Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is an arcade racing game that takes the tried-and-true model of item-based racing and adds vehicle transformation on the fly. The track changes during the lap, part of it is raced in a car, part on a boat amid churning water, and part in a plane through the air, and with every lap the layout of obstacles shifts, so the second lap already looks different from the first. Each of the three modes has its own physics: the car slides into drifts, the boat bounces on waves, and the plane requires managing tilt, so the player must constantly switch between three styles of driving.

The roster of characters spans the publisher's history and includes both expected faces from the blue hedgehog's world and representatives of older, less common brands. The career mode runs across a branching map of tasks, where alongside classic races there are also time trials, duels, and missions with special rules. Split-screen play and online racing are also available. The Vita version contains extensive content including several exclusive racers, and it's a very solid conversion that, at the cost of lower resolution and slightly simplified effects, maintains the necessary smoothness even on more demanding tracks. Controls are responsive and offer drifts with a gradually charging boost, so even after dozens of completed races there's still room to improve how cleanly corners are taken. The game also rewards bold driving with airborne tricks that likewise fill the acceleration meter.

The tracks themselves are the biggest asset: each is built around a specific game world, has its own musical arrangement of classic melodies, and can surprise with a dramatic environment change on the final lap. The game was received as one of the few racing titles that managed to stand alongside the genre's benchmark from the competition, and many reviewers called it the best work of its kind outside the genre's biggest brand. Today it's still the first choice on Vita if the player is looking for fast arcade racing with items and doesn't want to race alone.