Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Review – Its dynamic!

Our rating:

By: SEGA

Version #: 1.1

Date Released: 2014-01-02

Developer: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Support

Price: $4.99

User Rating:

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Sonic has been one of the most popular toon characters on the AppStore and SEGA is making sure they always have new games ready until the fans are satisfied. After experimenting with side-scrollers (Sonic the Hedgehog), endless runners (Sonic Dash), eternal jumpings (Sonic Jump) and kart-racing (Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing), they seem to be impressed with results of the latter as they have decided to bring the sequel kart-racing game, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, almost an year after its release on the consoles. Though a little downsized from the original, ‘Transformed’ has been able to beat the competition of Shrek Kart and Angry Birds Go to become the best in the genre.

Kart racing, it is!

Don’t ask why Sonic, with all his super speeds, needs a kart for racing. Let’s just assume he is having a really bad day. In Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, we fill the driver seats in a kart race as the characters of the iconic Sonic, the Hedgehog cartoon series. We can play as Sonic, Tails, Amy, Ulala and Dr. Eggman or even as some kin SEGA characters like Ralph, Gum, Joe Musashi, Ryo Hazuki and BD Joe. Each one has his own kart, colours, power ups, comments and actions during the race and the only goal is to reach the flour-line in the least time.

Its go time!

Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed offers three modes of gameplay – The Single player, Multiplayer and Daily challenges. Single Player again includes the World Tour and Grand Prix – The former has five tours of about 12 events each while the latter sports five cups of three consecutive races each.
Daily Challenges provide a set of five unique and hard races which can be completed to heap up points and xp. In the Multiplayer mode, you can invite your friends or call upon other GameCentre users randomly to a race of four. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to go live yet, as the matching for AutoPlay never seems to get completed. Hopefully, the issue will get resolved soon. You can also login via Facebook to share achievements, challenge friends and publish scores.

Each track is an unique environment like a ship dock, a water park or the sea side, with a challenging path filled with dragons, piranhas, honey bees, pits, ship bridges, rolling balls and more. You have the basic steering controls with auto-accelerate and a right button for drift. Occasionally, you pick up weapons like remote car, fireworks, missiles and sand storm which can be used to attack other cars, sort of reminding us of the Death Race movie and the Table Top Racing game. Do whatever it takes to make it to the podium – whatever!

Transform!

Now to the major highlight of the game which makes it stand out from the prequel – the wonder of Transformation. Both your racing track and the kart you’re driving, can change its shape and function (transform) during the course of the race, thus imparting the name.

For the first two laps, you have a certain normal track and the moment you step into that final lap, Voila! you see the track either crumbling to dust or majestically flowing away, revealing an alternate path. And in the event of that occurring, your car just turns into a boat or a plane to evade the situation. You can pass through the checkpoints on water or in the air, to rejoin the original track later at some point.

The other stuff
Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed is a mixed bag when it comes to execution and user experience; but the goodies over-weigh the other pan. The interface is great, keeping things simple and straight forward. The graphics is cartoony, which I guess, is the whole point and the sound effects & background scores are nostalgic, which adds to the childhood rush.

The major flaw is of course, in the control system. The default controls are steering-like, where you slide the button to a side to move. Though not exactly the same, it is similar to the GTA Vice City controls. The tilt controls are far better but still, separate right and left steers are something you’ll miss, especially when you’re playing on your bed.

Though the tilt controls were ‘ok’ on road and water, it failed miserably in the aero mode. A slight mishandle would throw you into a perpetual climb and you just go up & up till you’re stuck at the imaginary bounds. It goes into some kind of loop and there is no way to straighten your ride – Believe me, even rolling all over the bed with your iPad doesn’t help (What? I was desperate)! The only way is to close the app and start over again!

I also had some difficulty in getting used to the drift button. In conventional games, we have a handbrake button and you have to steer right or left while tapping it, to do the drift. Here, we have a dedicated drift button which can make you skid even on straight roads. So turning right or left will cause you to over handle and crash into a dummy. I got used after sometime but I prefer a standard brake button rather than a special drift button.
Though in-app purchases are present, they are hardly needed – unless you really suck in driving!

Thumbs up!

With its unique gameplay, transforming rides, nostalgic visuals and iconic characters, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed is a great piece of code. The issues with the controls and multiplayer modes will hopefully be fixed soon and you’ll have the complete winner. The abundant variety of content will grab hours & days out of your life and is hence, worth every single penny – just go for it!

Tips

• Tilt controls are better than the conventional ones
• Try not to waste your coins on Jackpot games in the loading screen.
• Always choose harder routes as they can give you the edge, once mastered.
• The power ups can be used against enemies in the back too. Just swipe down over the icon!