'Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing' review: Hazuki All-Star Racing!

I mentioned last week that I was due to review Heavy Rain and Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. Well, having met my commitment to the SONY title earlier in the week, I can now turn my attentions to this fun piece of SEGA fan service from Sumo Digital. Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing (with Banjo-Kazooie - on 360) is the latest in a long line of cartoony kart racing games inspired by the original 1992 game, Super Mario Kart. When I say Sonic & SEGA is “inspired” by Mario Kart, I mean it rips it off wholesale. The power-ups are more or less like for like, with red homing missiles instead of red homing shells, green boxing gloves instead of green shells and mines standing in for banana skins. It is unquestionably derivative and unoriginal, but it remains a lot of fun.

For a start a SEGA fan like me is treated to a range of playable characters from across SEGA history, with characters from every SEGA platform, as wide ranging as the Master System icon Alex Kidd and Opa-Opa (the star of the 1985 coin-op Fantasy Zone) to the Bananza Bros from the Mega Drive game of the same name and even including cult hero Ryo Hazuki, from the masterful Dreamcast game Shenmue. SEGA enthusiasts will also recognise much of the music used in Sonic & SEGA from games such as Sonic Adventure and Jet Set Radio Future. However, the game is less of a love letter to SEGA than Smash Brothers (the beat em' up which allows you to play as a range of Nintendo characters) is to Nintendo, as that title allows you to unlock far more (in terms of characters, stages and collectable items) than Sonic & SEGA does. It is disappointing that more time wasn’t spent adding unlockable character art (or something of that type) to the game, as once you’ve played Ryo Hazuki and gotten into his fork-lift truck, there aren’t really any more Shenmue references awaiting you as a hungry fan. A collectable model of an obscure Shenmue character (like Ine-San - pictured), in the way Smash Brothers does with Nintendo characters, would have provided that extra level of fan service the game needs to appeal to SEGA fans.

Indeed, Sonic & SEGA doesn’t try very hard to SEGAise every little detail in the same way Mario Kart and Smash Brothers do for Nintendo. Why are the power-ups red homing missiles and green boxing gloves? The shells and mushrooms in Mario Kart come from the Mario games. Whilst the Sonic & SEGA equivalent of the mushroom boost is a pair of Sonic’s speedy shoes, the other power-ups don’t seem to be SEGA-related at all, which is disappointing. How much effort would it have taken to turn the "confusion star" power-up into a picture of Mega Drive hero Ristar? A friend of mine at IQGamer told me that he thinks the game doesn’t have personality in the same way that Mario Kart does, and it’s hard to really disagree with that statement. There are some nice touches to be found, like the speech bubbles which indicate the objectives during mission mode, which are clearly stolen right out of SEGA’s OutRun arcade racing series, but they are few in number.

These gripes aside, I really enjoyed Sonic & SEGA as the Mario Kart rip-off it is. I played the 360 version, and it is great to have a colourful, fun game on that console in contrast to all the grim shooters. The courses look great, especially the Sonic-themed Ocean Ruin, which takes you through a translucent glass tube under the water. The slide mechanic, which again owes something to the slide and boost mechanism from the Mario Kart series (as well as SEGA’s own OutRun) works well and once you’re used to it you can naturally slide into the harshest bends and boost ahead of your rivals. The trick and boost mechanic is stolen wholesale from Mario Kart Wii to good effect, as performing a trick whilst airborne grants your an additional speed boost.

There is a pleasing variety to the games (60+) missions, a decent system for downloading pretty much anybody’s ghost on the time trials and the obligatory championship mode, with three difficulty settings (of course), is also pretty strong. Whilst I would have preferred there to have been more unlockables, there is still plenty to do in Sonic & SEGA. I’ve played it, across all the modes (including online and local multiplayer) for around seven hours now, and I still have half the missions to do, the majority of the time trials to attempt and I am yet to master the hardest difficulty in the cups. If you are looking for a fun racing game which offers 4-player split screen multiplayer (a rarity in this day and age) and an atmosphere of cartoony fun, then I would seriously recommend you play Sonic & SEGA.

Ultimately, how appealing Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is will depend on which system you own. If you own a Wii and don’t already have Mario Kart Wii, than I’d suggest going for Nintendo’s more polished title instead. Similarly, whilst the DS version is surprisingly pretty and plays quite well, DS owners can play the excellent Mario Kart DS, as well as a perfect port of the classic N64 Kart-clone Diddy Kong Racing, which for my money is the best option. Sonic & SEGA really shines as a 360/PS3 game, where the only other option is DreamWorks Madagascar Kartz. Without Mario Kart on these systems, Sonic’s pretender is as good as you are going to get (although ModNation Racers may best it on PS3 later this year) and aside from the aforementioned Diddy Kong Racing (which was basically a re-skinned Mario Kart 64 anyway), it is by far the best Mario Kart clone that I have ever played.



However, it is with a curious sense of survivor guilt that I enjoy this game. The great studios behind the original games referenced in Sonic & SEGA either no longer exist (Smilebit, Hitmaker, United Game Artists) or are a shell of their former glory (Sonic Team, AM2) and it strikes me as cynical that SEGA have no interest in making new entries in many of these series (Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio) but are perfectly happy to pimp them for an easy buck here. What a slap in the face it must be to somebody like Yu Suzuki (creator of Afterburner, OutRun, Virtua Fighter) to hear that SEGA don’t want to conclude his Shenmue trilogy, but they would rather like to see Ryo racing Sonic on a motorbike! Gee, thanks SEGA. If you really want to please fans, this isn't going to be the way to do it. Sorry to end the review on that down note, but as much as I enjoyed Sonic & SEGA, I’d rather be playing a new entry in any of the classic series themselves rather than a derivative Kart-clone, however fun (and this game IS fun).

Check out footage from the German version running on a top-spec PC, below (thanks to the Fr3akDeluxe YouTube channel):




Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing is out now on PC/Wii/DS/PS3/360 (not PSP?) and is rated '7' by PEGI. It really is a lot of fun.

Full thoughts to follow...

Just a quick post to say I am playing through Heavy Rain (PS3) and Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing with Banjo-Kazooie (360) as of today. It may take a couple of days to get far enough through the pair of them that I can post a review, so in the mean time I will leave you with my initial impressions from having played both of them for around four of hours:

Heavy Rain: More like "Heavy Handed Drama". In fact, the first trophy I recieved thanked me for "supporting interactive drama" so it has certainly nailed its colours to the mast. To start with the dialogue is cliche, drawn from every thriller movie ever made about the hunt for a serial killer. The voice acting is only one notch above Shenmue in terms of how natural it sounds (which I quite enjoy because it makes me laugh, so I'm not knocking it there).

I suppose this next comment is a SPOILER. The opening section where you lose your son as Ethan seems to demonstrate the best and worst of the game: there is nothing else like it, as you genuinely feel lost in a crowd, unable to get to your son, and it is a nightmare. However, it is also faintly ridiculous in terms of plausibility (Ethan allows his child to wonder off twice in two minutes, and not only does his kid disobey him by leaving his side, but he crosses the road outside the mall for some unknown reason)and because of the heavy handed way in which your sons red balloon floats into the sky after he is killed. It just made me laugh, which isn't the reaction David Cage wanted, I'm sure. It certainly isn't how I wanted/expected to feel playing this game. It is also oddly un-engaging as you never really feel in control of anything, just resonding to occasional button prompts and lurching ever forward with 'R2'. "Interactive drama" is about right, as you don't decide where to go or what to do there, with most decisions being pointless (orange juice or coffee?) and with most areas (so far) not letting you leave until you have found the important plot point.



Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing: This much more traditional game will not win anything like the plaudits of the above, but has still been brilliant fun (so far). It looks lovely (with notable frame rate issues) and plays just like Mario Kart, although is obviously as derivative as that sounds at its heart. I am just happy to be playing something on my X-Box that doesn't involve shooting someone through the brain in an alleyway or something. The cast of SEGA characters and the recognisable music have filled me with a nostalgic glee I never get from Smash Brothers, I suppose due to being a SEGA kid at heart.

On the negative side, the game doesn't go as far as Nintendo's Smash Brothers in really offering content to the fanboys. There is no unlockable art or models or anything like that: just characters (each with a little piece of biography), courses and music tracks are there to be earned. I never usually care about this sort of thing, but I would have loved it here. Also, in my first few games on X-Box Live it seems that the game may share a problem with Mario Kart Wii's online multiplayer: races tend to be dominated by one player who goes so far ahead you never see him again, whilst the rest of the pack blow each other up. Maybe I'm just not good enough at the game, and it's my fault, so I'll just keep trying!

Two very different games, as you can tell, with one trying to develop and evolve the medium with something a bit different, whilst the other is attempting to be a decent and polished example of a tried and tested formula. Anyhow, come back in the week for full and fair reviews of both!

'Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll' review: Monkey Balls...

I am quite conscious that, so far, I have reviewed two “mature” games, both of which involve a lot of shooting in dimly lit corridors (I am of course referring to Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2). I therefore thought that it would be a good idea to make my next review a Wii game, with a more casual (less bloodthirsty) audience in mind. I am also aware that I’ve been giving SEGA a rather easy time of it lately. First I talked up their new 2D Sonic game, then I charitably compared one of their biggest flops (Shenmue) with one of this year’s most anticipated titles (Heavy Rain), before going on to praise the demo of (what is sure to be) a fairly average Mario Kart-clone in the form of Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing. In the interest of balance, it seems only fair that I now take SEGA to task over their most recent release: Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll, on the Wii.

For those unfamiliar with this particular franchise, the original Super Monkey Ball was a rather brilliant Arcade cabinet game which became a successful and well-received Gamecube launch title back in 2001. The game basically sees the player take control of a monkey in a gumball. You must guide this monkey to the end of each level within the time limit whilst avoiding falling off the stage. Effectively you were not so much in control of the monkey itself, but of the level, tilting it so as to cause the monkey to follow your chosen path. It was good fun and was a decent party game as you could easily pass the controller around upon failing and give somebody else a go. Since then, SEGA has released a number of sequels to varying degrees of success.

I was relatively excited by the prospect of this new Wii iteration of the series as it employs the Balance Board peripheral (hence the word “Step” in the title) and whilst a few mediocre titles have so far tried to incorporate Nintendo’s fitness controller, Monkey Ball is arguably the first respectable games franchise to give it a try. In theory it is a good fit. As anyone who has played Wii Fit knows, the Balance Board is sensitive at detecting changes in weight distribution and this should lend itself to Monkey Ball well, as you tilt your body to tilt the level onscreen. But whilst this works in theory, in practice it is far too sensitive for its own good, rendering the game’s harder stages impossible. I was able to struggle through and complete the game’s two easiest “worlds” (sets of 10 levels) using this control method, but as the game progressed it became clear that I would need to switch to the Wii Remote.

It is a great shame that the Balance Board option doesn’t work as hoped. However, when played with the Wii Remote, Step & Roll handles fairly well after a bit of practice, and the difficult later stages become much easier. This is another problem with Step & Roll. It is too easy. With only 70 levels in the main mode (compared with around 300 in 2005’s Super Monkey Ball Deluxe on the XBOX/PS2) the game is far too short and even the hardest of the levels are quite simple to beat. Furthermore, losing all your lives results in being given the option to continue from the same point... which is completely pointless. Why bother with having lives when they are so meaningless? And when you (inevitably) complete each 10-level world, you are treated to an unskipable end credit sequence, each with it's own delightful J-Pop song (including lyrics about “living your dream” and “following your heart” like every piece of J-Pop ever recorded) which has nothing to do with guiding a monkey to the end of an obstacle course, whatsoever. The first time this happened, after world one, I thought I had completed the game within ten minutes.

Not only are Step & Roll's levels much easier than those in earlier instalments, they are also less fun to play. Whereas the original games were focussed purely on remaining on the level by avoiding holes, often building up a lot of speed, Step & Roll is mainly about the finesse required to roll around obstacles planted over every inch of each stage. Totems, rocks and blocks of ice are scattered throughout the levels and buffeting off them is not fun and just breaks any hope of building momentum. The game is best in the few levels where speeding from one end to the other is still possible and when this is possible, the game is still quite brilliant fun.

Whilst the main mode is unreasonably short (I completed it within a couple of hours), there is the option of co-operative play to add a little replay value to those courses, as well as the allure of besting your score from last time around. There are also around 20 multiplayer mini-games to keep you and your friends entertained. At least that is the intention. Bizarrely none of these mini-games employ the Super Monkey Ball gameplay mechanics at all, instead requiring you to: shake the Wii Remote to knock your friend off a pedestal; hold the Wii Remote like a steering wheel for a terrible Mario Kart-style game; waggle the remote to pump air into a balloon and so on. None of the mini-games have anything to do with Super Monkey Ball, or the concept of "fun". Take a look at the video (below) to get an idea about just how fun these mini-games are for yourself.



All in all, Step & Roll is not a bad game. It just isn't as good as it should/could have been, especially with regards to use of the Balance Board, which seemed like a match made in heaven. The originals were superior games and people who haven't played either of the first two instalments in the series would do better to utilise the Wii's Gamecube disc compatibility and find an old copy of one of those instead. However, if you can't find those games or if you have played them and are hungry for more Monkey Ball, the single player is fun (if short) when played with the Wii Remote. People looking for a fun multiplayer experience should probably stick to Wii Sports or buy a more polished dedicated mini-games collection (Raving Rabbids or WarioWare for example) and avoid what's on offer here.

Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll is out now on Wii and is rated '3' by PEGI. For another piece of SEGA-related news, check out the latest news on Sonic 4 at IQGamer.

Rejoice for the SEGA All-Stars (and, again, that bloke from Shenmue)

After railing against console-brand-biased fanboys earlier this week, it is time for me to be a big hypocrite and don my SEGA fanboy hat. Last night I played the 360 demo for “Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing” and loved it. I know Sonic’s track record for spin-off titles isn’t great, with lacklustre games like Sonic Riders and All-Stars Racing developer Sumo Digital’s previous effort SEGA Superstars Tennis scoring poorly with reviewers. However, from what I played, this new Sonic racing game was pretty good fun. In the same way that Sumo’s Sonic tennis game was based around the principles of SEGA’s Virtua Tennis franchise, All-Stars Racing seems to have been based on the driving mechanics of the arcade series Outrun, in that you must drift to turn corners. As a pretender to the Mario Kart throne, the game seems to be a lot better than it has any right to be and may provide PS3 and 360 fans with the opportunity to enjoy a decent game of that type without having to go cap in hand to Nintendo.

As I said, though, I am a bit fanboyish about this topic. Most of my time playing the demo was spent gawping at the references to other SEGA games, most of which come from the Dreamcast era and pointing them out to my girlfriend (who couldn't care less). There are playable characters and stages from Space Channel 5, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio and Samba Di Amigo and nods to other neglected games like Chu Chu Rocket. I also loved the fact that the music for the Sonic-themed stage of the demo was taken from directly from Sonic Adventure. I hope all the stages take their music directly from these old games. I couldn’t tell from the demo whether Shenmue’s Ryo Hazuki is voiced by the legendary Corey Marshall, but I remain hopeful (despite the fact his IMDB entry doesn’t list the game).

Basically, as you can tell from that last paragraph, a fair slice of my enthusiasm for this game comes from loving many of the franchises which it is cynically cashing in on. I knew I’d like that aspect of the game when it was first announced (it had me at “hello”), but what surprises me is that the game seems playable enough for me to actually buy it. It seems off though that this game should be released now and continue the Sonic Adventure-era branding of Sonic, seeing as SEGA are trying to bring the franchise back to its roots and put an end to this kind of crap. Anyway, enjoy the video of Shenmue's hero getting his race on below:



Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing is rated '7+' by PEGI and comes out in Europe on February 26th... which come to think of it, clashes with the release of Heavy Rain.