A pleasant surprise that shows Nintendo how to do kart racing better.
User Rating: 8 | Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed X360
Is this the best kart racer this gen? Yep. More importantly is this is a collection of all things Sega. Sega has always been a step behind Nintendo and it is good to see Sega come out with a greatest hits type game along the lines of Fighters Megamix. As for the game itself...no story, just racing. Everyone knows how the system works. You race other racers on tracks littered with weapons and speed pads. Sega through in a few time trials for good measure. However.....your car can turn into a boat to run on water of a plane / copter to fly when you run out of land. The boats are a bit floaty by design and the air vehicles feel natural with a bit of touchiness when you go up and down. The weapons are sadly a little on the boring side and actually hitting the target takes a bit of skill. The difficulty is well balanced however some of the later tracks are a tad easier than some of the earlier ones. Speaking of the tracks they are the best looking tracks in any kart racer. Period. There is no argument to be made. It looks fantastic. It looks so good in fact that some tracks like the "Nights" course or the "Samba" track are so cluttered it gets a tad confusing. Also the track design seems to be either a tad to simple or a tad to complicated. Some are trail and error. Not a deal breaker but it needs to be mentioned. But they look great. Sega blue is everywhere and seeing games like Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, and Monkey Ball gets the nostalgia going. Sadly on the Wii U I have not had a chance to dig into multiplayer because I can't get connected to anyone else. Plus the game is full of slowdown and glitches. I actually rented it from Redbox on the 360 and that version does not have the problems. So if you have the choice get the 360 version. Hopefully the Wii U gets a patch but thanks to Nintendo's ignorance I am already out of hard drive space. But I can't hate the game over Nintendo's mistakes. But the Wii U version gets the lower grade for coming out with problems.
