Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Review by Travis Vuong

It’s the fourth installment in Sonic’s kart racing career. As a direct competitor to Mario Kart, CrossWorlds is Sonic Team’s first time developing a Sonic racing game.

Previously handled by Sumo Digital, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is one of my favorite kart racing games. I didn’t really get into Transformed and skipped out on Team Sonic Racing entirely.

After spending 12 hours across single player and some multiplayer, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds checks off nearly every box for the genre.

A large roster of characters, multiple tracks to choose from, plenty of kart customization options, well designed tracks, and tight controls. The single player content isn’t a simple “complete every cup at every speed” but there’s the introduction of Rival Characters, a racer you have to beat in your path towards unlocking Super Sonic.

There’s more characters to look forward to in post-launch content such as Steve from Minecraft, SpongeBob, PAC-MAN, and Megaman. Local multiplayer content is surprisingly fun. Race Park has you battle against tough Rivals in various team-based races. And with a community of fans actively playing online, only time will tell if SEGA and Sonic Team can keep players engaged. Right now, CrossWorlds is an exceptional kart racing game that can stand toe-to-toe against Mario Kart.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is like any other kart racing game. Go around a track three times against 11 other racers in your goal of achieving first place. You’ll drift and perform tricks in the air to gain a speed boost. Use items to defend your placement or cause chaos on the track.

Most of the items are similar to Mario Kart. The Green and Red Rocket Gloves are like the Green and Red Shells. The Drill and Laser Wisps are similar to the Bullet Bill, darting yourself ahead towards the finish line. Transform your machine into a Monster Truck, plowing through other racers in front of you just like the Mega Mushroom.

King Boom Boo is the glorified Blue Shell item, stopping the racer in first place but instead of an explosion around the player, King Boom Boo unleashes a wave of tornados behind them.

The Bomb is a rolling projectile that can crush and blow up nearby racers. It can be charged up three times, causing the crushed effect and a larger radius on impact. The last projectile attack item is the Slicer, cutting up the racer’s vehicle in front of you. It’s essentially a better Red Rocket Glove.

Slime blocks the players’ vision, similar to Mario Kart’s Blooper, but the Slime also slows racers down. You have to jerk your analog stick back & forth to get rid of the slime and regain full control. It makes this item even more annoying than the Blooper.

Weight crushes the first and second place racers. Dark Chao replaces all the items for every racer. This can be a good or bad thing depending on your items at the moment.

Slime, Weight, and Dark Chao all appear in a Warp Ring, meaning you truly don’t know what’s going to come out until it appears.

The Wisps are the Mushroom items, gaining a speed boost to get across the track. You can use the Wisps to avoid the Warp Ring items. You can also use a Defensive item like the Shield or Tornado to block these effects. The Void Wisp is also a defensive item, sucking all nearby rings and negating some items/obstacles.

The Hazard items, the Spiked Ball and Magnet, stops the player on the track momentarily. They don’t have defensive properties like the Bananas in Mario Kart, dropping the Spiked Ball or Magnet won’t stop a Red Rocket Glove from hitting you.

For a kart racing game, Sonic Racing: CrossWorld’s item selection is fairly balanced. Obviously, there will be moments where you’ll get wombo combo’d by items but that’s the fun in these games. You win some and you lose some, it’s just how it is.

The defensive items are very strong if you use them correctly. You can create a large gap between you and the other racers when you finally identify what each item can do. Because Mario Kart has been around for so long, we don’t have to identify what each item does from game to game. CrossWorld’s items have a very small learning curve because it’s a new game.

Rings increase the racer’s speed, just like Mario Kart’s coins. 100 rings gives you the max speed. Rings also give you a buffer for when you get hit by items or other racers, preventing you from spinning out of control. Knocking into other players and into walls does cause some ring loss but nothing too crazy.

There’s a total of 23 Sonic characters available in the box. Sonic Prime characters are available in the Season Pass or the Digital Deluxe Edition. The Werehog is a Pre-Order bonus and included in the Digital Deluxe Edition. There’s no way to actually unlock the Werehog through gameplay achievements, so I’m assuming he’ll be available for free through the Free Content Drops like Miku.

After picking your character, there’s a wide range of machines to choose from, specializing in a specific skill. All of them run on wheels except for the return of Extreme Gear from Sonic Riders. You can pick one of the default machines or customize one for yourself. You can pick the parts of the vehicle, the color scheme, and add decals. Each modification does slightly change the performance of the machine but honestly, I went with what looked cool.

I didn’t mind Mario Kart World getting rid of the customization options because Mario Kart 8 was pretty bare bones. However, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has in-depth customization options.

The more important customization option is the gadgets, providing enhancements depending on your gameplay style. They can increase your ring count, charge up your boost faster, decrease knock-back from items, perform tricks faster, and so much more.

Your starter plate will only have two gadget slots, maxing out at six once you hit Master plate. I highly recommend you unlock all six slots before playing online because gadgets matter.

Depending how good a gadget is, it can take up multiple slots on the plate. You have four plates saved, fully customizable to whichever characters or situations you see fit.

Personally, I really enjoyed the double Air Trick gadgets, performing tricks at high speeds to give myself the level three boost that much faster. It’s not the best or most optimal set up but I’ve become so used to performing tricks in a quick fashion, it’s jarring for myself to switch off. The standard kits are useful as well. I love the Item Hoarder Kit, allowing you to hold up to three items and you gain an item upon completing a lap.

The customizable gadgets are the best feature of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. It’s way deeper than character weights as it directly changes the way you play the game. You can switch plates up in between races. I’m still exploring what the best gadgets are but I really do love the Air Tricks.

When you head into a race, you might notice CrossWorlds gives the player more clarity. You get to see the bar for the start boost, your speed, and how many levels your drift has. These additions make it easier to min-max your racing. When a Warp Ring appears and you have an item to counter it, the game will notify you with the item button flashing on screen. It might seem like the game is “holding your hand” but I like the added visibility.

Grand Prix Cups take the player across three tracks with the final track mashing all three levels together. There’s eight cups to choose from with four different speeds and mirror mode available. Each track follows the same formula, the first and last lap take you through the main course with the second lap featuring a “cross world.” It’s either a designated track or a random one, whichever side the racer in first place chooses.

Before starting a cup, a Rival character is given to you as a challenge to beat them. At first, it’s a character fitting for you like Shadow vs. Silver or Silver vs. Blaze. The more Rival characters you defeat, the other Rivals will fill in the spot by default.

The Rival standoffs do feature exclusive cutscene interactions which is a nice touch for longtime Sonic fans. Rivals will be the toughest opponent in the race. They are gunning for that first place spot like their life depends on it.

Normal Speed is the easiest of the bunch but the next level, High Speed, turns up the difficulty by a couple of notches. I found myself struggling with some of these races because the CPUs simply do not play around. Sonic Speed is only harder and I haven’t tried Mirror Speed yet. Super Sonic Speed, the highest level, is unlocked when you finish the seven main cups on Sonic Speed.

If you happen to mess up or want to re-do a race, you can pay 20 Donpa Tickets to retry. You can do it as many times as you want until you get first place. I was losing so many Donpa Tickets in the faster Grand Prix cups because they’re a challenge to get through.

Donpa Tickets are earned simply by playing the game. The higher placement in races, the more tickets you get. Red Rings can be found in each track and collecting all of them grants a ton of Donpa Tickets. You don’t have to collect them all in a single race as your progress is saved when the race is complete.

Donpa Tickets are used to unlock cosmetics for the machines. You can also give tickets to characters to increase your friendship rating. You unlock cosmetics at certain thresholds and it’s the most grindy part about Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. I probably spent a good 1,000 Donpa Tickets on race do-overs, not gonna lie, but that doesn’t even come close to how much you need to pour into cosmetics and friendship ratings.

You can play Grand Prix with up to four players locally. The real local multiplayer action is in the Race Park where you’ll team-up to take down other AI teams. The conditions could be playing in a standard race or collecting the most amount of rings, you get to pick the game mode.

My girlfriend and I only played two hours of this mode and the AI racers are tough here too. We didn’t have all the Gadget slots unlocked which probably made it harder but even then, it’s not easy. When you do win and complete the conditions, you unlock more in-game items. Race Park is definitely worth trying out if you have some friends over.

Online play has been smooth sailing from what I can tell. It’s a sweat fest in the lobbies. No crashing or noticeable lag in the servers. Partying up with your friends is very easy.

Races end after one track, throwing you into a new lobby if you continue playing. The tracks are standard races, not the three track mash-up courses at the end of a Grand Prix cup.

Which is Better? Mario Kart World or Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds?

I headed back into Mario Kart World after playing CrossWorlds and honestly, the lobbies were better than I expected. Nearly every lobby was full, maybe six missing players at most which is not bad for 24 player lobbies.

It’s still a chaotic mess with so many players in a single race. Items flying up the wazoo and finding myself in dead last more often than not. Traditional three-lap tracks were more common since Nintendo patched it out the day CrossWorlds launched.

As much as I wanted to dislike Mario Kart World, it was very fun.

Both games have fantastic kart racing gimmicks with Sonic’s being more consistent as the second lap always features a different course and only 12 players to worry about. Mario Kart is messy with 24 player lobbies but Knockout Tour is still a blast.

If you had to choose one or the other in terms of “Mario vs. Sonic,” pick the one that’s most affordable to you. Don’t own a Switch 2 yet but want to play a kart racer? Sonic should satisfy you. But let’s say you own a Nintendo Switch 2, then pick your poison. Both are solid options from a gameplay perspective but I still believe Mario Kart’s free roam mode is a major missed opportunity. The map is fixed but the unlockables are boring stickers.

Sonic’s single player content is repetitive but at least you’re racing against tough AI. Also, there is post-launch content planned for Sonic well into 2026 while Mario doesn’t have any plans right now.

Tomayto, tomahto; both are valid kart racing options.

CrossWorlds ran extremely well on the PlayStation 5. The only minor thing is slow down during the loading screens but other than that, no frame dips or chugs in performance.

The visuals are stellar, very bright and colorful tracks. The character models are on point. I’m very excited to see how the other third-party characters are going to look (Ninja Turtles & Avatar) because it’s becoming the Super Smash Bros. + Mario Kart experience fans have been wanting for years.

Music is always a mainstay for any Sonic game and it’s no different here. Radical Highway, Metal Harbor, Chao Park, and Kronos Island are some of my favorite tracks.

Final Verdict — Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

As Sonic Team’s first time developing a racing game, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is very solid. Over 20 characters to pick from with more on the way, meaningful customization options with the Gears and the Machines, and tracks that harken back to Sonic’s modern history.

The controls and items are very similar to Mario Kart which makes adjusting rather seamless. Whether you’re playing solo or with others online, there’s so much content to look forward to.

The only thing I have a hard time justifying is its price tag. It’s $70 with a $30 Season Pass for all the shiny third-party characters coming out later this year and beyond. That’s $100 and you could save a little bit of money by buying the Digital Deluxe Edition but that’s $90.

Unless SEGA and Sonic Team really fumble the post-launch content, this is one of the best kart racing games on the market right now. Although Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds doesn’t surpass Mario Kart World, it’s a very close match. The game provides a slightly less chaotic kart racing experience with all the same bells and whistles.

Travis “tvsonic” Vuong
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