Despite the inevitable name calling of a 'Mario Kart clone', Sumo Digital have surprised many and pulled off an impressive game. Although the karts are the focus, there's sections of each track that cause your kart to transform into a boat or planes for their respective water or aerial sections. Not only do the vehicles transform, but the track does too. This can be a bit of a burden at first since it is harder to learn the track, but it's not only a cool visual feature but a great game-play mechanic too. As you'd expect, the levels are based on games throughout Sega's history, although it is surprising that all courses don't have an associated character. For example Billy Hatcher has a track, but Billy is not a playable character.
The different vehicles have a completely different feel to them. Boats bob in the water and are harder to control and vulnerable to waves. Planes are very manoeuvrable and can move vertically as well as horizontally. Planes are faster as well as less likely to be hit by weapons, and so if you see a path that allows you to transform earlier, or bypass the water sections entirely, then it's a good idea to travel down that route.
There's the usual Mario Kart like weapons you would expect, although the weapons aren't as exciting; but maybe that is just favouritism. On the plus side, the swarm of bees isn't as effective as a blue leader shell; which is certainly a good thing.
The controls are really simple since right trigger is accelerate and left trigger is brake. If you brake and turn, you initiate a power-slide. By power-sliding, you charge a boost (up to 3 levels) which is executed as you release the trigger. X fires weapons and A looks behind.
Non-Mario racers are usually hindered by weak characters since a lot of charm and enjoyment is provided on characters alone. All Stars Racing Transformed has a large and quality selection with characters from Sonic, Super Monkey Ball, Shinobi, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi plus more. They are joined by two non-Sega characters; Wreck-It-Ralph and real life racing driver Danica Patrick. They don't look too out of place, especially since Danica is driving a Hot Wheels branded car.
Gran Prix mode is exactly what you expect, but the more interesting mode is World Tour which has a map of events which you complete to earn stars. These unlock more events, extra characters and car mods. Events are varied and includes standard races, races without weapons, drift challenges, tank battles, ring race, battle elimination races. Each race can be played at any difficulty but will reward you with more stars for higher difficulties. The majority of events are ridiculously tough, and often you do need a bit of luck too to complete the higher difficulties.
Time Trial has some pre-set times to beat and a ghost to race against. You can race in local or online mutiplayer, and even race purely on the Game-pad; freeing up the TV for a friend.
As you race with each character, you gain experience and at each level, a modification is unlocked. This tweaks the car's statistics, so the handling mod may take away a point from speed but increase handling. This means if you like a character, but not their stats, then using the modifications, it may gear them to your liking.
Even though the game is brilliant, there are a few drawbacks. Sometimes I found that if you do hit an obstacle, sometimes it was really hard to dislodge from it, especially as a plane or boat. There are areas, especially with the boat, where the physics seemed a bit inconsistent, eg landing off a ramp slowed you down, rather than landing smoothly. There's the occasional bug where you may just drop through the floor, or a tyre may leave the track and the game decides to respawn you. More importantly, there are crashes too. It's rare that it will crash mid-race, but it can happen. The game does have a tendency to crash when you've finished the race, which I think is more frequent if you are hammering the button to progress the screen before it appears.
If you can overlook the crashes, and a few annoying niggles, then you're in for a treat, at least until Mario Kart 8 comes out, but there's a good chance All Stars Racing Transformed could be better.