Sonic and Sega All Star Racing
Rating: E10+
Score: 5.0/10
Okay Sega, this is not what gamers meant when they asked for a Sonic game with a faster pace. Either Sega really thinks this is funny, or they honestly think Sonic needed a racing game to please fans, who want Sonic to be back to his speedy self. Well, I guess you can't fix the past, and maybe it's surprisingly good - I mean Sonic has always been the master of speed. This game is available on the Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
Sonic is not the only one getting the desperate defibrillator paddling: every character Sega could reach was involved, which is a pitiful way to offer fan service to series that have never seen the light of day since one appearance in the Sega Genesis days (decades ago). Billy Hatchet (From the series of the same name), Alex Kidd (From the series of the same name), and even Ulala (From Space Channel 5) all make an appearance. Haven't heard of it? Not surprising. Oddly enough, there's no Sketch Turner, from Comix Zone, which is one of Sega's bigger series (or so we can assume, they re-released it several times already). I smell the horrid funk of Downloadable Content on the way: eight bucks a character in a game that already has little to offer, so it shouldn't be stripping itself of content to use for downloadable content.
At first it almost seems like a decent Sonic-themed kart-racing game, complete with music from the series the track is based on, and some creative (albeit peculiar) cars that are completely character-themed. If you squint really hard, you might be able to convince yourself you're playing Mario Kart.
You race across different tracks, collecting power-ups to use against your enemies and stay in first (or get to first), just like that other game that's been doing that kind of gameplay for decades: Mario Kart. You can also drift-boost (drift into a turn, and boost out), and find shortcuts to try and catch first, just like that other game. Although the game mostly runs off the Grand Prix mode, it has a battle mode and an online mode...just like that other...- well, you see where this is going. It's a glorified clone of an already successful game.
Not to say it's a bad game, nope. For what it's worth, it's fun. The tracks are fun, the character selection is all over the place but still pretty good, and the music should be well known to the fans (who are more or less the demographic for Sega, hoping they can still reel in fans since their last good console game was nine years ago). All that is fine, but there's something to be said for shameful cloning. I already mentioned in my last review, Skate 3, that re-releasing a game is pitiful and should be punished by a huge slash in profits. All big companies seem to do it once in a while. Even Nintendo is guilty (albeit, arguably, not recently). You remember Super Mario Bros 2? Well a fun fact is that Super Mario Bros 2, as North Americans know it, is a complete clone of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic. It hardly even counts as another game, it was the same game just with Mario slapped all over it. The "true" Super Mario Bros 2 was released a few years later as "Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels" in Super Mario All-Star, since the Japanese believed the game to be too difficult for us silly North Americans (and difficult it was), but I digress.
It's not even the first time Sega has ripped off a previous Nintendo title. I mean, they might be still enemies since the third to fifth generation "console wars" (in which Nintendo was head-to-head against Sega to become a more successful video gaming company. Seeing how Nintendo still makes consoles AND games while Sega only makes games now, you can see who won). Even if they are enemies (which makes it all the more ironic Sega keeps making games for an enemies' console), they cloned Mario Tennis to make Sega Superstar Tennis, they cloned Dr. Mario to make Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, and now they're cloning Mario Kart? That's pretty bad.
Few gamers have played Sonic And Sega All Star Racing and not been tickled by it's fun, pick-up-and-play style. That's not to say I don't fit the demographic of "fan"; I have been beating the poor hedgehog in my reviews for two and a half years now. I still love the guy, but clones are something gamers in this day and age shouldn't accept. With game prices getting more and more expensive, and each game being someone’s allowance(s) or paycheck(s) placed down into the hopes of an original, fun activity, each game needs the scent of originality to be worth buying/renting. If it's a clone of a game you previous used your money to buy, there's no need to buy it again without original content. If Sonic is that big a hero to call this game "original", then there's no need to hesitate to play. Otherwise, it's always excellent to know what you're walking into. The fast hedgehog seems to have hit another speed bump in the long ride to find a good console Sonic title (which, hopefully, Sonic 4 will deliver).