3/5 ★ – Protector_Of_Memes's review of Team Sonic Racing.

I really need to kick the habit of disappearing from here for months on end. Team Sonic Racing, to jump the gun here, is a massive step down from Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, the previous Sonic racing game developed by Sumo Digital, and it's a big shame considering this is all we had in terms of Sonic games between Forces and Frontiers, obviously not counting Sonic Colours Ultimate. First played this on the Switch back in 2019, and generally never saw a need to go back to it until it became a game PS Plus users could get for free in March of 2022 (which is when I'm writing this). This most recent playthrough has the game once again fresh in my mind, so while we wait for gameplay footage of Frontiers, I'm returning to what is probably the last original game for Sonic's Meta Era. Unlike all of Sumo Digital's past work with Sonic, TSR comes with a story mode to tide the lone player over when they're unable to race with randos or friends, and given the more or less dead online multiplayer, that inadvertently makes this a bigger deal than it should be. Sonic and his friends are all given invitations to participate in races hosted by a brand new character Dodon Pa, whose motives for giving them racecars and making them participate in difficult races remain a mystery for the bulk of the plot, making everyone distrust him and begin assuming he has an ulterior motive, not helped by Eggman joining the races later on, even getting to the point where Amy and Tails partially have their distrust of him founded on coincidental similarities, like advanced tech, their laughs consisting of "ho" being repeated, and moustaches, the last of which Big calls Tails out on, asking if he's evil because he has a moustache. Turns out everyone's mistrust was for naught as Dodon Pa has no ties to Eggman, being the president of Donpa Motors, the largest automobile corporation in the Sonic universe alongside literally being the king of his own world called Donpa Kingdom, which basically means the tanuki's an alien. The entire reason he got everyone together was because their teamwork would provide the information he needed to develop his Ultimate Energy Engine which ran off of the limitless power of teamwork. This makes him a prime target for Eggman, resulting in his kidnapping for the engine, and then being rescued by the heroes who all get rewarded with new racecars as thanks for saving his life. That's the gist of the important stuff that happens in the story, and while it's not bad on paper, but I do think the writing does make it less enjoyable than it should be. Like the rest of the games that started coming out from 2010 onwards, TSR's writing is ultimately more comedy focused, and once again, most of it falls flat, or is straight up obnoxious due to the flanderisations of many of the core cast members. Sonic's overconfidence is still present, not taking any of the villains seriously despite Eggman having managed to conquer the world in Forces, which canonically should've taken place prior to this if this broken down but still functioning Death Egg Robot in Frozen Junkyard is anything to go by, and seems obsessed over racing and being the best up until Dodon Pa gets kidnapped, and it's kinda all there is to him. Shadow once again has a massive arrogance problem, to the point where his response to Sonic wanting to race him is "Challenge accepted, although there is no challenge", seemingly forgetting that Sonic has consistently been on par with him and has won many of their bouts, and Eggman is primarily portrayed as an incompetent villain who despite being a super genius is consistently made fun of by Sonic and his own lackeys purely because of his loss record. And that's just what's in the story mode. If we were to look at gameplay voice clips, some of the comedy there tries a bit too hard to be hip with the kids, namely stuff like Sonic saying "Don't text and drive" despite no one having a phone or a messaging system on hand, "Oof, epic stunt fail" which speaks for itself, and the most infamous example in the game, Tails saying "Who's your daddy Shadow?", which makes no damn sense. Really, the only part of the game that made me laugh was Big's response to Tails' flimsy justification for believing Dodon Pa was in cahoots with Eggman. That said, everything here is with the dub in mind, as the Japanese script is quite a bit different, even throwing in a reference to 06 which is nice. Graphically speaking, I do find the game visually pleasing. Nothing too crazy, but I did find the race tracks both new and old to look great. In particular, I love the visuals for Sky Road, being a fully transparent road above the skies of Spagonia, and Haunted Castle, with the ghostly ethereal roads and the generally spooky aesthetic. Character models are generally good, but some of the renders they did for the cutscenes make the characters look kinda weird, in particular Sonic's open mouth smile which weirds me out for reasons I can't articulate at the current moment. Overall, better than the visuals of Forces, but that's kinda backhanded to say. In terms of audio work, the voice acting and direction is about the same as other recent Sonic games so I can't really add more to that, but then we move onto the thing TSR excels in without question, the soundtrack. Marking the grand return of series veteran Jun Senoue alongside the rest of Crush 40, Johnny Gioeli included, this blows every OST after Generations out of the water and then some. The main theme of the game, Green Light Ride, is a pretty solid piece, though for some reason it also got a couple of remixes in the OST's commercial release, the Wall5 remix having some questionable instrumentation to it, but where the real bangers lie are within the race track themes. All of them are pretty damn good, but the real highlights are Boo's House, a collab between Tee Lopes of Sonic Mania fame and Jun himself to turn Sandopolis into one hell of a banger, Tomoya Ohtani's theme for Sky Road which has one hell of a dank rave party at the start of its Final Lap mix, Ice Mountain being yet another collab between Jun and Hyper Potions, this time resulting in a great Cool Edge Day remix, Tyler Smyth helping with making a banger remix of the Runners boss theme Theory Of Attack for Frozen Junkyard, Wall5 delivering on a great Final Fortress remix for Turbine Loop, and Jun channelling some serious Castlevania vibes for Haunted Castle, he really should try his hand at some more symphonic rock. It's an excellent OST overall, but before I move on, I love that Blaze's Team Ultimate theme is a Jun Senoue remix of her boss theme in Rush, Vela Nova, never thought I'd see it brought back. And now it's finally time for the gameplay, which in terms of the controls is very familiar territory if you've played Transformed. Drifting and holding said drift to build up a boost, using the right stick to do tricks in midair for a boost, that much hasn't changed. That said, the game generally feels slower to play, even with repeated drift boosting, and the boosts from boost panels don't feel like they're doing much to make me go faster. But that in of itself isn't too much of an issue on its own. The real issue in terms of the core gameplay for me are the added team mechanics and how they handled the items. Unlike past games, TSR puts a higher emphasis on teamwork during races, which forces all twelve racers into teams of three, and there's a number of things that can be done with your teammates. The teammate that's ahead of the other two will leave behind a weird gold trail that you can follow to gain an increase of speed and build up a massive boost known as a Slingshot, which can be helpful for getting back into higher positions, though the one in front needs to be aware of this and try to remain stable. Speaking of techniques meant to get players back in the game, there's also the Skimboost, which is meant for racers who've spun out. How it works is that you skim past your teammate to give them a boost, and it's more potent depending on how much of a difference in speed there is between the two of you. Something tells me that drift boosting may have been nerfed a bit to put more emphasis on those techniques for gaining speed, which if true is kinda dumb for reasons I'll get into in a bit. In addition, you can request or give Wisps between the three of you, as a means of giving struggling teammates an extra edge when they're being dogpiled by the opposing racers being assholes, and speaking of those, the team that's ahead of you in the rankings will be highlighted in red, the game's way of telling you they're the rivals you should be aiming for. Now besides the base level of encouraging teamwork, all of this builds up a meter for all three team members that when full, allows you to unleash a Team Ultimate, which is literally just the characters driving at breakneak speeds with a yellow aura, the only difference between each character being the theme they get, and it can be extended if all three team members activate it at the same time. This however feels like the logical conclusion of the degradation of the cool factor All-Star Moves had going from SEGA All-Stars to Transformed, only at least Transformed bothered to give something different to each character. They're all the same for the sake of balance, but it just feels kinda lame. (tbc)