I'm a Sonic fan, which can be tough sometimes when poor quality games keep being released. But, I like to keep faith that they won't all be bad. I liked Sonic Generations, Sonic Mania was pretty decent and I have quite enjoyed Sumo Digital's racing series. Recently they released Team Sonic Racing, and I was excited to try it.
Hot chicken baguettes are huge in Ireland, but nowhere is the love bigger than here in Cork. It's not hard to get a hot chicken baguette but the quality can vary massively from place to place. Sometimes the chicken can be dry, the cheese not fresh, the roll might be close to being stale, but when the ingredients are right, it's perfect. Playing Team Sonic Racing I found myself asking was this the perfect hot chicken baguette?
Story
Story? I know what you are thinking, it's a racing game is there really need for a story? The answer is no, no there is not. Sonic and some of his associates are sent an invitation from an alien being called Dodon Pa to compete in a series of races. Rather than ignore it they blindly go to meet Dodon Pa, and even though they don't trust him they decide to compete in his races because...reasons. The dialogue and voice acting is terrifyingly bad.
Overall the story is poor and unneeded and I have nothing positive to say.
Visuals
Swiftly moving on from the story let's take a look at the visuals. Similar to Sonic All-Star Racing, and Sonic Transformed the level designs are vibrant and fun. The only issue as such is that in some levels it can be difficult to work out where the track starts and ends, especially in the lava levels.
Overall Sumo Digital does a great job of the visuals, with very minor issues.
Music
The soundtrack is an upbeat rock soundtrack, it's fun and has a 'we can do anything if we can work together' feel. The soundtrack is created by Japanese video game composer Jun Senoue who is the lead guitarist and songwriter of Crush 40. His previous works include; Sonic Heros, Sonic and Knuckles, Sonic Hedgehog 3, Daytona 3, Burning Rangers, and Sonic Adventure 2 to name but a few.
It's a meaty soundtrack that runs at well over three hours. There are many great tracks which all help in creating a fun feeling when playing.
Gameplay
Onto the hot chicken. The gameplay focuses on working as a team of three to help win races. This can be done by sharing powers ups, following the trails left behind by the leader of your team and slingshotting around them. If you do this throughout the race you can pull off an ultimate attack which helps propel your team into, or close to, the lead.
Finishing races and challenges provide credits that can then be used to purchase upgrades for cars. Some are purely cosmetic and others will help give you the edge in races.
There is an adventure mode, which has a lot to be desired. The out and out and races are a lot of fun and even the destruction missions are fun, but the others got old quick for me. I think the real issue for me is that they rehash the levels a lot. I think it would have been great if they had included some of the levels from the previous games similar to Mario Kart.
Overall, if you ignore some of the elements of the adventure mode it's pretty solid but somehow doesn't quite offer the same fun as the previous the games in the series.
Final Thoughts
So, after twelve hours how did I feel? Ummm, well...not bad. The story was woeful, the visuals are pretty good, the soundtrack is upbeat and fun. The gameplay is pretty good and while it would have been nice if they didn't reuse the tracks as much the team element is a lot of fun. Overall this one gets a lukewarm 3 out of 5
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