All Stars Racing is a fun little kart game, but lacks online play and real challenge for older gamers.
The Bad: Highly repetitive, very easy no matter what difficulty, no online play, graphics are dated, some annoying sounds
Kart racing games tend to be able to beat the king of them all: Mario Kart. While that game started it all a few entertaining off beat ones have raced by, but this is Sega's serious attempt at it and it works. You can play as almost every major Sega mascot such as most Sonic characters, and familiar faces from Space Channel 5, Super Monkey Ball, and others. You race around tracks that reflect the design and setting of various Sega games while using power-ups to stay ahead of the pack.
The game has a power sliding ability that will increase your boost which is the key to getting in first place, but also picking up capsules that hold random power-ups such as a homing missile, mines, shields, speed boosts, and various other power-ups we have seen countless times. The game has a great sense of speed and sliding around corners and doing various stunts is exciting, but the overall experience is borderline juvenile and very easy even on the hardest mode. There are various missions you can complete as well as buying characters with Sega Miles, but this only goes so far.
The ideal way to play is with friends, but you need several controllers to do so because there is no online play. Why this was stripped from the PC version beats me, but it really brings down the experience since crowding around one computer isn't very convenient. Once you do get some friends aboard the game is a blast and power sliding and knocking enemies down makes for great laughs.
But when it's all said and done the game is a really average kart racer and has dated graphics as well as some annoying sounds. The game just feels the same no matter what you do in single player and I highly doubt anyone over 10 can play all 50+ missions without going crazy. If there was just some online play in here it could sweeten the deal some, but the single player can only be tolerated for so long.