Let's kick this page off with a bang. The bang in question being my fist slamming the desk from how much I wanted to like this game, because surprise - it's actually here to immediately provide a sharp contrast to everything else on this page.

A new Mario Kart should've been an easy slam dunk. I played the hell out of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe; at one point I could confidently say it was my favourite online game ever. And to its credit, Mario Kart World does make a significant number of improvements. The graphical leap is considerable, with characters having so much life in their animations and an overhauled visual style harkening to their 2D artwork. The gigantic open world looks lush, and acts as a great showcase of what Nintendo can do with the Switch 2 hardware. And indeed, the initial wonder of that open world was fun to journey around, with new stuff to discover around every turn and the introduction of parkour-style mechanics allowing the kind of exploration both in and out of races that previous Mario Karts could have only dreamed about. The stage was set for the Mario Kart experience.

But there's problems. Oh man, are there problems.


The biggest elephant in the room are the route-type tracks. I get it, Nintendo was very, very proud of these for whatever reason, and they make sense within the open world structure of the game. But they are given such a ridiculous amount of spotlight when they simply aren't as fun as the more consciously designed circuit tracks the game offers. Attempts to rectify the issues with these routes have been slow, half-hearted, and shallow - they still show up too often during online races, and the majority of them still just aren't that great. There's a couple of routes with unique twists, or that result in completely different routes through the circuit that they end in, and these are neat, but they're exceptions in a pool of about 200-odd routes. In a game where Knockout Tour exists, these routes already have a place where they feel much more at home than in general racing, so Nintendo's insistence on players sticking with the gimmick doesn't really work; it comes across as reluctance to admit that yes, even the great Nintendo can get it wrong. That's not to say Knockout Tour is perfect either, as the obvious money-on-the-table home-run of custom/randomised Knockout Tour routes bizarrely isn't a thing. Forza Horizon's been doing this for years, so it feels like Nintendo is caught behind the times here.


I mentioned that the open world managed that sense of wonder... initially. I didn't even mind the lack of direction given too much, as it truly did feel like something was around every corner, and the sense of discovery was wonderful. But as I completed more and more, the remaining challenges became harder and harder to find, which meant aimless driving, just hoping I'd find something engaging to do. This isn't an issue of me running out of stuff to do and complaining that the game's nearly over, either; I still have about 100 missions left to find, but finding them at all gets tedious. The fact the game didn't really track where you had been didn't help either; a recent patch addressed this somewhat by showing completed missions on the map, but even so it's a struggle just to find the content to engage with, given the open world is pretty barren beyond said missions. I think given the premium Nintendo are asking for the game, it's justified in feeling that the open world is seriously underbaked. Again, just compare it to something like Forza, which already set a fairly reliable blueprint for this stuff! The parkour does at least make the exploration and ensuing missions a lot more fun, but I find in races they can have limited appeal; using the parkour feels like it falls into the category of either 'doing something cool that actually puts you at a disadvantage' or 'doing something that's scarily precise and often looks like a glitch for a major advantage'. When it does work out, it's fine, but I often find it safer to not engage with these mechanics at all - especially as the tracks all being built into the open world can make the separation between out-of-bounds and the actual track more vague than ever, something that rails and the like don't exactly guide you away from.

Even when the game is just focused on circuit racing, there's some bugbears. Mario Circuit being a sprint-style track is a baffling decision. While it is indeed the 3 SNES Mario Circuit tracks smushed together, that doesn't quite make for a gigantic track in the same way it might've on its native Super Nintendo. Boo Cinema feels like a complete waste of potential, with really basic circuit design and a sorely underutilised premise. I'm glad there's all these film reels so we know we're definitely in a movie! There's obviously highlights, such as the absolutely incredible new Rainbow Road, the return of my beloved Dino Dino Jungle, and Sky High Sundae being given the glow-up to end all glow-ups - but it's not the strongest track roster the series has presented.


Speaking of rosters, the character roster is also a bit of a mixed bag. One thing I do immediately have to compliment is the introduction of character costumes, even if the character select screen presents them in the most boneheaded way possible. People like being able to dress up their favourite characters, they like being able to give their character a unique spin when they take them online, so props to Nintendo for recognising this. I'm also not going to give Nintendo crap for the introduction of the NPC racers either, because I would've been all over being able to drive around as a Cataquack back in the day. And to some extent, I still am! It's a funny inclusion, for sure, but my mixed feelings come from how relatively basic it feels outside of this. There's no real surprises here, no deep pulls or interesting picks. It's just a very safe Mario Kart roster with a million extra enemies bolted on. No E. Gadd, no WarioWare characters, y'know? And it's mostly weird to me because now feels like the perfect time to have these oddballs here; WarioWare's had plenty of games in recent years, E.Gadd's shown up in Luigi's Mansion sequels and remakes, Mario RPG got a full-blown remake to put those characters back into the public conscious. I don't need this to be Smash Bros Kart, but at least the crossover stuff in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was something a bit different. I think the NPCs were done to better accommodate the jump to 24-player races; which is another area where I think World missteps, as 24 racers with Mario Kart's item play is simply too chaotic for its own good. My online experience with this game has been miserable compared to 8 Deluxe, and that only got worse when I tried using the Discord suggested as a means of bypassing the over-abundance of route-type courses in the regular online mode; bypassing the game's skill-based matchmaking was never going to lead to good results. Yes, the 24 racers might help showcase the Switch 2's power, but whether it was a good idea from a game design point of view is another kettle of fish.

There's a good game in Mario Kart World. Even in its current state, and despite how this rambling probably sounds, I wouldn't call it bad either. It's just aggressively average, and I expected a hell of a lot more from a Mario Kart game that was this long in the making, let alone being sold at such an eye-watering price. If Nintendo had sold the next game on this list at $80 - OK, I'd have still disagreed with it, but I could've perhaps seen where they were coming from. But this? I seriously don't see what's worth the premium price tag. Maybe it was the soundtrack, which is probably the one thing I can't make a snide counter to. It's one of the greatest ensemble soundtracks of all time, and the effort that went into it speaks for itself.

After Mario Kart World was a relatively disappointing start to the Switch 2's life, I was left waiting for the first game that would really justify the purchase. Thankfully, there wasn't long to wait at all, because as I just mentioned; Donkey Kong Bananza is probably the game Nintendo could've gotten away with charging $80 for. It's a goddamn masterpiece.

At first I wasn't sure I'd gel with DK's new adventure too much, simply because I don't have a particularly strong connection to the character. I haven't played through any of the Donkey Kong Country games, never had the DK Bongos during my GameCube days, didn't care for him in Smash Bros or anything. This is the first Donkey Kong game I've played through besides the arcade game (and Donkey Kong '94 on the Game Boy). But handily, that didn't matter, because Bananza alone does plenty to endear me to the character; this new take on DK is funny, he's expressive, and a joy to blast through the environment with. I didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with DK's old design, but I do think this new one fits in slightly better alongside the rest of Nintendo's lineup. What really got me with Bananza was just how fun the minute to minute gameplay was - the terrain destruction gimmick could've easily worn out its welcome in no time, or been heavily restricted to preserve gameplay balance and make it sort of pointless. But it feels like Nintendo struck a perfect balance here, providing the freedom to approach the game in a dozen different ways without completely sacrificing any semblance of level design. Having actual upgrades and new abilities to unlock feels like a relative rarity in Nintendo's 3D platformers - usually your starting kit is what you've got for the game - but in Bananza it not only opens up new opportunities to approach stages, but acts as a more explicit reward for the Golden Bananas you're collecting.


Despite the fact I haven't actually played their era of Donkey Kong through, I did admire how the game acts in many ways as a love letter to the simian's history with Rareware, rather than a rejection of it for something entirely different. There's so many elements here with very blatant Rareware DNA running through them, in ways that become gradually more obvious later on. I do think it was a bit shit to not actually credit any of Rare for this, granted. The complete absence of the likes of David Wise and Grant Kirkhope from the credits was flat out egregious given how much of their music is used here - but it's nice to see Nintendo acknowledge its importance to DK's image at least. The character designs, worlds, and animal transformations all feel very much in-line with the sort of thing those crazy Brits would cook up.
Pauline also provides a lovely sense of progression to the proceedings, and it's genuinely sweet to see her confidence grow from hour to hour - her bond with DK is adorable. How exactly it makes any sense lore-wise is anyone's guess, but I'm going to try not to think too hard about it. VoidCo, the new big bads for DK to contend with, put on a great show given it'd be easy to brush them off as mere stand-ins for DK villains of old. Void Kong especially is a fast-favourite. He's just an absolute dick, but it makes punching his lights out ever more satisfying.

Each world you encounter offers new twists, new ways of using DK's abilities, a new transformation to totally change how the game's played, again and again and again. It also stuck out to me how there was just no filler here. The game feels like it's constantly firing on all cylinders, even in levels that feel like they should be filler, or perhaps would be in another game. There's something to find around every corner, but at the same time it feels less arbitrary than the over-abundance of moons in Mario Odyssey. It's a bit more focused here, with secondary rewards like fossils used to provide any further collectable hunts. The variety in movement, further enhanced by those animal transformations, takes Mario's best efforts to the next level. Finding ways to destroy more stuff more efficiently becomes an obsession, as does finding new ways to traverse the world in ever-more stylish ways. The way boss fights use these is fun too, albeit it can make some of them a tad easy when the transformations are factored in (though that post-game boss rush does not mess around!). The level themes stand out as more than just your traditional platformer tropes, with settings like a forest hotel or arctic ice-cream factory giving each locale a more lived-in feel.
It's also got a solid soundtrack, albeit with a lot of repurposed Rareware music to help with that. Don't me wrong, the Bananza themes will get stuck in your head, but to me, it's obvious that the highlight of the soundtrack is that one specific boss theme.


It feels like I've barely scratched the surface here, but Donkey Kong Bananza simply just does what it sets out to do really well, and then some. There's not much to say beyond that, besides 'go and play it for yourself'. To me, this was the real way to kick the Switch 2 era off with a bang - an utterly sublime game, and easily one of Nintendo's best. He might not be Mario, but DK proves Nintendo can work that 3D platforming magic with anyone just as easily. Could've done without the paid DLC immediately after launch though... maybe give the game above this a crumb of that extra content instead.

Hey, let's stay on the topic of apes for a moment. Because Ape Escape is pretty cool.

Ape Escape 3 is one of my favourite games ever, so it's a little odd it's taken me this long to go and try the original. Admittedly, I didn't leave myself many notes for this one, but as the first real showpiece for the Dualshock, it's a remarkably fun and well-designed game.

The popular zoo attraction Specter the Ape has gotten his hands on a Pipo Helmet that gives him incredible intellect, and so he puts it to use trying to take over the world. As you do. This game in particular has a time travel theme, with our hero Spike venturing throughout time to try and find the apes trying to rewrite history in their image. It's a fun backdrop and makes for some solid level variety, even if there's nothing truly out-of-the-ordinary for a platformer here. Coming back to the original game from a much later one can be difficult sometimes, but thankfully Ape Escape largely stayed consistent throughout its main series. Most of the gadgets I recalled from 3 originated from this game anyway, and as a result it felt like slipping into a comfy pair of PJs again. The level design is stellar for a first go, although there's a couple of moments where it felt like the game tried to get a little too fancy without necessarily having the sophisticated controls needed to back it up. Those moments are indeed few though - for the most part, you're well equipped to tackle what the adventure throws at you.


The graphics are bright and colourful, and remind you of what PlayStation's studios used to be capable of before this obsession with video games being movies showed up. And no reflection on any of the Ape Escape games can go without special mention to the magnificent soundtrack, provided by Soichi Terada. Right from the get go, this first entry in the series is full of absolute classics, and easily some of the best music on the PS1.

I think most games wouldn't get away with "you beat the main game? Alright, now go replay all those levels and get the stuff we forced you to miss", but Ape Escape keeps revisits fresh due to its expansive level design. Part of me was actually surprised this was true of the original, and it's a game that doesn't feel limited by its hardware at all. Although I generally think 3 did things better - as you'd hope a threequel would - the original Ape Escape remains sharp, fun, and well-designed. I'll definitely be making time for Ape Escape 2 in the near future, a game that I've been told numerous times may well be the best of the bunch.


Alright, that's enough monkey business. I can confirm that the next game will definitely, 100% contain not a single monkey. None whatsoever.

You had one job, Tracker.
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble was probably my other big surprise of the year. It's a Monkey Ball game that isn't called Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, Deluxe, or Banana Mania - which usually doesn't bode well. But Banana Rumble tries new things with the established formula, except it's not nonsense like a jump button. It's stuff that legitimately enhances the experience, to the point it's hard to go back.

Banana Rumble's big new gimmick is the Spin Dash, not cribbing from a certain blue hedgehog at all. You spin horizontally while charging, so it's different! This lets you build up a charge and then rocket off ahead, which is simply fun to do and more than ever promotes trying to speedrun these levels. I've often never bothered with some of the more esoteric means of completing Monkey Ball levels, because I simply didn't have the skill, timing, or physics degree to do so. And I should stress that the spin dash far from trivialises these party tricks; but it does make them more accessible, and I like that. It helps that Banana Rumble feels like it leans into the more abstract side of Monkey Ball again, with many levels that wouldn't at all feel out of place in the original games. There's a couple of stinkers, like the one where you have to slowly push a manhole for like, 30 seconds and nothing else, but there's a lot of great stuff in here. The main story was a little on the easy side though; which is why I had a big stupid grin on my face when I finished the story and the game let me know there were actually 'EX Worlds' that double the length of the game. This is where the best levels are, unsurprisingly.


It's also nice to see a new Monkey Ball story with a bit more thought to it than "AiAi wants bananas." Like don't get wrong, it's still a simple plot, but Palette is a great new character and I love the whole Phantom Thief archetype Easel's got going on. The other new animal guys are a bit more forgettable, but some variety's nice. You can even play through the story mode with friends, and compete to see who can finish levels quickest - a simple, but surprisingly effective feature. I can't say I've tinkered much with the minigame selection, although unlike most people that was never my draw to Monkey Ball; Monkey Target be damned. The only other wrinkle here is that there's a weird amount of DLC (including Hatsune Miku, except she's not voiced by Hatsune Miku for some baffling reason) and even some battle pass thing tacked on. My main takeaway here though, is just that it's nice to have a genuinely good single player mode in a Monkey Ball game again. Hopefully future games in the series live up to this.

I'm a big fan of homebrew stuff for older consoles, and that's especially the case when the homebrew in question is coming from Ancient. As in, "Streets of Rage 2, Sonic 1 8-bit, Gotta Protectors" Ancient. This game was in good hands.

Horizontal shmups perhaps aren't the genre they're known for, but Earthion is one hell of a time, and really pushes the Mega Drive to new heights. It's got an immaculate presentation, with intricate graphics, incredible scrolling and scaling effects and of course, an absolutely incredible soundtrack from Koshiro himself. Earthion is very much cut from the cloth of Thunder Force albeit without the speed change mechanic. This even extends to the protagonist, who's kind of just 'Cenes Crawford with the serial numbers filed off' - still rad as hell, but y'know. You've got a shield gauge so one hit kills are mercifully not a thing, and it refills automatically after a while too. But you can't be too reckless, as taking damage can also weaken your weapons, or in the worst case scenario cause you to lose them entirely. There's some solid weapon variety with a slew of upgrades on offer, including an interesting 'Adaptation Pod' located in each stage. Picking this up sacrifices one of your subweapon slots, but holding onto it until the end of a stage allows you to choose an upgrade before the next stage starts. These include a bigger shield gauge, more subweapon slots, extra lives... but you can't just max everything out, as there's a bit of push and pull with more weapon slots coming at the cost of health, and vice versa. One of the most interesting gimmicks to Earthion, that separates it from other shmups on the system, is its use of its password system. After a run you get a password, but it's not for continuing; rather, you can use the password to start a fresh file with all your gear from the previous attempt. This almost lends a bit of a roguelite angle to the game, although before you groan, rest assured that the game can very much be beaten without doing this at all (and you get a better score bonus at the end for going in without a password).


For the most part, the game feels like a fair challenge, although the game has struggled with bullet conveyance quite a lot since launch. The awkward thing is that the arcade-only version of Earthion basically solved the issue with its bullet graphics, as well as having several other tweaks to perhaps make it the definitive version; but that's exclusive to ROM hoarding prick ShouTime's 'EXA' service, so forget about playing that. Really, Earthion's biggest black mark in general is its various distribution partners. I'm not surprised, but Koshiro partnering with well-established bullshit artists Limited Run Games doesn't half sting. At least we got an admittedly pretty sick 8BitDo M30 skin out of it? The latest patch feels like it's landed on a decent solution to the bullet graphic issue, albeit one that's not far off the EXA version anyway.

Tangent aside, the game does throw a few curveballs that can feel a little hard to deal with on a first run. I enjoy the vertical scrolling stage just as much as I do in any other horizontal shmup; so not at all, then. And while I did praise some of the graphical effects a moment ago, it can make gauging the active hitboxes of certain attacks a bit unintuitive, a problem that rears its head as early as the first stage and then at the worst possible moment - during the final boss. Still, these blemishes aren't enough to hold the game down, and aren't any worse than something like Greylancer's various cheap shots.
And I already mentioned the soundtrack, but yes - it's Ancient, which means it's got a Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack. And it's amazing. Highlights are definitely Endless Horizon, which very much feels like a tribute to Hyper Duel's 'Black Rain' (the stage even plays out similarly) and the sheer blood-pumping majesty of 'Rush to the Core' gets you more than hyped for the final encounters. The final boss theme 'Terminal Doctrine' ups the stakes tremendously.


On the whole, Earthion is a superb example of what the Mega Drive can do in the right hands. Ancient have strongly suggested they aren't done with Mega Drive development, so I'm excited to see what they get up to next. Mega Mamotte Knight, anyone? Lola of Rage? I just want more Gotta Protectors, man...

Oh right. Yeah. Sonic the Hedgehog. New game. Right. That guy.
I can't say I exactly had high hopes for Sonic Racing Crossworlds at its reveal. The whole 'Crossworld' thing sounded like a shoehorned gimmick, and the fact we were apparently sticking to just Sonic again gave me Team Sonic Racing vibes - a game that wasn't very good and died on its arse almost immediately. But then things actually started to look... promising?

The roster was proving immediately more interesting than TSR, Extreme Gear was making a return, and the stage roster already had way more variety than TSR did, with the Crossworlds actually providing more stages on top of the main roster - and more opportunities for other Sonic games to get some representation. As a SEGA arcade racing aficionado, the news that SEGA's Initial D team were onboard to develop the game was maybe the single most exciting piece of news they could've given me pre-release. And just when I thought they'd done everything they could to try and rope me in, really got me hook, line and sinker, they drop the "really specific to me" motherlode that HATSUNE MIKU IS IN A SONIC THE HEDGEHOG GAME.


And so the game finally came out, and... yeah. It's pretty great!
Maybe not the perfect slam dunk everyone hoped for, but it's a seriously satisfying arcade racer by a team that certainly knows how to make those, and I'll be frank: I've had a hell of a lot more fun with it than the plumber's attempt, which was the last thing I expected to be typing for this summary back when that game was revealed.

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds provides a handling model that genuinely feels cut from the cloth of SEGA's previous racing efforts, rather than Sumo Digital's; throttle control is a crucial skill in this game, and even something like the boating sequences feel like they stepped out of Wave Runner or something rather than the somewhat questionable physics of Racing Transformed. The plane sections are best described as 'odd', although they do improve once you realise trying to drift in a straight line every 5 seconds isn't actually of much benefit.
The game also offers a solid track roster in addition to plenty of Crossworlds that mix things up in each race - The titular gimmick risks getting old, but needing to adapt your strategies on the fly can make for intense racing. I do think it's obvious that corners had to be cut towards the finish line though. The Secret Grand Prix basically comes across as the 'Asset Reuse Cup' and feels weirdly out of place. I mean, you used Shadow Generations assets for a track based on the game's hub world instead of one of the actual Sonic levels that were in it? A friend of mine mentioned that datamining the demo of Crossworlds suggested this was originally supposed to be a SEGA-themed cup that presumably fell through due to the original assets needed, and I could very much believe that.


Fortunately the tracks themselves are still great fun to drive. In fact despite what I just said, White Space is one of my favourite tracks! The rest of the track variety is largely solid, albeit with a glaring absence of Classic Sonic tracks. Where's my Death Egg's Eye, SEGA? Some of the original stages also don't really hit the mark (Crystal Mine should've been Quartz Quadrant), but fair play to the ones that do; Chao Park is a brilliant idea for a locale, and the sort of stuff we need more of. Likewise, Aqua Forest is one of most beautiful stages in the game by a hefty margin. On the whole, I'd consider the game a step-up from what came before visually, and it's nice that we're free of Sumo Digital's terrifying skinwalker Sonic models; they actually animate like actual Sonic characters this time. Saying that, the game's got a very desaturated look about it. Bumping the saturation on the TV (or my preferred method, via ReShade) addresses this somewhat, but I think they could've had a better look at the colour grading before release.


While the item balance has been the topic of much debate - and yes, you will get Mario Karted, especially in later ranks - I still found the chaos a lot more controlled than the 24-player carnage of Mario Kart World. I do still think the game's party-game esque balancing is at odds with the genuine attempt at a Ranking leaderboard system, but in practice it's not massively different to how other games handle their points-based matchmaking beyond having a letter slapped on it. I think the more interesting aspect of the balancing is the Gadget system. I think it's pretty obvious the gadgets have an established meta already, with the invincibility-granting 'Ultimate Charge' being a more-than-common sight amongst top players, but I tend to ignore the meta in any game like this, and just play to what feels right. And I've not had terrible results with that mentality, either! The gadget system lets you really dial in your own playstyle, and while some are definitely better than others, experimenting with what compliments your driving style best can be a really rewarding experience.


It's great fun learning the tracks and picking up on the small strategies to give you an edge, such as the aforementioned throttle control, or figuring out that rainbow boost pads letting you cut offroad. Likewise, there's tons of time you can sink into trying out different characters, vehicles and gadget combinations - and to digress for a moment, oh man, do I love the vehicle customisation. As nice as it is to see Extreme Gear return, you can very much tell that this game was by the car sickos™ of the Initial D team, with customisation features more akin to Need for Speed than any kart racers I've played. The stupid grin on my face when I realised 'Candy' paint options were in here was something else. The only catch is that it's a shame that decals are so restricted in this game, as there's no means of overlapping them and many of the real-world sponsors included are heavily restricted in how they can be placed. I get why the latter is the case (go read through any company's logo guidelines, because they're comically over the top), and Kirby Air Riders' community marketplace makes a good argument for why this might've been done, but this is also a game that lacks a name filter (or at least, has a pretty crap one). And with the Minecraft DLC car being a blank canvas, you know the obligatory dick cars have started to show up anyway, so I think they should just rip the plaster off and let us stack decals. There's a report button for a reason.


Crossworlds' single player offering gives you plenty of room to cut your teeth before diving into online, although this is probably the game's weakest point. Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed and Team Sonic Racing both had fairly strong 'World Tour' esque modes with a huge variety of missions. While Team Sonic Racing fumbled it a bit, owing to the fact it was Team Sonic Racing, Transformed provided a perfect template for how the single player experience could look in this sort of game. Crossworlds' Race Park is a pretty major step backwards in this regard, with slightly different racing rules being the only major variation you'll get. Bored of regular racing? How about collecting rings (which you do anyway)? How about items being even more chaotic? Or having to bump into each other a ton? These alternate rulesets are fine, and during the online festivals they can be quite fun and make for some suspense in the final standings. But they aren't enough to hold together the single player alone, and it basically boils down to grinding for hours to unlock every car part. Much the same goes for Grand Prix, which has Super Sonic locked behind repeat Grand Prix runs. I'll give Grand Prix a little less flack, as they do offer some means to make revisits a bit different; you can set the difficulty of your rival to challenge yourself more, or hunt down the Red Rings scattered throughout each stage. But it does all leave me wishing this game had included some kind of take on Transformed's World Tour, to really bring in the best of every Sonic racing game before it. I should stress that the Race Park modes (and in turn, the Festival modes) aren't actually bad by any means, they just get a bit repetitive when gunning for unlockables. There's nothing on the level of that bloody AGES staff ghost on Burning Depths, which felt like an event that everyone who played Transformed was talking about for weeks, sharing tips and strategies. No big boss fights either - even Team Sonic Racing had that, at least.


It's pretty clear that the multiplayer experience was SEGA's priority with Crossworlds, which I can't really blame them for. While a more robust single player offering would've been great, in any kart racer I tend to treat the single player as a one-and-done thing before I spend the rest of my time online. After the barely functional disaster that was Team Sonic Racing's online play, Crossworlds is a breath of fresh air. Crossplay ensures quite robust lobbies, the netcode is relatively solid with me only experiencing a handful of disconnects from Global Match (although friend lobbies are considerably more unstable for some reason), and games are pretty speedy to get into. A lot of umbrage has been taken with the game's 'Festival' events, where the main matchmaking gets switched off for a weekend in favour of team-based modes. At first, I was certainly one of those that wasn't keen on the idea, because Festivals were happening constantly as SEGA rushed through the first few post-launch characters. Now they've calmed down a bit, I don't mind festivals too much. In fact, it's nice to take a break from the ranking system, and the constant rewards for playing like decals and tickets are much more enticing to me than watching a line go up. This goes doubly so now that festivals are probably the best source of Tickets, the ingame currency that thankfully isn't an excuse to sell microtransactions, but bizarrely seems balanced as though that was the intention.


Speaking of microtransactions, the game does have a hefty amount of DLC, and I'm in two minds about it. The fact that SEGA related characters are being added for free over the next year - brilliant! Legendary video game characters who've got some shared history with Sonic, such as Pac-Man and Mega Man (two of my favourite non-Sonic video game series, no less) joining the race is super exciting, too. To be honest, even Minecraft didn't make me bat that much of an eyelid, because there's Sonic content in Minecraft nowadays. While I'm never particularly big on Minecraft's artstyle clash whenever it crosses over with something, the included Overworld stage ended up being a great time. The only part of the DLC that still has me scratching my head a bit is the sheer abundance of Nickelodeon representation. I get it, SEGA's tied up with Paramount now so there's probably some business logic in it. And in any other scenario, I couldn't take the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles showing up in a Sonic game as anything other than an absolute win! But SpongeBob and Avatar: The Legend of Aang feel very out of place - and this is 100% just on a personal level, but I actually find Avatar more egregious than SpongeBob, given it doesn't exactly strike me as particularly relevant in the year 2026. I think two Nickelodeon collabs would've been pushing it, but three is just weird. That being said, I do hope this game continues to see support past its initial Season Pass window; in particular, I'd love if SEGA could go back and pick back up the idea of having more SEGA-themed tracks in here. I'd even take a SEGA Illusion style stage a la Sonic Riders!


Much has been made about the game's soundtrack. How it started out sounding dire, then slowly became more promising, and now there's plenty of people dubbing it an all-timer Sonic soundtrack. I'm just going to stare over at my modded music folder for the game and take that as reflection on how I feel about this game's audio.
It's not the worst Sonic OST, and it certainly isn't as bad as initial previews made it out to be. But there's a lot of fluff here; tracks that are generic, have shoddy instrumentation, or are just really strange arrangements. Getting Vocaloid legend GIGA-P on a Sonic game should've been a slam-dunk, let alone a Sonic game that has Hatsune Miku in it; so why is he given Apotos to remix, a song that barely fits his style with a fairly dire result to match? The other collab tracks fare better, but it makes me wish we'd had a full-on ensemble OST for this. Yes, the Sonic Lost World stage somehow gets one of the best songs in the game (complete with 90's rave chords) from INTERNET YAMERO maestro Aiobahn+, but why isn't every song this good? Likewise, Camellia's remix of Sonic Frontiers' "I'm Here" is such a dramatic highlight of the soundtrack that I'm convinced everyone picks it online so often just for the song. No such joy about something like Dodonpa Factory's theme. The incessant chanting in every final lap song can also be downright embarrassing sometimes, as are the somewhat nonsensical lyrics peppered throughout. Very rarely these flourishes can enhance the song, such as Aqua Forest, which has a legitimately brilliant final lap theme. But other times it just comes off as clumsy. What on earth is Water Palace's vocal theme yelling about? Above all else though, the most unforgivable thing is the complete absence of eurobeat in a game from the Initial D Arcade developers. Get A-ONE on the phone, stat!


As a side note, I think it's worth noting that this is the first Sonic game that I'm aware of to rely almost entirely on vocal synths for its music's lyrics (such as VSynth's Kevin in Blizzard Valley - alas, no Kasane Teto here). The exception is obviously the game's vocal theme, provided by James Bourne of Busted. Look, I grew up with Busted. I had their godawful Thunderbirds song on CD and listened to it all the damn time. I knew what to expect, and Sonic Racing: Cross the Worlds is still maybe the worst vocal theme this series has given us. Don't start with this 'but Sonic Heroes is cheesy' nonsense, because at least the verses in that song aren't literally just describing game mechanics! You could tell me an AI wrote the main theme, and I'd believe you entirely.
On a more positive note, Project ONSOKU, a collection of Sonic-themed Hatsune Miku songs to promote the game, was a brilliant move that resulted in some superb tracks. I'm a big fan of Treasure Garden's various Sonic Adventure 2 motifs, and Denkoh Sekka by Camellia is a number one jam with flashes of F-Zero GX's 'Feel Our Pain'; and a track that I've basically tried to instill as the game's actual main theme in my head.


This mini-review has probably sounded a bit mixed, but I should stress that the moment to moment gameplay of Crossworlds is insanely fun. It feels more like a new SEGA arcade racer than just another kart racer chasing Mario Kart's tail, and that's basically exactly what I asked for after Team Sonic Racing's dire state. I've put nearly 100 hours into the game already; I wouldn't be doing that if I wasn't having a great time with it. Y'know, ignoring the whole Columns II misadventure a few years back.

If I had to pick one game from this whole list for Game of the Year, would it be Crossworlds? I dunno if I can answer for sure, but it's probably got the best claim to the crown. And I mean... look how much I wrote about it! That's gotta count for something.