First impressions

[BuffPuffer]

Just some quick background about myself as a player: played ASRT for ~100 hours, 100% completion, Top 300-ish in time rankings. I'm no grandmaster, but I'm not some random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ either.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on Team Sonic Racing after a couple hours, for anyone who's on the fence about buying it:

- The racing controls feel super polished, even tighter than ASRT. The physics also seem a bit less prone to having seizures, but this may be due to simplified course design; more on that later.

- The teamplay is surprisingly intricate, but I'm a little iffy on the star boost mechanics. What's to stop a team from just offering items to each other indefinitely...? Not sure if this is the best way to build the meter, but figuring out the correct strategy here is a little unintuitive.

- There is a pretty big variety in items, but my initial feeling is that they lack the visual clarity / identity from the original. Hard to tell the wisps apart without having played the game for a while. For example, where we used to have a glove and a swarm of bees, we now have a red wisp and a magenta wisp (not sure if these are the right colors, but you get the idea.)

- I like that collecting coins increases your top speed, but getting hit by anything will cause you to lose all of your wealth at once. This seems overly punishing; it creates situations where you build up 50+ coins for the first two laps of the race, eventually get hit by an unavoidable wisp, and end up in a position with little to no comeback potential. On the other hand, I'm not sure if coins make you THAT much faster... anyone have the exact numbers on this?

- The maps are absolutely gorgeous, but the track layouts are underwhelming. This is pretty much what everyone expected. The ASRT remakes are especially disappointing, in my opinion, because they just loop before any of the sky/water sections would appear in the original - they're much shorter overall (e.g. Ocean View).

- Capsule pods are cool, if a little gratuitous. I think credits are earned too quickly. Also, there seems to be some weighting to the droprates; I got like 10 Sonic parts in a row.

- Still can't play Grand Prix in online multiplayer :-( Single races only. EDIT: I was wrong about this, you CAN play Grand Prix online!! It's a "rule type" under the "race settings" menu. Strange place for it, but I'm not complaining!

- What's the point of expert difficulty story mode? In ASRT, you had to beat the top difficulty in order to earn every star. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Overall, I am having a blast with the game, but there are some fundamental design choices that may keep it from surpassing its predecessor. Post-launch support might help somewhat.

[TommyEV]

Are many maps/trscks recycled or just a few?

[BuffPuffer]

Originally posted by TommyEV:

Are many maps/trscks recycled or just a few?

I have only seen two or three remakes so far. Ocean View and the casino Roulette stage, whatever that one's called. Most of the tracks are new.

[TommyEV]

Originally posted by Elevory:

Originally posted by TommyEV:

Are many maps/trscks recycled or just a few?

I have only seen two or three remakes so far. Ocean View and the casino Roulette stage, whatever that one's called. Most of the tracks are new.

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Nu-men von Kryt !!XD]

Originally posted by TommyEV:

Are many maps/trscks recycled or just a few?

entire Seaside hill zone, casino zone and eggman fortress zone are recycled seaside hill has one track from transformed but the rest is from the first all stars racing game. In terms of how complex are the new tracks only rooftop run zone(personally this has the best looking tracks of all that are new) and sandopolis zone are any good but the best tracks give House of the dead, Samba de Amigo and Monkey ball from previous games.

[Everybody do the flop]

I miss how tracks would change from lap to lap, here they stay the same and if there is some change, it's minor.

Also don't get why you'd ever need to play on harder than Normal, since nothing seems to unlock other than another difficulty setting, which is also pointless.

[MONZUN]

i'm loving the game (just purchased it and tried some tracks), BUT whats up with those horrible graphics ?!? o_O i mean wtf, its insane, it doesn'T use my systems ressources at all rofl (15-20% of my gpu and i only have a gtx 980ti) and like 5-15% of my cpu (got a ryzen 2600X). maxed out in 1080p i'Ve buttersmooth 60fps, but the graphics look like ♥♥♥♥

i mean, they look much better than in transformed, but still they could be so much better o_O the lod is ridiculously small and the shadows look horrible aswell

[BuffPuffer]

Originally posted by Everybody do the flop:

I miss how tracks would change from lap to lap, here they stay the same and if there is some change, it's minor.

Yeah, this is a valid criticism. The transformations between laps gave ASRT stages a lot of personality and replay value.

[Nu-men von Kryt !!XD]

Originally posted by MONZUN:

i'm loving the game (just purchased it and tried some tracks), BUT whats up with those horrible graphics ?!? o_O i mean wtf, its insane, it doesn'T use my systems ressources at all rofl (15-20% of my gpu and i only have a gtx 980ti) and like 5-15% of my cpu (got a ryzen 2600X). maxed out in 1080p i'Ve buttersmooth 60fps, but the graphics look like ♥♥♥♥

i mean, they look much better than in transformed, but still they could be so much better o_O the lod is ridiculously small and the shadows look horrible aswell

see what screen options you have because this is already noted as possible problem if you dont have fullscreen set on there is windowed fullscreen or borderless and people on forums says this is giving them problems.

Also performance is all over the place for instance people RX 470 and with new i5 cant run the game at decent settings and framerate at 1080p, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gt 1030 and ryzen 2200g can run the game in high settings 1080p no problem reaching over 60 fps.

In other words the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from Sonic Team are responsible for PC port just freaking lovely.