Phoenix Gamer Review: Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing

Fast paced racing action at its finest!

The most recent addition to the Sega Superstars series, Sega All Stars Racing is an action packed, fast paced adventure that can be enjoyed by players of all ages. It was released last year for pretty much every modern console. We got to take a look at the Sega All Stars Racing on the Xbox 360.

Like many novelty racing games that came before it, including Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing, and the like, All Stars features brightly colored tracks, characters a and power ups. The character selection spans across a variety of Sega Games and offers over 20 playable characters including Sonic, Ulala from Space Channel 5, Beat from Jet Set Radio, just to name a few. You can even choose to play as your xbox live avatar. Each character has their own unique driving style and super attacks called "All Star" moves. These are mainly picked up if you are falling behind in a race, a sort of equalizer to keep the game fun and interesting. Other power ups that you can pick up include speed boosts, missiles, knockout gloves (unguided projectiles), stars that turn the receiver of the attack upside down, and rainbows that block the view of you opponent for a short time.

The genius of this game is really in it's simplicity. There are only 3 buttons that you use throughout the entire game; Gas, Drift, and Fire. There's no break button, and that's quite alright. The races run smoothly and fast and fierce. It's all about speed in this game. Similar to the original Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, this game puts you in perpetual motion, there's no slow down, and the only time that you will ever get stuck is if you run into something or fall off a track. Even if you fall out, the game will spit you back onto the track, still in motion so it's easy to catch up to other racers. Turbo boosts are something you will pick up early in the game as much of the game's mechanics depend on them. You drift into a turn and then let go of the drift button to get a turbo boost that will speed you up and send you flying towards the finish line.

Another spectacular addition to All Stars Racing is the beautifully rendered backgrounds and obstacles of each track. The graphics are extremely smooth and the colors, oh the colors! They all stay true to each Sega franchise they represent. The soundtrack never gets stale, not even the announcer, but you do have the option to turn him off. The announcer does come in handy during some races though as he'll warn you if someone picks up an all-star or if there's an oncoming attack (some of which you can avoid). He also cracks jokes too, some of them stupid, some of them genuinely funny. For instance, Ulala gets hit by a missile, he'll say "That's a hit on Ulala! I'm sure she gets that a lot!".

In addition to racing with up 4 players, there are also time trial and mission modes. Time trial is just what it sounds like, beat your time on each track. Something really cool about time trial mode is that there's no limit to how many laps you can do, you just keep going and going until you feel that you've done your best. Also, you can race against the ghost of your previous lap, and the one before that. Rather than just racing one ghost at a time, there are multiple ghosts on the track depending on how many laps you do. Mission mode is just as fun as the racing itself and a true test of your skills. You play as a predetermined character and accomplish set goals such as "drift as much as you can for a high score" and "battle races" where you have to knock out your opponent with selected weapons. With each 'A' rank you get, you unlock the next mission until you've completed them all. With each finished battle and mission you receive 'Sega miles" which are the games currency which you can spend in the shop to unlock characters, race tracks, and soundtracks.

Over all Sega All Star Racing has the characters, variety, smoothness, and replayability that make for a fantastic gaming experience to be enjoyed by all. Whether you're playing by yourself or with a friend, Sega All Stars Racing is a genuinely fun game and I would highly recommend it.

Sega All Stars Racing gets a 10/10.

Review submitted by Mel the Office Gamer Girl