As a lifelong Nintendo fan, I always compare other games to Mario. When Sonic the Hedgehog first appeared, I naturally compared it to Mario’s platforming. So, it’s hard to play a kart racer like Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds without thinking about Mario Kart – especially with a new Mario Kart game released recently. However, that comparison actually highlights what makes CrossWorlds special. While the newest Mario Kart is great because it’s simple and easy to pick up, CrossWorlds offers a huge amount of options and ways to customize your experience, letting you really find your own style. There’s a lot to learn, and it can feel overwhelming at first, but exploring all the different options is ultimately very rewarding.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has three main ways to play offline. You’ll likely be familiar with Grand Prix and Time Trials – they’re classic racing modes. The third, Race Park, is a bit different, and we’ll cover that shortly. Most players will begin with Grand Prix, which features seven different series to complete. Each series has three races, followed by a final race that combines elements from the previous tracks.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds gets its name and a special feature from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies – rings that transport you to different worlds. Unlike typical races with a simple start and finish line, CrossWorlds tracks have you racing *through* giant rings that lead to entirely new environments. The player in the lead gets to pick where the race goes next, choosing between a set destination or letting the game pick a random one. You’ll briefly race in this new world before being sent back to continue on the original track.
This feature is clever and keeps races surprisingly unpredictable. You can’t simply rely on memorizing the track, because the game can instantly transport you to wildly different environments – like a candy-themed course with sharp turns, a bouncy forest, or an aerial stunt arena. While you’ll eventually get a sense of the possible worlds, not knowing where you’ll end up next keeps things exciting and fresh. On the standard PlayStation 5, the transitions between worlds can look a bit blurry and rough around the edges, but the gameplay impact more than makes up for the visual shortcomings.
Like in *Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed*, you’ll drive vehicles that can transform into cars, boats, and planes. Each form feels distinct. Driving a car is a standard kart racing experience with boosts and drifting, and you can earn bigger boosts by performing stunts when airborne. Planes give you complete vertical control and reward skillful flying through rings. Boats trade drifting for a powerful charged jump, letting you reach higher power-ups. Mastering the boat sections took some getting used to – you need to build up a full charge to get the best rewards, which requires planning instead of just reacting quickly – but it was very satisfying when I pulled it off.
Initially, the racing felt a little clunky. I kept crashing into walls, and the game really slows you down when that happens. It was frustrating to be stuck bumping along while other racers zoomed past, especially because the standard karts didn’t handle my preferred drifting style well. Once you hit a wall, it was tough to recover. However, switching to racers and vehicles with better handling mostly fixed this, so it was about finding what suited me. The vehicles look very different from each other, too – you can instantly tell the difference between a fast hoverboard, a powerful monster truck, and a nimble sports car.
/videos/sonic-racing-crossworlds-everything-to-know/2300-6466347/
The game offers a lot of ways to personalize your racing experience, both with your vehicle and how you race. Each vehicle type has core stats like speed, acceleration, power, handling, and boost, and you can further customize them by buying parts with in-game tickets. These parts mostly offer small improvements – a bit more handling here, a little less boost there – and you can also change the vehicle’s appearance with paint and decals. Getting all the parts takes time, encouraging long-term play. You can also customize your racer with gadgets, which are determined by your gear plate. As you race, you upgrade your gear plate, unlocking more gadget slots – up to six total. Gadgets can give you a starting boost, speed up your drift, or help you handle tricky surfaces. While some gadgets are quite powerful, they often take up multiple slots, keeping things balanced. Overall, the system is very flexible, letting you tailor your racer and strategy to your preferred playstyle. Upgrading your gear plate is a key part of early progression, and it primarily unlocks new gadgets as rewards.
As you’d expect from an arcade kart racer, this game has plenty of items you can use during races, but their effects aren’t always clear. I’m still figuring out what each one does! Overall, the items are the weakest part of the racing. There are too many that feel impossible to defend against. The game does helpfully warn you if you have an item that can block a particularly nasty attack. But most of the time, if you see a ring above your head, something bad is about to happen, and you can’t do much about it. This can be really frustrating, especially when you’re about to win. Think of it like this: the game has way too many of those annoying, hard-to-avoid attacks, similar to the blue shells in Mario Kart.
Race Park is a fun offline mode perfect for playing with friends on the same couch or competing against each other. Teams face off with unique goals – sometimes it’s about using power-ups to attack opponents, and other times it’s about mastering the track with boost pads. You still earn points based on your finishing position, but completing these extra objectives can significantly boost your score. Winning enough matches against another team unlocks their vehicle for you to use!
Throughout the Grand Prix races, you’ll have a randomly assigned Rival. You can even choose a more challenging Rival if you want! Defeating your Rival contributes to a larger goal, with a final reward revealed only after finishing all the Grand Prix races. Your Rival is typically your strongest competitor, meaning winning against them often translates to winning the whole race. This can sometimes make it feel like a head-to-head competition, but it also creates some amusing moments – for example, when my Rival was Cream the Rabbit, she’d sweetly ask, “please let me catch up!” when I overtook her.
The course design is excellent, offering a lot of visual appeal. The levels are set in diverse worlds inspired by Sega games, and constantly switching between different vehicles keeps the gameplay fresh. The main courses clearly take inspiration from Sonic games, ranging from classic titles to the more recent Sonic Frontiers. A unique feature lets you briefly visit other iconic Sega locations, which are delightful surprises – you might find yourself racing through an Afterburner stage or recognizing a nod to Columns! Even after playing all the courses, it’s still enjoyable to spot all the references to Sega’s history.
Honestly, the online play is where this game really shines and I think it’s what will keep people playing for a long time. It’s cool that I can mess around with customizing my car and gear while waiting for a match, and I like that we all get to vote on which track we play. You climb up through letter grades as you play, which is a nice touch, and it’s awesome being able to team up with my friends. But it’s pretty basic overall. I was hoping for things like being able to play a whole series of Grand Prix races online, or having optional challenges like in Race Park. It works, but there’s definitely potential to make the online experience way more varied and fun.
Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is a well-rounded game overall. It’s easy to recommend to kart racing fans who enjoy deeper gameplay thanks to its single-player modes, goals like collecting upgrades, and lots of ways to customize your racing experience. Despite some minor issues with online play, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds looks like it has a bright future.
Read More
- LINK PREDICTION. LINK cryptocurrency
- Katanire’s Yae Miko Cosplay: Genshin Impact Masterpiece
- GBP EUR PREDICTION
- Gold Rate Forecast
- “A waffle has many spheres” is puzzling you in Cookie Jam? We know the answer
- Looking for “On the grid of happiness” in Cookie Jam? The answer is here
- Puzzled by “The core of flavors” in Cookie Jam? Let’s find the answer together!
- These Crypto Exchanges Have Customer Support That Actually Doesn’t Suck
- USD THB PREDICTION
- Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection Releases Digitally Just Before Halloween
2025-09-18 16:10