Imagine driving through a port that has airships docked. When the port ends, you drive off of a cliff only to have your car turn into a jet. After you come down and complete a lap expecting to see the same thing, a giant airship has crashed into the port. Forcing you to drive into a path unknown, the river below where your car morphs into a boat. Mines drop into the water, sending waves that you and your rivals then need to traverse the dynamic water. On your third lap around, the airships get engaged in battle and have completely destroyed the port, causing you to have to fly through burning airships and find your way around the crashing behemoths. As you're dominating the competition on the third lap, you can hear the fans chant your name.

This is Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed. Every race might be three laps with many paths, but the second and third laps usually deviate in a big way from the first. You won't just be driving cars around the 20+ courses (40+ with mirrored mode), but you'll be piloting ships and jets. The tracks are gorgeous. Themed and inspired from classic SEGA games like Sonic, Super Monkey Ball, Shinobi, Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Afterburner, Nights and many more. Even lesser known games like Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg get their own track. A lot of love and detail went into this game and it shows. Bright colors for some tracks, realistic lighting and texture for others. There is something here for everyone.

The controls are easy yet difficult to master. Left thumbstick to steer, a button to use items, a button to look back, right stick to do tricks in mid air, right trigger to speed up and left trigger to slide / drift. Drifting around corners will not only tighten your turn radius, but if you hold it for long enough, it will boost your speed when you come out. Every character has his or her own stats: Speed, acceleration, handling, boost and all star. These stats balance out drivers. The All-Star determines how frequently you will get it from the items. When you have it, you're temporarily turned into a jet.

Since this is a 'kart' style game, there are items that you'll pick up from floating red orbs. The fire crackers launch forward and bounce off of walls. There are ice balls that come in threes and will first stun opponents. Hitting them with more ice freezes them longer. A hot rod that will give you a temporary speed boost and you can detonate it, making a ring of fire around you. A drone that will follow the driver you've selected. You can even change the driver by pointing at a new one. A simple speed boost. A spiked blowfish that you can leave on the course. Finally, one of the most creative weapons, a swarm that will charge forward and will put giant wasps on the course. It will cause drivers to weave through them.

Each of these weapons can get fired ahead of you or behind you. Making everything valuable and useful. How do you defend against all these things? Well you can evade them, but there is also a glove that will catch projectiles. Not just that, but then you can throw them back.

With all these weapons, they don't feel like they'll cause a winner. The game still feels skill based. The last driver won't get an item that will drop them off at first place. There is no item that will seek out and rob whomever is in the lead. It is possible that you can take such a lead that no weapon can overtake you, only your own bad driving will lose you the lead. You can also fall so far behind that nothing will bring you to the others.

As you play through the game, the characters you play as will get experience. When a character levels up, he or she gets a modification. Simple things like handling or speed. They give you an extra point, but because the game feels balanced, they take away a point from something else. It is a nice system, especially when considering multi-player balance.

There are boosters marked with purple arrows in the air, water and the track to move you faster. That's not the only way though. When you are in the air, you can do a trick by using the right thumb stick. If you land the trick you get a boost. If you fail, you get slowed down. The game avoids crashes. Even if you fly off the track, the screen just wipes and puts you back in the game. The tricks have another purpose when you're in the air. Left and right do barrel rolls. Up and down do flips. This makes sure that you don't jump off the track.

Sega makes use of its rich history and there are plenty of drivers. Characters from Sonic's series, Crazy Taxi, Super Monkey Ball, Football Manager, Nights, Shinobi, Panzer Dragoon, Rome: Total War, Space Channel 5, Team Fortress 2 (three characters as one), an unlockable famous real life racecar driver and so many more. Wreck it Ralph is even here straight from the animated movie! Even if you've never heard of Sega or Sonic, there's always someone here to recognize. It is a huge roster of drivers and thankfully a lot of them are unlockable throughout the game's various modes.

There are career modes that have your typical Grand Prix with 5 cups that have 4 races each. Each race generally lasts around 5 minutes. Complete all 5 of the Grand Prix and earn mirrored track mode. The main game mode is the World Cup that has you participating in a lot of different events for stars. You will unlock events on a sort of map. When you take part in the event you set easy, medium or hard. Each new victory will give you a star. Easy gets you one star, hard gets you three. These stars are to progress and to unlock new drivers.

But with the World Cup, you don't just race. There is a whole slew of events. Drifting challenges, time challenges, battle challenges that have you destroying other racers, traffic attacks where you need to dodge other cars, vs races that pit you against another driver, ghost races that have you competing against game developer ghosts, ring races that have you flying through rings and even a perusing a tank boss to destroy it. There is a lot of variety here and I for one appreciate it.

On top of that, you have local co-op and online co-op that finds you matches based on what mode you want. There are typical races, battle arenas and a few others. The process is pretty streamlined. You vote on a track from three random tracks. Then select your driver, view their license to see how good your competition is. Then you race to see who is the best.

For every achievement you unlock, you get a sticker. You can place 3 stickers on your license as a flaunt or a personalization that tells other players about you at a glance. There is still in depth information to everyone, which is always nice. When you win, your online rating goes up, when you lose it goes down. It is all a nice system.

When you head into a race in Grand Prix and multiplayer, you can play a slot machine for buffs. These buffs are things like ice doesn't slow you as much. You get a glove every lap. Things that mix it up, but really doesn't make anyone overpowered. The slot machine is a diversion during the loading screen. How do you get coins for the machine? On the track there are coins every so often that you can pick up. Not just that, but when a driver is hit with a weapon or falls off the track, they leave a coin. This rewards aggressive players. Plus someone else can always sneak in to take the coin.

This game has a lot of content that puts it somewhere at the top of the heap when it comes to combat cart racing. While it has weapons, it is skill in the subtleties of the game that will win you races. Every track has its own flair and is a thing of sheer beauty. It is a lot of fun for anyone that needs something different yet similar to Mario Kart. It feels like a genre that was sorely missing from Steam and Sega didn't just fill that void, they hit a home run with it.

First off I want to say that I am not a Sonic fan nor really of racing games, yet I loved this game.

This game reminds me of Mario Kart, it has alot of elements which need to be mentioned:

The level design is great and very creative which also keeps the game from getting dull.

Bots have great difficulty adjustments, you will have to work up your skill and learn the game before you can win against the harder AI.

The graphics is clear and beautiful with a high definition cartoony smoothed out look, which runs smooth, and should run even on low end machines.

The vehicle handling in this game is incredible feels like a real arcade game

Fairly balanced customizable characters to choose from heaps from which you will recognise, each having their own vehicle look and transformation which is a nice touch.

COOP CAMPAIGN (This is something I haven't seen done much, and it is one of the features which I had the most fun and makes this game stand out from other games in general).
The campaign itself is very creative with having modes I have never seen doen before like 'Traffic Attack' (reaching checkpoints dodging traffic) 'Drift mode' (drift on marks on the ground that give you extra time to reach the end) 'Versus' (Go head to head against waves of bots and take them out or get ahead of them before they take you out) 'Boost challenge' (drive over the boost marks on the ground to reach the end before time runs out). So many more.. But what makes this better is that you can do all this with your friends together and unlock new maps and characters which keeps you locked in the game trying to beat bosses and progress through the campaign.

The transformation with the kart, to boat, to air vehicle works great and just makes the game more original.

A game you should definately play split screen with friends and one you can challenge yourself to reach your All Star potential. 9/10

hands down the best Kart racing game since Crash team racing on PS1.

gotta go fast

First game I bought in steam, for full price, at first, I felt like I wasted all my money, but then I shut my mouth and enjoyed one thing, something so big, I didn't relize until I played it...

Its not just racing, Its racing transformed! 10/10

As good as or even better than Mario Kart in all catagories. Don't be put off just because Sonic is the main selling point. Great challenge, great controls, great multiplayer. For sure worth a check out if you like party racers such as Mario Kart, Crash Bandicoot Racing and Modnation Racers.

And TF2 characters as racers. Enough said.

Admittedly, an oddball in my Steam game library, one filled with gory shooters, slaughterfests, and other such M-rated material, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is like the stray hippie amongst a population consisting of shizophrenic sociopaths! If you don't like long reviews, just skip to the last paragraph, where I summarize everything!

I quite honestly don't remember just how exactly this game ended up in my library, but I recently decided to play it anyway. Because while I may have many games I still need to play out of my library, I've been desiring a decent racing game for quite some time. Did I expect this game to actually fulfill that desire by being anything close to what could be considered a quality racing game that brought me some great amount of entertainment? Honestly, no, I did not.

But alas, I was surprised! What I expected to be nothing more than a dumbed down racing experience with unbalanced items and cheesy banter between characters that would make me want to turn this into one of those M-rated shooters I own so that I may claim unsavory vengeance upon them for their horrible forced personalities, turned out to actually be one of the few good racing games I've seen on Steam!

How is it good? Well, allow me to explain! Wait... Oh, right, that's what reviews are about... Um... Moving on!

From the screenshots, and the involvement of Sonic and co, in a bright and cheerful-looking environment, one may be brought to the understandable conclusion that this game would only be enjoyable if you were young, or the stereotypical "hardcore" 50-year old Sonic Fan with no friends, who yells "You're too slow!" at every car he drives by on his way to his minimum wage job at the local McDonald's. You would be wrong.

Amazingly enough, this game is actually enjoyable regardless of age, and you really don't have to be a fan of Sonic at all to enjoy the gameplay. I'd recommend this game regardless of the age of the player, as it's obviously safe for young kids to play, but definitely offers an enjoyable experience for older players as well (For reference, I'm almost 19).

Is it for the "filthy casuals"? No, not at all! While a casual could definitely get into the game on the lower difficulties that take nearly no skill whatsoever, a pro gamer could easily find a good challenge on the hard, and expert difficulties!

My only complaint would be how few tracks there are. A total of 16 new tracks, with an additional 4 classic tracks, plus mirrored versions of all the tracks, and +1 new track with a mirrored version if you get the DLC. Thankfully, the game offers a variety of modes to make this small number of tracks less bothersome. Nonetheless, it is a small amount, and new DLCs with additional tracks are unlikely.

Speaking of the DLC, it's not bad, but I certainly wish it offered more than just one single new track. A full circuit of four new tracks would certainly be more appealing. The DLC track isn't really worth it in all honesty, since it's not nearly as interesting as the tracks originally in the game, and there's also a few bugs in it that can be accidentally triggered from time to time (nothing too frequent, so don't worry). Buy it if you really want a new character, and desperately want an extra track. Otherwise, skip it.

So, in summary, a great game for all ages (children or adults), and offers a challenge for both casuals and hardcore gamers, providing a small number of tracks, but a fair number of characters, and overall one of the few good racing games on Steam right now.

This game is really fun! My parents have been fighting a lot lately

Rating 9.5/10
Overview: Arcade kart Racer

The Good:

+ 20 levels that span across different parts of the Sega universe. All the levels are detailed, well designed and incredibly fun to play. What really makes the levels is that they feel so alive, whether its air ships battling in the skies, pieces of the track blowing up, carriers jets flying over head, or flying through exotic envirnoments it all adds to the atmoshpere.

+ The majority of the levels change inbetween laps keeping things unique and interesting. There are three modes of racing: car, boat and plane. One lap you may be driving a car and the next lap you may be flying a plane, sometimes you switch between the modes in a single lap.

+Plenty of characters each with their own stats. As you play with a certain racer you unlock mods that change their stats for better performance depending on the level/mode your playing.

+ The game features plenty of different modes across 4 difficulty levels. Each mode is fun to play and very creative. Some modes include racing, boost challenges, sprint, battle areans, traffic attack etc.


The Average

- I found the weapons you use to be somewhat average. I did not find them as unique or interesting as the levels.

- Multiplayer is somewhat still alive but its pretty hard to get a good game going.

Conclusion

This is one of the best arcade racers on Steam, if you can get some friends together you are sure to have a good time. They took everything that was great in the first game and improved upon it in significant way

Who could have predicted that 'Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed' would be the best 'kart-racing-arcade-game' on PC ever?

Beautiful graphics, tight controls, awesome soundtracks, a bunch of different well known characters and cool racetracks. Truly recommended to all fans of arcade-style racing games.

10/10

Diddy Kong Racing's spiritual successor. Heavy skill required for a kart racer, one of the hardest games to get 100% achievements for both time wise, skill wise, friendlist & luck.

But it's a great game to play online, the AI is super challenging, great to have friends over & play spilt screen 4 players. 9/10 game

Why would I not recommend this game?

The gameplay is vastly different from the previous entry in the series. Transforming and drift boosting will give a great edge in this game once you master the latter. Risk boosting in plane mode can take some time to master since you have to roll out of the way at the last moment for it to count.

The staff ghosts can be a real pain in some levels (looking at Graveyard Gig and Burning Rangers in particular since both are a little difficult to master drifting in).

Cameo appearances from non-SEGA stuff (Danica Patrick, Ralph, and Yogscast if you choose to buy it) are nice to see. Interestingly, people seem to hold a lot of course record top 10 spots with Ralph with characters like Metal Sonic, Sonic, and AGES all coming pretty close to it.

Quite a blast to race through the courses (although I think Mirror Mode could have been replaced with 4-8 new tracks instead, oh well, SUMO's call there) and try to beat your own record every time. I did find Traffic Attack (sans the last one) and Pursuit to be a difficult to master since those felt a tad bit more on the "need to memorize a specific course of pattern" kind of logic to me. Pursuit was way more difficult though since you have a set amount of HP so you can't just recklessly chase down the tank.

The characters were great although a couple of them looked a bit off (looking at Gum, Beat, and Pudding). Dialogue and racing stuff was pretty nice. It seems Gillius is the hardest one to master as well out of all the characters.

Fantastic game, whether it is in a deal on Steam or not, worth icking up and playing.

Such an amazing and fun game!
The best of its gender for PC platform.

The scenarios are really creative and very dynamic, filled with sound effects, plus the possibility of playing online with a lot of people makes it far more interesting.

Perfect for playing with family and friends.
10/10

I love this game ! I think its the closest to Mario Kart i have ever played on PC !! Real good GFX and good controls !! I 100% recommend useing a controller with this game !! Real Fun!! This game Brings back so many MK days chilling in my living room with all my friends playing MK all day !! GOOD TIMES!!! Get this game if you feel nostalgic for fun games of the past !

It's like Mario Kart on drugs.

Review, Tips, Guide


Where do I start with how awesome and addictive this game is? Somehow I managed to clock in over 620 hours playing this, still crave every second of it!

Being a late starter and only getting the game at the start of 2014 when a friend was kind enough to give it to me as a gift while trying to promote Ryo Hazuki DLC and Shenmue.

I did not have high expectations for the game after playing the horrible touch screen version you can download on mobile... this dampened my expectations as to what to expect on the PC and console addition of SSASRT.

First mode I tried was the online match-making. Never in my life have I felt like such a novice at a kart racing game, there really is a polarising effect between being good and being down right elitist when it comes to online MM.

This did not stop me from playing. I was fascinated, intrigued of how these top players became so awesome at this kart racer and quickly learnt that SSASRT is a rather technical Kart racing game.

Those new to the SSASRT: you need to learn fundamental basics.

Learn how to drift to level 3
Find out how to risk boost and danger boost
Learn the tracks as best as you can
Learn how to stack your boosts
Learn every item and use them effectively
Learn how to avoid drones with a drift
Unlock practice with all characters find their strengths and weaknesses
Check your mini-map on straight ways for approaching racers and on incoming item spam, back spam if needed to counter this and look backward to see the potential racer.
Constantly if ever in bad situation go all-star strategy.
Above all else do not hit walls and practice and maintain high speed and keep consistent races


Wondering how I got so good at this game: I came up with a plan!

Decided to complete career mode and gain all (232 stars) and complete all Grand Prix and mirror tracks set out to unlock all characters and their respective console mods. I thought this would give me the edge I needed but I was in for a surprise... Gaining all the all-stars in career mod was tougher than expected but at the same time it was the most rewarding. And whatever you gained in career mode without knowing ...you will be applying in online MM.

Sumo Digital have gone to a lot of effort at getting the balance between casually playing this Kart Racer and challenging the player to get better while also gaining rewards after completing and getting all 232 stars. And gaining a new character "Ages" was funny enough (this spells Sega backwards).

I was feeling confident with my new attained super kart racing skills after completing the game, getting all 232 stars and completing Grand Prix on expert mode; I was sure I was in with a chance to take on even the top players on MM, come out on top or at least give them a good run for their money. I found myself accelerating up the ranks and obtaining & keeping a constant and respectful 1600 rank in MM. I new it was time to take on higher ranked players and test my skills.. Again I was in for surprise, feeling frustrated with my efforts and felt I had peaked only obtaining 1600 to 1700 ranks while I greatly desired to achieve a 2000 rank.

To do this I had to better my playing style to compete with higher ranks. I pushed on and came up with another plan, which was only something you could gain through experience and patience and allot of hours playing. I set out to learn all the yellow pick-up locations, what they had to offer and tap into their potential and also learned which mods and characters worked best for each track.

On some tracks this was a huge game changer: for example there are two yellow pick-ups on Graffiti City: the first pick-up is a triple boost; used at the right time you can gain tremendous speed on straight runs, however this is not always enough to win this track consistently due to the tight nature of the course and the "bees" on the second lap. Now, this is where the second yellow pick-up comes in handy, which is a (blue glove). I like to use this when the "Bees" come my/your way... activate it and sail through them, the bees also act like a wall and are slowing down other racers who might be fast approaching.

This strategy gave me huge advantage over players, and from time to time I have been accused of cheating on Grafity City. Well, once you get to grips with the course it's possible to pick both yellow pick-ups and use the triple boost and pick-up the blue glove which will both give your even more distance, when timed and use correctly.

Sometimes you might find yourself in challenging situations with regular players who see you as their rival, and you might end up getting a few friend requests.:)) This is something not many articles mention or people talk about...
It is the online social communtiy linked with that game which I think people really need to start taking notes of because I think this is also a factor that makes this game a great success...it is the community that goes with it..

SSASRT has an active racing community and friendly too, and sometimes it causes and creates rivalries in MM, especially with the Brazil players and Europeans.

One veteran SSASRT racer who goes by the alias of "harlot" decided to add me as a friend back in july, he was quick to message me about my skills limitations at that time and style... others have taken note of my potential and this gave me more confidence to keep on going and to continue racing SSASRT. I can't remember exactly what was said back then, but we soon became good rivals to one another, we both had a common goal to improve our racing style and to win as much as we can. But we had different ways of going about it. harlot said to me: If I want to really improve my game I need to "time attack", I took note of what he said and I managed to unlock all the secrets the tracks had to offer, if it wasn't for harlot's insight. It would be almost impossible for me to keep up with the elitist at MM....there is so much to learn to be at the top of your game while playing SSASRT...The game has unlimited potential in that regard!

HARLOT QUOTE: I can, at this moment, be a better matchmaker in a week, than you can be a time attacker in the same amount of time


Even though I had the Time Attack experience it did not always solve crucial problems and differences between MM and TA, that is because in MM you can pick up items and if you get hit it it slows you down… because TA promotes the use of "Console Mods", but at times this is not always suitable for MM and so, I decided to approach this differently.

This is what I come up with to address this issue:

I have a character for every track in the game, I developed a strategy that will give me the overall edge to that particular track and the best balance depending on some factors, that I take into account.
I am very specific about this, learned over time certain methods and race conditions that need a particular fine tuning, which can greatly improve your chances. This is where the true sophistication that SSASRT brings.

These are a few examples what character's I use for some of the tracks in SSASRT and the mod's I use and the yellow items I like to pick-up.

Race of Ages - Ryo Hazuki - Console mod - Provides the perfect balance of movement speed - especially in water areas and being small enough to avoid going over the edge of the track.

Game changer: Triple Boost yellow pick-up second lap just passed the finish line.

Chilly Castle - AIAI - Sonic - Manager - (Ryo Hazuki/ Console mod) - best over all mod for this track "Acceleration".

Game Changer: You will need to know this course inside and out, learn TA acceleration mod and track knowledge and above all maintaining lead will see you beat this track on MM.

Dream valley - Ages / Ryo Hazuki / Gilleus / - Console mod

Game Changer: Learn how to (Risk-boost) on practically anything and stack your boosts as best you can.

I could not have been more impressed by this game, really a recommend to any fans of racing games, Sonic, and/or Sega characters.

+Graphics look great and run smoothly
+Tons of characters to choose from (~30), many unlocked as you play
+Race tracks are highly varied, look great, full of twists, turns, and surprises
+Transformations occur seamlessly in levels allowing land, water, and air/space racing
+Level up characters through play to unlock specializations for each character
+Items keep things interesting without severely damaging balance
+Difficulty is challenging but rewarding of practice/experience
+Customizable controls, works well with controller or keyboard, mouse even works properly in the menus

-I could only wish for even more characters, but you are bound to see some you recognize and like

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Well, if I have to say something, just one thing that I could pinpoint and mention "this game does this so well, way better than everyone else" I have to say it's the scenery. By far, Sumo Digital managed to extract the very essence of the classic Sega games scenery and include it on this game, and it's wonderfully done. I mean, just look at this detail of a stage based off Golden Axe.
And like that track, we also have ones based on Panzer Dragoon, Samba de Amigo, Shinobi, Jet Set Radio and some other great Sega franchises.

But that's just me, and if that were the only good thing to mention about the game, then it might suck. But they managed to include driving mechanics so so so good it takes a couple hours to understand them (drifiting-based) but could take months until you manage to master it, and master every track little by little. If you go online, be prepared to be the best you could, or be crushed.
Let me stress this once again: mechanics are and feel awesome. When you manage to charge up to 3 drift combo levels and you manage to get past that pesky AI, it's great. Also, everything. Getting hit, hitting someone with a weapon, flying, the water drag is incredible. So yeah, that's another really strong point.
Talking about weapons, there's one amazing mechanic that they did, where they sent this swarm of bees that the first player in the race has to avoid, or it will lose the positing. It's great how they balanced that.

Hm, and I think I could write a thesis about the menus of this game too. Whenever you select something, the commentator encourages you to keep selecting things, the SFX, it's just great.

Now, if I have to mention something I really didn't like, it's the inclusion of certain characters without any kind of relation to the Sega universe. Specifically, Danica Patrick and the Yogscast one. They feel so out of place and so unrelatable to Sega that they just break the immersion. I know they either had to maintain the sponsorships, or they did it with for a good cause (charity), but still... it's not for this game. Let me enjoy the classics, not some random dudes/dudettes.

And that's it for this game, I could go on but it's long enough as it is. Thanks for reading!

Отличные гонки,где герои из разных игр,как Sonic,Super Mario и другие персонажи из других игр
Плюсы:
1) Много трасс
2) В каждой трассе есть препятствия и бонусы,которые иным способом,вам помогут во время заезда.
3) Можно выбирать разных персонажей
4) Отличный сеттинг игры
5) В каждом заезде есть трансформация,тоесть машина превращается в самолет или в лодку.
Минусы:
1) Чуть позже,атмосфера игры меняется и начинает надоедать
Оценка 8.5 из 10