SEGA and developer Sumo Digital invited the press to play a demo version of their upcoming racing game Team Sonic Racing, a rough follow-up to the Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing series, during a pre-E3 event.
Check out the gameplay video of Team Sonic Racing, featuring some gameplay footage:
Laura Kate from Kotaku was one of the press members invited to play the demo version of the game at the pre-E3 event by SEGA. Here’s what she said about the game:
“I thought this would be a kart racer that largely followed the lead of the ever-popular Mario Kart, with a Sega-centric roster and that key detail of multi-platform support.
More fool me, because what I saw of Team Sonic Racing was a pleasant surprise. Mario Kart, as polished and tight as it is, represents something of a pinnacle for the genre: you can copy what it does, and do a decent job, but the chances you’ll ever actually top it are low. The previous Sonic racers were hugely influenced by Nintendo’s series, but Team Sonic Racing shakes up the kart racing formula with a few core gimmicks that make the game feel unique.
Team Sonic Racing is a 12-player kart racer where racers are split up into four teams. Where kart racers typically reward players for their personal performance and own finishing position, Team Sonic Racing gives each player on a team points based on their finishing position, then adds up those points for an overall team score. Simply put, you can’t win as an individual by just being the best racer; if the team doesn’t do well, then nobody does.
Team Sonic Racing gives players a number of tools to help out their fellow racers, none of which I have really seen employed in this sort of cooperative racing game before. If you pick up an item (called Wisps) while racing around the track, but are considerably further up the pack than your teammates, you can press a button to offer that item to your team. If one of your team members accepts and takes the item, it’ll warp over to them, allowing them to catch up more easily (and hopefully knock a few people off your own tail). If you’re the player falling behind, you can use that same button to request items from your team, and any players with an item available have the option to pass theirs over. By passing items between your team, hitting enemy racers with items, or pulling off collaborative racing moves like slipstream boosts, you can slowly build up a team energy meter too which, when full, can be activated to give every racer on your team a short but substantial speed boost.”
For more information on Team Sonic Racing, visit its official website. For more gaming news, visit our website.
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