I am not very excited to play. I will definitely keep an eye on this and will be getting the full version. I welcome SEGA having their return to greatness and hopefully this will not mean that SEGA is done.
