For consoles, yeah. The arcade side didn't really ever stop, with Initial D chugging along as usual and Sega World Drivers Championship - which is partly why they're drawing on their expertise with the genre (and more recently Unreal Engine) here.
This has heavy Ian Flynn vibes to me but I don’t think he’s confirmed any involvement with the game as of yet so I’d be really intrigued to learn if it’s somebody else handling writing duties, because that’s a really sick reference. Shame the track for Water Palace is entirely new rather than being a Back 2 Back remix though, despite the fact it seems to have only ever been the sampling that has been legally problematic for the Rush soundtrack rather than the melodies themselves, given Vela Nova was remixed for TSR. Can’t get too upset though because god even just short clips of this game look like an absolute blast, so much snappier than the Sumo stuff (which isn’t a knock against them, mind).
Game looks amazing but is it OK for a bit of negative nancy time. I think Roger Craig Smith is an amazing VA but some of those VA lines are a bit much. GOOD. Lol. It's better than the horrible direction he had in Frontiers but I feel like he's got the smarminess back from Lost World and maybe going a bit too forced with it. I know this is extremely stupid to be pedantic over. A five second Twitter clip. But ah well!
yeah I couldn't help but think the same thing, especially considering how often the same voice clips repeat. Sonic's awkward "buh bye!" voice clip had me like "maybe they could've done a better take of that..." lol
It's very possible he did better takes of those clips and someone chose to not use them. That's how it is as a VA sometimes.
I think awkward is a good way to describe Craig Smiths VA when he leans a bit too much into smarmy Sonic. Awkward rather than cool dickhead. Lol! Hopefully he's good in the rest of the game. I do actually like Craig Smith as Sonic and this is leagues better than his worst performance ever in Frontiers due to that games horrific direction.
Overall, it looks good. As a nitpick, I'm always a bit peeved at how different the vehicles look between games. I'm also surprised it's coming to last-gen consoles, given the fast-loading segments of the tracks.
We already had something pretty similar on 360: We've probably got a little more horsepower to make the magic trick look nicer is all that's really changed.
---- (3:19 - 3:57) (3:11 - 3:48) --- Look I don't know who did the Voice Direction for TSR or TailsTube, but I want them on for the games, if only because I really fw with Roger with them. My favorite of all time is Ryan, cause Heroes alone, but these aren't bad to me either As a side-note you ever think about how Roger had to audition for Sonic back in 2010, I mean yes we're all aware of that but we don't know who else auditioned aside from Ryan Drummond, I mean was it really just those two are there just a ton of Sonic auditions we've just never even heard MENTIONED even to this day. Like, who else auditioned for that really.
My only real hangup with this game was how janky trick system looked but now we know that was due to gear. It looks more responsive than before without going overboard. Love all the little additions to make the gameplay more "active" like the charge jump system. Seems like SASRT combined with the best of riders(Super "active" skill based gameplay, high levels of customizability). I'm really excited for this. A lot of things in this game remind me of Riders, to be honest. I like it a lot. I get the complaining about the lack of sega characters but all I really wanted them to do was to go for deep cut Sonic characters instead if that's the route they're going. Jet on Extreme Gear is beyond even my wildest dreams for a project like this.
It sounds like we might get both, assuming the site isn't lying and depending on how you interpret "a ton more on the way". But yeah, I'd rather see more obscure Sonic veterans, I'm here for Sonic. SEGA's IP portfolio is great, but I'm unfamiliar with a lot of it, and importantly, a lot of it is shit that hasn't got a game in decades, reminds me of Captain Falcon being trotted out for Smash every few years.
I figured this would be the case, but browsing the manual for the game, I'm a tad disappointed that the items are very... Mario Kart-y. Part of why I liked Racing Transformed so much is that the items were really well-considered and had a totally different feel to other "mascot racing" games - they didn't just feel like "party game BS" but a bit more like weapons to use and employ well to get an edge. Yeah, they weren't SEGA or Sonic themed, but mechanically (with the exception of Twister) they were the best item set I've seen in a game like this. It also concerns me that there's so many items and that you have two item slots. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's change of carrying two items instead of one makes that game hell. And apparently there's a gadget that lets you carry -three-?! really don't like this : (
Super Monkey Ball, Puyo Puyo and Like A Dragon are active series. Samba de Amigo got a new game a year and half ago. Panzer Dragoon and House of the Dead both got remakes in the 2020s. Shinobi, Virtua Fighter, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi all have new games in development. Then there are Atlus and Rovio's titles, as well as Sega's PC focused titles like Total War.
I really don’t think the All-Stars items were that good, and many of them do have Mario Kart analogies anyway (such as Hotrod and the Thunder Cloud, the RC Car and Red Shells). About the only one that I think truly stood out was the ice shot thanks to the option to fire all three at once, freezing opponents to award good aim and timing. If I had to characterise the new item set as anything in particular, it’d be “odd”. The wisps, for example, continue to be themed pretty much perfectly as Mario Kart-esque items, but then you get stuff like the weights and the tornado, which are largely fine in a functional sense (though weights targeting first and second feels arbitrary), but just seem kind of boring. I can appreciate the desire to expand the item set beyond the wisps, but the results are a bit tepid and I don’t think it’s that hard to take the function of what we already have any make it more Sonic-y. If it were up to me, the item list would be as such (assume items without a description are unchanged from their existing versions): White Boost Black Bomb Violet Void Yellow Drill Cyan Laser - A far reaching single shot attack that pierces opponents to hit every racer in its range Red Burst - Replaces Tornado but has a “pulse” effect rather than being constantly active Purple Frenzy - Replaces Monster Truck Orange Rocket - Homing variant is Crimson Eagle Warp Ring Shield - Modelled after classic barrier shield (maybe green as in the Advance and Rush games) Dark Chao Bonus Ring Proton Torpedo - Functions identically to the Blue Shell in Mario Kart 8; can be dodged by using a boost right before contact (if this boost is from a drift, it must be level 3 or higher) Buzzsaw - Modelled after Scrap Brain/Metallic Madness buzzsaws, replaces Slicer UFO - Modelled after Sonic CD and Mania, replaces Omochao; if hit with an attack or driven into while active, the player who hit it receives a random item Ring Tether - Tethers two players to one another and rubber bands them together when a certain distance between them is achieved (the nature of this is moderately physics based and dictated by player action - for example, if the player behind brakes to activate the effect, the player in front is pulled backwards; if the player in front boosts to activate the effect, the player behind is pulled forwards) Bumper - Can be placed ahead or behind, players who come into contact with this experience severe knockback Spiked Iron Ball Mega Mack - It’s literally Slime but reskinned to look like Eggman’s beaker of Mega Mack from the Chemical Plant boss Magnet - Same as current, but makes the same sound as the magnets in Flying Battery There, an appropriately Sonic-ified take on the existing item set with the exception of Weight because I think it’s a dumb item. I even got some Chaotix and Tails’ Adventure representation in there!
Yeah, I never thought Transformed ideas were as good as people hype them up to be. They were also a step down thematically. At least some of the SEGA All-Stars items were from the games. That and first place could get a massive lead when 2nd and 3rd place are duking it out and Hornet becomes useless at doing anything to first place.
speaking of classic Sonic elements I noticed that bumpers actually appear as a stage obstacle so that's cool, idk if they were in any of the other Sonic racers
A lot of the items in Transformed are conceptually similar to Mario Kart but are cleverly redesigned to fit the game's more arcade-y design and cut down on what I feel is bad about Mario Kart items, for instance: Fireworks is a "Green Shell" sure, but you often only get -one- of them, and you don't just hold it behind you all the time hoping to protect you, which I think is a pretty bad thing about Mario Kart - hoarding an offensive item and keeping that button held down for an eternity because of its usefulness in shielding you from a hazard coming from the back. To make Fireworks more exciting though, and feel different to other items, they're -super- fast, so it feels feasible but also really satisfying to get a bounce shot in. Shooting straight, if you're aiming for a pretty good opponent, is risky because they can peek at you and see you've got Fireworks and move out of the way, especially if you're very predictable at deploying it. This also makes the Snowball item interesting, because it gives you way more opportunities to hit an evasive racer, but you do -not- get the rebound or the speed of Fireworks. And you also have the opportunity to throw them all at once for a wide shot, but you have to commit to it before throwing any snowballs. The RC car is a Red Shell but you only get one instead of three, and if it misses someone, it just goes farther ahead for the next target, meaning it's bound to take someone down and allow people behind to catch up. It's also great how you can avoid it by boosting at the right time! And of course my favorite items are the Glove and the Swarm. Transformed is really anti-defensive play when it comes to items, so it makes sense to make your defensive item something that you steal the item being thrown at you and turn it into an offensive option. Otherwise, what you do when you get a defensive item is to just deploy it immediately as a precaution and hope you get another one. You can't do that here. Gloves aren't easy to come by, and they don't stay up long, and if you want to steal an item, you need to think about timing, and timing a Glove right to snag an item and then throw it right back feels incredible. And the Swarm is such a good way of dealing with the Blue Shell problem. Here's an item that affects the person in 1st place so to allow others to catch up, but it doesn't JUST affect the 1st place, it affects everyone in front of the Swarm user, allowing people who are farther behind to catch up, instead of just the 2nd and 3rd places. And as people get hit by Swarm, there's less obstacles in the track, making it easier for people coming behind. And if the 1st place is too far ahead, then it only affects them, allowing the whole pack behind to catch up a bit. It's also fun for the one in first place! If you're too far ahead you don't just get to ignore what other racers are doing, you get to try to steer and dodge your way out of unexpected obstacles instead of just seeing a Blue Shell coming in and going "well, might as well just stop my car and take it." There's a couple things that you can do to avoid the Shell but they're so specific and situational. And the way you halt to a complete stop with the Blue Shell makes it so frustrating to get hit by. It's great! This is why I say it feels like combat, with "footsies" and commitment and choices to make, instead of just "well now I get to slow down a bunch for a few seconds, nothing I could do about it, and it feels bad and I hope I don't just get hit by something like this immediately again" or a first place hoarding the same defensive item for half a race.
On top of how mechanically solid and interesting the items are, I wanna give a shout-out to the tiered boost system. The way different sources and levels of boost interact is really cool - you aren't just maximizing the uptime of a binary boost state, you're stacking them into a stronger boost with however many big drifts, speed boosters, tricks, and boost items you can manage to squeeze together. I remember one track in particular (I think the House of the Dead one) had a super item box with a multi-boost and a big jump with a lot of airtime. Building up a huge trick combo, then holding the item button to burn all the boost charges on landing added up to a MASSIVE boost that felt great to pull off.
