GAME REVIEW: SONIC AND ALL STARS RACING TRANSFORMED

This is a racing game featuring Sonic. But it's not racing like Sonic running as he usually does, it's a vroom vroom racing game. A driving game. Sonic drives a racecar. We can't say anything funnier than the concept itself. Where did Sonic buy his car? We didn't even know Sonic had a license! And he got a car that like, looks like him.

We have played this game a lot, mainly because it has couch multiplayer. Over the years, we've built up a whole lot of, uh, personal lore about it. About the game with Sonic driving a car.

We like to call it "Sonic and the Secret Racecars", but the official name is Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed, a fact which the ever-cheerful announcer will not fail to let you know every time you start the game - every single time. How many subtitles does this game get? The first racing game of this series is called Sonic All Stars, and it's a racing game with characters from Sonic, but then they made the next game which also added non-Sonic characters, so they called it Sonic AND All Stars Racing. But the game we're talking about right now is the sequel to Sonic and All Stars Racing, and it adds a new feature in which the cars can transform into boats and planes, so it's called Sonic AND All Stars Racing TRANSFORMED. We don't have the time to say all of that because we are too busy writing silly reviews about car driving games, so we just call it Sonic and the Secret Racecars. We used to joke that the reason why they took so long to make a sequel to this game is because they reached the character limit. Well, they really did - the spiritual successor ratches back this mess of subtitles, and instead is just called Team Sonic Racing.

The other reason why we call it that is because Denise happened to be playing Sonic and the Secret Rings at about the same time, and she mangled the titles. But this nickname stuck with us because it really is a fitting title: the game doesn't tell you anything about how to play itself. The racecars really are secret and full of secrets.

Like, we start up the game, and the first event is a race. The announcer goes, three, two, one. All the other cars zoom away.

We press every button, trying to figure out how to go forward. Oh, ok, it's the right trigger button to hit the gas. And the only reason Denise tried that is because she had previously played Mario Kart. But the game does not tell you. There is no tutorial, not even one informative screen before the first race, and at the time we couldn't find a manual. Maybe, during the loading screen, you might be able to read a tip, but most of the tips are actually really advanced stuff, and using terms that you don't know what they mean yet, and not like, "Go forward by holding the right trigger button". The tips talk about Sky Tigers and Chain Boosts. We're just trying to go forward, we're not ready for the Sky Tigers yet.

So, given that nobody told us how to even go forward, we suck at this first race, but we assume it's because we just started, of course we still suck. All the other cars do seem to be going faster than us, but whatever. Let's go on. The second event is another race, and we manage to come in at least third, which unlocks the third event. The third event is a "Drift Challenge". We don't know what that means. But we start it up, it goes 3, 2, 1... we start racing, and in the middle of the race the announcer suddenly yells FAILED, and game over. No explanation, no anything. After two or three more rounds of the announcer giving us various intonations of FAILED, we went online to look it up. At the time the game was relatively new, but luckily someone else went to the internet about the same problem, and someone answered that you need to hold the left trigger button to brake while also holding the right trigger button for the gas to do a drift, and if you hold the drift long enough, you get a speed boost. Or, more precisely, you can hold it until you rack up to three levels of boost, indicated by the changing color of the boost fire on the back of the car. This drifting maneuver is critical for making tight turns and obtaining these critical speed boosts, and there's an entire type of event revolving around this mechanic... and the game doesn't tell you anything about it.

We keep doing the races, and even though we finally start to get the hang of the drift boost maneuver, we still notice that all the other cars still seem to be getting off the start line faster than us. Still thinking of Mario Kart, we tried pressing the gas in time with the 3, 2, 1. Oh, that's how it works. That's how you get a bonus boost at the starting line. The game tells you nothing about it.

Same thing with the stunts for the transform boosts and the stunt boosts. You will notice cars flipping around while they jump. There's an entire mechanic around using the otherwise ignore-able right analog stick to do daring stunts while in mid-air, which gives you more speed when you land. Even once we figured this out, it took us even longer to figure out that we could do two stunts in a row to get a bigger boost, and three stunts to get an even bigger boost. And, unlike anywhere else in the game where the limit is three, if you do more than three stunts, you get even more boosts. We're not actually sure what the cap is.

And then there's the risk boosts, which we only found out after like 50 hours of gameplay, and only by accident, and still we can't quite pull them off consistently. If you're in the plane, and flying towards an obstacle like a pole, and do a barrel roll to dodge the pole at the last second, you get a boost. This game has mechanics you've never even heard of.

This all to say, the fundamental mechanics required to achieve anything resembling competency in this game are all secret. So yeah. Sonic and the Secret Racecars. We're right.

This being a Sonic game, you can play as a variety of Sonic characters. There's Sonic, and Tails, & Knuckles, and Amy Rose, and Shadow, and you can even unlock Doctor Eggman, and there was bonus DLC Metal Sonic (which is now free). Very nice. But, as we said, this is not just about Sonic, this is Sonic AND All Stars, so there are other characters featured from other Sega franchises. Depending on how deep you are in the Sega fandom hole, you might be surprised to hear there are other Sega franchises... These are mostly games that are somewhat obscure but with devoted fanbases. There's NiGHTS and Reala from NiGHTS, there's Vyse from Skies of Arcadia, there's Ulala and Pudding from Space Channel 5, Beat and Gum from Jet Set Radio, and so on. We actually have played a good number of these games, and while some of the character choices here make sense, some others are baffling to us.

In the making sense category, NiGHTS and Reala, because who else are you going to put from NiGHTS. Of course they included the main character and also the charismatic antagonist, and nevermind the overarching villain Wizeman the Wicked who is a mess of floating hands. Wizeman can appear in the NiGHTS-themed level itself. All bases covered. Very good. Reasonable. Except for the fact that NiGHTS and Reala are in the role of the vehicles rather than the drivers. This is expanding on some weirdness that already happened in the Journey of Dreams reboot. In the first game, the dreaming children become NiGHTS. In the second game, Sega must have decided that'd be too gay, so instead, NiGHTS becomes various vehicles for the children to ride around in during their dreams. But here, it's not the children driving the NiGHTSmobile, but rather one of the Nightopians, who are just like, background cherubs in the world of dreams, here promoted to the role of driver. Reala was never shown having such a shapeshifting powers, but if NiGHTS can do it, Reala can probably do it too, and the Realamobile is driven by a Nightmaren imp. It's only when NiGHTS or Reala go into All-Star mode that they can fly around as themselves as they usually do. Actually, this got pretty mangled, didn't it?

Representing Skies of Arcadia, there's Vyse, the main protagonist. We're happy to see that Sega still remembers him, but a bit sad that he's here alone, without his co-protagonists Aika and Fina. It's like if Jessie were to appear without James and Meowth. They're a team! They should be together. It even could have been done efficiently, either with all three in the same vehicle, or maybe with Aika and Fina sharing their own vehicle, to harken to the boat that Aika and Fina sailed for one part of the game. ✽︎ Sonic and the Secret Racecars has boats, so the design for the boat is already existing, and they wouldn't even had needed to invent anything from scratch. But there's not hide nor hair of either them, not even as cameos in the level themed around Skies of Arcadia. Why not?

From Space Channel 5, we get Ulala and Pudding. No questions on Ulala, who is the main character. But Pudding? She's a minor annoyance in one level in both games. She has so little character to reference that her only line while racing is to sometimes shout PUDDING!. Denise, who hadn't played Space Channel 5, thought that Pudding was the type of cutesy character who likes to say her own name (like Jigglypuff). But that's not how it is. It's just that one of her few spoken lines from Space Channel 5 is "I am Pudding!", so they reused just the name part of the introduction as a sound clip for her. She's such a minor character that they had to resort to this level of scraping the bottom of the bowl (of pudding). Why didn't they instead opt for a more major character?

How about Shadow? It may have been a bit difficult for plot reasons, and also then you'd have two characters named Shadow in the same game... but hey, Smash Bros. did it.

Our personal vote of another character to have included would have been Purge, the main antagonist of the second game. His All-Star mode should have him redo his iconic second-stage reveal, when he throws off his cool black and white trenchcoat to reveal that he's wearing an incredible hypertight leotard of pink and purple sequins. His way to shoot should be the pelvic thrusts with Chu Chu. It would have been hilarious and actually build on what is already in Space Channel 5.

And, if they could have worked out whatever legal stuff they would have had to, we would have wanted Michael Jackson to reprise his role as Space Michael and drive a car in this game with hedgehogs.

While we don't have any particular criticism for the choice of characters from Jet Set Radio - Beat and Gum are both very featured in their series, and Beat in particular could be considered the main character. But, we want to talk about what happened to Beat when he was brought into this game. In Jet Set Radio, he's a kid, a vandal, and all of his spoken lines are like, Yeah! and Sup? and various grunts. Once he came to Sonic and the Secret Racecars, he became... smoldering sexy.

We can't say we're mad about this change - we find it hilarious - but where did they get this from? It's like they put in Tumblr Headcanon Sexy Beat rather than Beat as he appears in the actual game.

Then there is Amigo from Samba de Amigo, and Meemee and Aiai from Super Monkey Ball, meaning that this game has three playable monkeys, and is completely meeting the monkey quota. By the way, Amigo drives a wind-up choo choo train, and makes adorable toy noises.

There is also a level based on The House of the Dead. It puzzles us, because it has nothing to do with the actual game. There are all these zombies around, but none of them look like the actual zombies from the game. The Magician isn't there. Not even G made the cut. We aren't meeting G over there.

And then there's Football Manager, who doesn't look like the handsome man boner and all that we talked about, but who rather looks like a teenager with a helmet. We think they were trying to capture his stubbly chin, but failed, and he's wearing the helmet because the upper part of his face is always obscured on the boxart, so nobody knows what he looks like, and he must remain obscured lest a new game in the Football Manager series comes along with the great reveal of the color of the Manager's eyes. But imagine a football manager in a football field, wearing a suit and a helmet. Also, his car has soccer tires, and the whole thing transforms into a soccer ball. In All-Star mode, he gets giant metal whistles to blow other cars off the road, and he can kill people with a soccer ball just like Conan. Football Manager is slightly unhinged.

And then there's Willemus, who, as far as we can tell, isn't actually a real character. He's more like the representation of Total War: Rome II, kinda like how Football Manager isn't actually a character in the Football Manager series. But Willemus isn't even the guy on the cover. He's a fictional Roman general who sounds like some sort of Monty Python character, and his inclusion in this racing game was meant as some sort of promotion for a game that wasn't out yet at the time, and in which he does not appear. Well, no wonder he seems so confused.

But, besides all these other Sega characters from other Sega franchises, there are other characters in this game. Exclusive to the PC version of this game, which came out on Steam, there is the character of "Team Fortress". It's Heavy, Pyro, and Spy in their vehicle, voice-acted by your mom. They couldn't even get the Pyro muffles to sound in-character, which we would have thought impossible, but it's true - it sounds like a completely different voice making completely different muffles, to the point that when Pyro does "say" something, we go "what was that noise, who made it"? Why couldn't they have just used the exact same voice clips from TF2, which would have been amazing?

You can also play as Ralph from Wreck-it Ralph, which is a movie character from a movie about video games, but not actually a real game.

And then, there's Danica Patrick. When Rosy first played this game with friends, she asked them, who is Danica Patrick, what game is she from? And they were like… she's... just... she is. What do you mean, she is? She just. Exists. She is a real life person who drives real life racecars, and she's here in this game with Sonic the Hedgehog. You know what, good for her. I mean, if we were racecars drivers and had a chance to be in a game in which we could race with Sonic, hell yeah! She's also apparently here as some sort of promotion for Hot Wheels, but that doesn't matter, because it doesn't come across at all.

You think that's the weirdest? Nooo, this game manages to have even worse. But first, let's recap.

1. Sonic in a Sonic game
2. Other Sonic characters in a Sonic game
3. Other Sega characters in Sonic game
4. Characters loosely based on other Sega games in Sonic game
5. Non-Sega video game characters in Sonic game
6. A movie character in Sonic game
7. A real fucking person in Sonic game
   ...
   ...
8. Ậ̘̑̔̎̃̈́͢G̜͇̩͈̬̤̜͌E̷̝͛ͬ̓̈̂S̮͔͚̦͖ͣ̄ͥ

The last character you can unlock in the game is a hallucination. It's the embodiment of a Sega compilation game, represented as a beeping mash of Sega consoles shaped into a car with no driver. We don't think AGES was designed by anyone at Sega. It just... appeared in the game, and everyone is too scared to touch whatever code is controlling it. If there is any at all.

This is a good segue to talk about the code of this game. This game is actually just a stack of glitches that accidentally worked. Fire up this game, and you're pretty much guaranteed to stumble upon at least one ridiculous glitch. This is one of the few games where you could pretty much legitimately blame the game every time you lose. Like, sorry, I lost the race because the game decided to drop me through the floor and have me fall into the sky. Or, the path inverted itself so that now I'm somehow on the other side of the road, underground. Or, somehow I spawned as a boat in the middle of the land, and now can't move. Or, the game just randomly killed me. I was suddenly launched into space, where I am now floating around and can't get down. Yes, this happens. All of these are describing actual things we have experienced, many times.

In fact, when we fired up the game to take some screenshots for this article, we stumbled upon not one, but two glitches, which we luckily caught on video:

Yet, this game is fun, and somehow these glitches only add to the experience, actually. It helps it keep not serious. After all, how serious can you really possibly even get about Sonic in a car racing against the soccer-ball mobile and sexy Beat? We might as well sometimes just get stuck out in space.

Speaking of more silly things in this game, the announcer. There are so many nested menus that you need to go through before you can start a race, and they're all voice acted. This is what you'll hear every time you start the game:

Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed! Select a mode! Career! Select a career mode! World Tour! Select a tour! Sunshine Coast! Select an event! Race! S-Class! Select a character! Player two join! Amigo! Beat! Standard! Acceleration!

If you go through this too fast (as you will do once you know the menus), you will hear:

Sonic and All Stars Racing-- Select a-- Career! Select a-- World Tour! Select a-- Sunshine Coast! Select a-- Race! S-Class! Select a-- Player two join! Ameat! Sasseleration!

And when you're in the character selection screen, you can also play the game of pressing the buttons too fast and ending up with overlapping voice sound clips.

If you don't meet the challenge of a certain level, the announcer says, FAILED. Luckily, they recorded him saying it multiple different times in different ways, so that you don't just end up with the one sound clip burned in your head. But one of the times he goes, FAILED?. Indignant and offended. As if you personally disappointed him. What do you mean, failed? He thought better of you, and you failed. How could you? We tend to instinctively reply to him like, look, you try that yourself.

In fact, the announcer has so many voice clips, we almost forget that it's a recorded voice, and not a guy who just lives inside the game. We've been playing this game for more than ten years, and we still sometimes find voice clips we hadn't heard before. The announcer has something to say about everything that happens in this game. Including himself. If you go to the audio options and try to lower the volume of the announcer, he'll cry, "Noooo! This is my only job!".

As we previously mentioned, beyond just classic racing and who reaches the finish line first wins, there are other kinds of events. One of the events of the game is the so-called Traffic Attack, in which you have to drive while avoiding traffic. The traffic in question is other random cars in the way. There are green cars that drive like the average asshole on the road. We like to call these "commuters". There are yellow cars that weave everywhere - we like to call these "drunks". And there are blue cars with sirens. Yeah, the police are after you. They will go out of their way to hit you, suddenly strafing sideways with what presume are their side-wheels. Somehow, the police are all after you, and not after the plentiful drunks, or even the asshole commuters. Apparently Sonic is a bigger threat here. Are they implying that they're trying to arrest Sonic? For what, speeding?

Sega does not condone vandalism. They keep saying that, but first they made a game where you play as a group of vandals who spray-paint the buildings, then they made a game where you have to outrun the police. Sega's answer to Grand Theft Auto. Actually, Sega really does say fuck the police.

In conclusion

This game is so much fun. It's so stupid. In fact, we think we're gonna go play it now.