Team Sonic Racing

However good the game is on other platforms, it looks like the Switch port's being held back from review sites. Never a good sign.

Wouldn't it be the same? as we have comparison videos etc

I've spent a few hours with the Switch port, and I'm feeling fairly positive about it so far. It handles well, looks superb, has an excellent soundtrack and I don't really feel the effects of the 30fps gamplay - it's not as big a deal as I thought it was going to be. I also don't mind that they've got rid of all the old SEGA stuff, as I don't think the artistic or critical success of this was relying on having the dwarf from Golden Axe in it.

That said, I'm finding it strange that so much of Team Sonic Racing's track design seems to be heavily influenced by 2004's Sonic Heroes and 2010's Sonic Colours. Neither has seen a re-release or port since they first came out, and - as they're a bit old now - I'm struggling to remember much about their level design. Something more contemporary would have helped, as I'm finding the tracks to be a bit forgettable to be honest. The power-ups aren't up to much themselves, they're a bit mince.

I'm having fun with it though, and that's the main thing.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

That said, I'm finding it strange that so much of Team Sonic Racing's track design seems to be heavily influenced by 2004's Sonic Heroes and 2010's Sonic Colours.

I'm not sure about Colours, but with TSR focusing on mish-mash teams of racers, I suppose a close link with Heroes makes some sense.

I haven't got the game myself yet - only because it just seems less interesting than the excellent Transformed - but the port certainly looks good to me. 30fps was playable for Sonic Transformed so I could live with it here.

Do the team mechanics hold up in single player?

fronkhead wrote:

Do the team mechanics hold up in single player?

I don't think they do. There's too little that you can do as a team when your in first and your AI teammates are in eleventh and twelfth place, as the mechanics mostly come down to gifting them power-ups and letting your partners speed up in your slipstream. It's really based on good fortune, in that you need decent power-ups to send to them, and they need to be racing right up against your arsehole. Several times, though I've raced well myself, my co-racers have ended up costing me victory, because they're been rubbish.

It's a problem that's compounded when they're causing you to lose at the end of a long Grand Prix. As creative as the team mechanics are, they don't help to bring any of the tracks to life. Honestly, these are some of the most unspectacular tracks that the developer could have imagined, and it makes for some pretty boring racing at times. There's nothing at all here with even half of the spark of imagination of something like OutRun Bay, Carrier Zone or that Panzer Dragoon track from Sonic Transformed.

'I'm having fun with it though, and that's the main thing'...but it's just not as good as the Wii U/PS3/360 game from seven years ago.

Aye, the tracks were a big appeal from Transformed. The Afterburner and Skies of Arcadia tracks were cracking and made great use of the transformation mechanics from what I remember.

Have you hopped online to try it out multiplayer at all? I'd imagine the team-up mechanics would be a bit more engaging with real people as opposed to CPUs.

It's got the same kind of problems with the tracks that I thought Mario Kart Wii had. They're big, open and wide tracks that are designed to accommodate twelve racers, but they don't change between laps and nothing interesting happens (apart from getting leathered with power-ups every fifteen seconds, which is baws).

I've tried the online multiplayer, and it's all right. It's all probably much more engaging if you're not playing with a load of randoms like I've been.