What's going on boys and girls what's up world Austin John plays here and today
we're gonna be taking a look and some first impressions for Sonic Team Racing
now out for the Nintendo switch now I picked up Sonic Team Racing because well
one I love Sonic the Hedgehog and two I love Mario Kart and I'm going to assume
that a large majority of my audience who owns a switch owns Mario Kart a deluxe
I'm also going to assume that the Mario Kart series is the animated slash
unrealistic racing game that you've played the most as have I with that in
mind I picked up Sonic Team Racing and I want to give you some of my first
impressions on the game and you could determine if it's the kind of game that
you do or don't want to go by with your hard-earned bucks or your mom's credit
card when you're watching this video this game is already released on the
Nintendo switch as well as Steam PlayStation 4 and the Xbox one I've
played the switch version and that's what I'm going to be talking about the
main story mode here is team adventure where you're gonna be spending most of
your time it's where you control one of three racers on a team and you go
against other racers whom are on a team of three themselves you're judged on
your score as well as an overall team score and with that blanket statement
the first thing that may come to your mind is that's baloney why am i judged
on what some AI does but that's the thing about Sonic Team Racing
it's not a Mad Max free-for-all like Mario Kart 8 deluxe instead items are
more sparse and you're working together with your team a lot more examples of
that being you can draft your own teammates for a speed boost called the
slingshot when executed correctly this will slingshot you in front of your
teammate and they can slingshot off of you so on and so forth and unlike Mario
Kart 8 deluxe there's a story mode this is where you're gonna be spending a vast
majority of your time as soon as you boot up the game the main story supports
one to three players and it can be played in docked or tabletop mode if
you're playing by yourself you could play in handheld however handheld does
not support two or more players while playing with two or more players in
story mode if you choose someone from team sonic for example then the other
players who are playing have to choose racers from the same team such as Tails
and Knuckles in the story mode which is a voice acted with still animations of
Sonic and the gang you're going to complete a variety of single races Grand
Prix's and challenge races there's a guy named da daaaa who invites Sonic Tails
and Knuckles to a racing tournament that he's holding and everyone needs to drive
cars hello blue hedgehog I endured on par I'm glad to see who accepted the
honor of my invitation are you ready to prove to me that you're the fastest and
then you learned that aiming the hedgehog big the cat and four Chows in a
car are also invited for the first chapter of this race you're introduced
to who da daaaa is as him being the antagonist the whole crew is super
suspicious of this guy and he's a tanuki that's all I have to say about him the
first chapter of the race into this is these three characters and upon
completing the chapter you unlock the three characters and you can play as
them this theme of new team being introduced after every chapter follow
suit four additional chapters of the story mode each chapter is a basic map
with an average of about 6 acts including the challenges the challenges
each have four ranks turn and it can help hone your skills and they can be
quite a challenge however most challenges are not required to progress
through the story each challenge has four different ranks up to platinum and
I do recommend spending some time on them at least getting to bronze level
before moving on as it conditions you for the upcoming chapter as far as the
regular races there are single races and Grand Prix's Grand Prix is our
collection of floor races and there's also some fun twists to the races such
as survival races where the last racer to and each lap is eliminated
therefore destroying the team commodity there's also fun random mirror modes of
courses and more when entering a race or a Grand Prix there's a set amount of
goals to reach that's displayed on the right hand side except for the
challenges you'll find yourself completing all of these goals
with ease also each race has a difficulty option normal hard and expert
expert is locked by default and completing goals on a harder option gets
you a higher score on the race via multiplier as far as the racers
themselves you start the game with the classic tree up Sonic the Hedgehog tails
miles the Fox I don't know the proper way to say his name
and Knuckles the Echidna Sonic's design is based off of new Sonic not classic
Sonic attitude is cocky and light-hearted and his teeth are not
human-like so I approve as far as all the voice acting in the game your
knuckles and Tails and I got these weird invitations to meet somebody at the
beach for some kind of race but I've always got time for a chili dog it's
pretty spot-on and I generally like all of the characters except for some reason
I really don't like shadows voice perhaps you could be useful and
assisting me to thwart the doctor's plan after all Sonic it sounds like a guy
who's trying way too hard to be dark and edgy although I guess that's what shadow
is doing too when you complete chapter 1 you unlock the racers that you just
raced against Amy big the cat and the Chou's and from there you'll unlock a
colorful cast of racers based off of old Sonic games some newer some older the
racers that you can unlock in this game include blaze Eggman aka
dr. Robotnik aka Jim Carrey Metal Sonic Omega rogue or Rouge I don't know how to
say her name shadow silver vector and zavok this
brings me to the three categories of racers there are speed types like Sonic
and Amy Technic types like tails and the chow and the power types like knuckles
and big speed types are well obviously the fastest racers technique types
attract rings when nearby and they aren't affected by going offroad
I do recommend this if you're playing with a younger sibling or child and the
power type are the heavyweights like Bowser that can knock into other racers
and they could also destroy obstacles on a course with ease you even get a few
rings every time they do destroyable it's also important to note that each of
these three classes really handles very differently for
example when I do challenges that evolve drifting I like to use technique types
because of how quickly they can enter into the drift and when it comes to
races like single and Grand Prix I prefer power types because I like to
pave the way for my other two characters on my team to follow behind me and
slingshot up now let's get into the races I do want to mention that the
levels that you race in even earlier are very detailed there's a lot going on
with each race course and each race sometimes can seem a little distracting
with how many things are going on on screen compared to in retrospect Mario
Kart eats more basic stylized courses however the team thought about that and
in both docked and handheld mode if there's an opposing racer in front of
you they have a very fine red outline that helps you distinguish them from the
course this small detail I cannot begin to explain how helpful it is team
Sonic's racing can be broken down into a few things
drifting which is very similar to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's drafting and slingshots
which I've already explained a little bit Ultimate Team boost and items
firstly items head a 9 a box on the course and it gives you a random wisp
however I may refer to these as just items out of force of habit the various
wisps do different things and you can only collect and hold one at a time now
once you have a wisp in your possession you can use it however you can also
offer it to a teammate it then reran demises to be a different wisp and that
teammate gets it you can also request an item / wisp from your teammates if they
have them and your teammates may offer you items randomly if you accept them
while you have an item then it will be added to a buffer of items so one stand
by one the transferring use of items is very different from Mario Kart 8 deluxe
and there's not a huge amount of items on each course therefore the game
promotes you to use them strategically and of course sharing is caring it's
really nice to not be in the mentality of ok I just got an item I need to use
this one to two items before I hit the next amount of idea
and also let's go over one very specific scenario that many Mario Kart players
find themselves in you're in first and you're only getting a single banana a
green shell or a coin that's it instead in team sonic racing you offer that item
to your teammate to help them catch up your ultimate goal is to have yourself
in first and your teammates in second and third when you give away one of our
items to your teammates not only are you immediately helping your teammates by
giving them an item obviously however you also fill up your ultimate meter
which is triggered by hitting X this puts you and your teammates into a state
of invincibility and a speed boost very similar to how a superstar works in
Mario Kart except it's for you and your two teammates in addition to sharing
items you also fill your meter by slingshotting with your teammates
letting them slingshot off of you hitting other racers as well as various
other ways also performing these actions while in the middle of a team ultimate
increases your team ultimate for a short period now when you first boot up the
game the amount of items and wisps that you encounter is it catches you a little
off-guard especially if you're not used to them which it's your first time
playing this so you're probably not it should also be noted that there are
rings on the levels they add to your top speed as well as count toward your final
score however if you get hit once or fall off of a course once you lose all
of your rings sonic stuff you know when completing races and challenges you'll
also get credits these can be used for mod pods mod pods are like acorn
capsules that you get from a quarter machine at the exit of a food store each
mod pod is ten credits and it's essentially a lottery of items the items
can be anything from an race boosts items meaning that there's a chance of
you collecting an item and instead of just being one rocket it's three Rockets
a boost box item which is a one-time disposable use item that you start off a
race with a specific wisp mods for your race cars for a random character even if
they haven't been unlocked yet the engine mods come in a few different
types and there are legendary versions of the
from what I could tell the only difference is that the legendary ones
are gold you can also get horns paint jobs and vinyls that brings us to the
garage in the garage you can customize your parts of your racecar as well as
its cosmetics also the music here is really dope but also the customizing is
dope mostly the paint options but first let's talk about the performance options
you unlock parts as you progress through the game via mod pods or other means and
before going into a race you could choose to hot-swap these parts in and
outs or in the garage you can define your default loadout generally each of
these takes away from one or several stats and adds to others but also some
of them look really awesome and while they could be used to add to eraser
shortcomings they could be also used to make them excel very much in one
category but at the same time you can equip parts that counter each other and
just make the car look a lot cooler from what I could tell you're not gonna find
a combination of parts that magically makes you the best racer in the game
they're all fairly well balanced here's the fun stuff this is what I came for
that's actually not sarcasm it's painting from the beginning of the game
you could customize the paint jobs of the vehicles for any unlocked characters
there's 15 default paint schemes and 13 additional paint schemes based off of
classic and modern sonic levels once you pick a color scheme you get those four
colors to choose from and you get to choose from a healthy variety of
finishes the finishes can make your paint look matte semi-gloss metallic and
so much more so the finish that you end up choosing for the color effects the
saturation the hue and the light reflection of the paint you can also
swap the color scheme after choosing the finishes and get some really awesome and
easy customizing there's also a variety of vinyls to choose from all of them are
locked at the beginning of the game and there's a bunch of horns too because you
know how much you use horns and Mario Kart about two-thirds of them are locked
from default I've spent a good 15 minutes here
customizing just the cars of the three characters that I had
before having any edges parts like I did two races and then I came here and then
I spent more time here than I've spent racing so far let's talk about
multiplayer for a local multiplayer you have a few options here Grand Prix's and
single races for both you get to play as a team or a single racer completely
defeating the purpose of the game the multiplayer is 1 to 4 players and Sonic
Team Racing also supports single sideways joique on play for Grand Prix
you choose from the five different Grand Prix's in the game with four courses
each for who you play as it's locked to who you've already unlocked in story
mode so out of the box you're only going to be able to choose from three
characters Sonic Tails and Knuckles but each race has a total of 12 racers
including racers that you haven't unlocked in story mode chosen at random
I'd also like to note that if you're playing a one player team race your
teammates are not locked to the default teams meaning that if you choose Sonic
your two AI teammates may be big the cat and shadow which is very weird this also
goes for just popping in a fresh game with four controllers the four players
have to choose from the three available racers Sonic Tails and Knuckles so you
generally have to do some time invested in the story mode before friends can
join in and not use repeat characters however I don't really feel like this is
the kind of game that random friends you're just gonna be able to hop in and
enjoy themselves more on that at the end you also get the option to do races and
Grand Prix with the switches local Wireless which lets you create lobbies
and join them which is nice so let's wrap it up with some overall final
thoughts Sonic Team Racing is a fun game and I'd say it's a little bit more akin
to diddy kong racing in mario kart it's more of a game that two people will sit
down play the story together rather than game that you could just pop in with a
group of people and within the first race everyone knows exactly what's going
on the vehicle customization is really well done the lottery system is pretty
fair and not too frustrating the sense of commodity between the racers on a
team is great and I wish I was ten and I had a friend who could come over to
after school and we do those races together like I did with Diddy Kong
Racing back in the day the game is only 40 bucks and it runs
fairly well on the switch except for the slight hiccup of the traffic challenge
courses and sometimes there's this weird tire rendering the actual racing
gameplay is a smooth stable framerate and resolution with no slowdowns from
what I've seen so to sum it up will it replace Mario Kart 8 deluxe in your life
and your group settings at a party no but is it a good 20 to 30 hours of a
sonic story with racing and some fun challenges absolutely if you're looking
for a game to play and you're a big fan of Mario Kart 8 deluxe but you wish
there was more going on with the single-player then this game is
definitely for you if you own Mario Kart only to be in a group setting so other
people can join in and play with you this probably is not the game for you
again it is available now I'm gonna leave an affiliate link down below on
Amazon if you want to go and buy it from there amazon gives me a small cut but
not sponsored or anything else and yeah that's my first impressions that I have
about Sonic Team Racing for the Nintendo switch so guys it's been a while since I
did a game review and I really enjoyed it if you enjoyed the video do me a
favor leave a like down below if you're new to the channel be sure to subscribe
turn on notifications until next time austan Johnny