One of the more surprising announcements to come out of E3 for Sonic fans, perhaps swamped by all the news of motion controllers and revamped handhelds, was the announcement of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. I think a lot of people were wondering, after a few attempts at tacking the hedgehog onto a racing game, when exactly SEGA were going to try and go for Mario Kart’s crown as multiplayer king. It certainly seems to have some quirks to it, when you watch the gameplay videos that have gone online. It could well be the manic, fun and non-super-hyper-realistic-epic racing game that Sonic Riders never really was.
As much as I’m dying to get my hands on the gameplay to make a final judgement, I’m most impressed with the design of the game. A lot has been borrowed from Sonic’s past, including the Green Hill/Seaside Hill fusion that brilliantly has some loops and other crazy things involved. But a lot has been spent towards other ‘Superstars’ in SEGA’s lineup too, including a Bill Hatcher stage which I heart. Because Billy Hatcher is awesome. It just seems like, while games such as Sonic 06 and Sonic Riders had a premise which didn’t fit Sonic’s style whatsoever, this racing game just gels with the character of Sonic perfectly.
SEGA put up a load of high-res screenshots recently, so we’ve taken the liberty of putting them on TSS for you to download. They’re from the 360/PS3 versions of the game, and they’re quite large. Use them as a wallpaper or something. That’s what I’m doing with that gorgeous Green/Seaside Hill track screenshot there.
I didn’t really dig that. I love crazy, unfathomable stuff in a Sonic stage/world, like crazy loops and imaginative colour schemes. It’s one of the reasons Eggmanland is my favourite level in Sonic Unleashed, actually.
