What a weird title…. ANYWAYS, this is a Sonic racing game, and Sonic, rather than running, has to drive a car… that’s kinda weird, considering he can run faster than the speed of sound. He is joined by various All-Stars in the Sega library. Well, more like cult favorites, since very few of the racers could be considered actual All-Stars. And if you get the Xbox 360 version, Banjo and Kazooie join in on the fun… for some reason…

I sort of took my time before playing this, because I wasn’t sure if it would be any good, considering this is a post-Sonic 3 game in the Sonic franchise (I checked, Sonic CD was before 3), AND it’s a spin-off…

After a while I decided to rent it and sort of played non-stop since I got it… So read on and see if I really liked it or not!

Developer: Sumo Digital
Publisher: Sega
Date of Release: February 23rd 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo Wii (360 version reviewed)

Genre: “Kart” racing
Rated E for Everyone

Presentation
The graphics look pretty good while you’re racing. The tracks are all based on various Sega games, and all of them are very similar in style to the games they come from. Like, when you’re in a Samba de Amigo level, it looks like it would in the actual games. But, from closer up, the character models are a bit cheap, and the textures aren’t too high-quality. And the lighting in some levels is just crazy bad. Some are too dark, preventing you to see anything, some are too bright, making the graphics look worse than they actually are. It’s not a bad-looking game overall, the style makes up for the low-quality stuff.

I didn’t pay much attention to the music here, so I won’t comment on it. What I did sadly pay attention to is the announcer. He’s constantly speaking through every damn race, and he’s completely annoying. Maybe there’s an option to remove him, I don’t know, but if there is, it’s a must. He’s constantly screaming random shit and it just annoys you to no end. The sound effects do a fairly good job at telling you what’s happening, so other than the announcer, I have no problem with the sound design.

Gameplay
The game is a fairly standard kart-racing game. You drift, boost, pick up boxes that give you items such as weapons, boosts and shields, and the goal is to get in first place. It doesn’t do much that you haven’t seen in other kart-racing games.

What makes this game a bit different is the total lack of a brake button. Instead, what would usually be the brake button is a drift button. The drift button makes you (surprise) drift, in the direction you’re turning. That kinda confused me at first, since I was counter-steering before drifting (but that’s just a personal problem). During the drift, a small flame will appear at the back of your car. The longer you maintain the drift, the stronger the flame gets. The flame has 3 levels, it won’t go beyond that no matter how long you maintain the drift. If you hit a wall, you lose all of the power given by the drift. When you let go of the drift button, your car will boost. The higher the level of the flame behind the car when you drift, the longer the boost. It’s pretty easy to see how that can be “abused”, since you can drift again right away when you start boosting.

Otherwise, you have a selection of items. The boxing glove goes straight and bounces around, the missile is homing and will hit enemies without fault (I found no reliable way to avoid them, they’re about as annoying as a Blue Shell from Mario Kart), the shield blocks 1 hit, the shoes give you a boost, horns hit everyone that is close to you, cones are mines, rainbows block the vision of anyone who touches them, stars are homing and flip the target’s screen around, and I might be forgetting a few. Overall… well, it’s basically the items from Mario Kart with a different look. In addition to that, every character has a “unique” All-Star item. Though they basically have the same effect: they give a big speed boost, and have you spamming the A button for an attack/speed boosts, and you don’t have to steer for the duration of the item. The strength of the all-star item depends on the character. The occurence of the All-Star item depends mostly on your position in the race. If you’re in 5th or less, you have a chance of getting it, if you’re 4th or higher you basically never get it. The items are generally not too cheap, though the CPU gets all-star a lot, while you never get it because you pwn the CPU so much.

On the single player side of things, in addition to Grand Prix and Time Trial, you have missions, which have various objectives. 64 missions in total. Some require picking up items, others are races/time trials, other require passing through gates to get more time to get to the end, and various other things. They offer a bit of variety to the single player experience. And, as you do grand prix, time trials and missions, you get Sega Miles, which are used to buy characters, music and tracks for multiplayer.

Overall
Random pointless complaining about the game’s title
Why “Sega All-Stars”? They really pushed the definition of the term “All-Stars” here. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik, Amy, Shadow, Alex Kidd, Akira Yuki, and Ryo Hazuki(barely) can be considered all-stars, but the rest? I’m not denying that most of the characters are great, but some of them even I had to check where they come from. Without checking, can you tell me where Robo and Mobo, Zobio and Zobiko, B.D. Joe and Opa-Opa are from? Probably not unless you’re BIG Sega buffs. And other characters like Ulala, Billy Hatcher and Amigo are at least a bit known, but they’re not “All-Stars”… Why not just “Sega Racing”? You know, since a lot of the characters aren’t All-Stars. Especially not Big the Cat…

Impressions
As for the game itself it’s pretty fun. From what I’ve heard the online on it is basically dead, so if you want an online racing game, look elsewhere. But if you want it for single player and local multiplayer, this is actually pretty good. The single-player has time trials, 64 missions to go through, and grand prix, as well as unlockables, so with just that you have a bit of gameplay in front of you. But if you really want value for your money, getting with a group of friends and playing with them should be fun.

Not exactly a Mario Kart killer, but, if you’re looking for an entertaining kart racer and you don’t have a Wii, this is definitely something you should consider.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Fun to play once you get a good grasp of the controls
- Good graphic style where all the levels have a similar graphic style to the games they’re based on
- Some gameplay variety
- Multiplayer is fun

Cons
- Difficulty varies too much, and is completely random because of the AI
- The AI is rubber-band, and frequently annoying, but I’ve seen worst(see Split/Second review)
- Graphic quality is a bit on the low side (character models sort of feel cheaply made)
- Lots of glitches (like racers and weapons passing through the floor)
- I can’t be the only one who thinks having accelerating and drifting on the shoulder buttons is a bad idea… it hurts my fingers after only a few races

The Save Factor
The game, as of the writing of this review, costs $30, whatever version you pick. While I feel it could be worth it at that price, the Save Factor for this one will be $20 since the online is dead.

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