The Sonic Racing franchise has always a little odd. After all, you have a hedgehog who is the fastest guy alive, but he's driving cars? Sonic and speed go hand in hand, and a Sonic-themed racer seems to fit, even if he's handicapping himself with a car. Sonic All-Star Racing Transformed from 2012 was a fun little racer, but it never eclipsed Mario Kart 8 for me. However, the latest game in the series, Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, is a strong contender for the most fun kart racer on the market.

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds doesn't stray far from the classic kart racing formula. You and a bunch of other racers are thrown onto wacky tracks full of dangerous turns, deadly shortcuts, and a veritable toybox of boosts that allow you to gain advantages or hinder your opponents. If you've played Mario Kart or a similar game, you know almost exactly what to expect. Don't take that as a criticism, since Crossworlds is a top-of-the-line kart racer; it does what it needs to, and it doesn't mess with what works.

Much like in Mario Kart, you drive over an item box and get a random item. There's a fantastic collection of potential items that you may get. You get boosts or the ability to target enemies with attacks, and you can also get a tornado that shields you from attacks, the ability to force all players to draw an item (regardless of whether they're saving one), and the ability to turn into a crushing monster truck and drive over nearby opponents. A lot of this is entirely familiar to kart-racing fans, but it's well executed and darn fun.

The coolest feature is the titular Crossworlds. At certain points during stages, you're teleported to another world, the choice of which is determined by whoever is in the lead. These tracks don't just have cosmetic differences but entirely different tracks with different advantages and disadvantages. If you're playing a vehicle focused on maximum speed, you're going to want something with a lot of straightaways, while something with better acceleration and handling can thrive in a stage with a lot of twists and turns.

Vehicle choice matters a lot. You can customize your vehicle loadouts before you hop onto the track, adjusting various parts to increase or decrease stats. You can choose between vehicles and "Extreme Gear" hoverboards, both of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. Each character has their own customized vehicle that is functionally their default one, but you're free to mix and match as you like, in case the idea of gloomy Shadow the Hedgehog piloting a pink and frilly vehicle tickles your fancy.

In addition, gadgets are another interesting way to customize vehicles. These can be equipped in a small 2x3 grid, with each piece taking up a certain amount of the grid. Each one grants a different bonus, ranging from improved stats during the first lap of a race to unlocking special items that you can't otherwise use, to further modifying the build of your machines. You can store multiple gadget layouts and swap between them before races, so you can plan for different tracks.

Characters also impact how your machine works, with different characters having different available stats. Sonic is the master of speed, while Knuckles the Echidna has power to spare and Eggman's daughter Sage makes up for her lack of either with improved handling. You can pick your favorite character and do well in any situation, but there's something to be said for picking the perfect combo of machine and driver for each race. Fans of the franchise can play as anyone they'd want to, with a diverse cast of various brightly colored wildlife.

The character element is also fun because the game has a rivals mechanic, where at the start of every race, a specific character is designated as your rival. This rival will trade some chatter with your character, usually some kind of amusing dialogue that's distinct to each possible pairing of Sonic characters. They also will get a boost in capabilities, so they'll be the most dangerous person on the track and add an incredibly cool sense of genuine danger to races, even when playing against AI opponents.

If there's one negative, it comes in the form of anyone who isn't one of the default Sonic cast. Crossworlds has about 23 standard Sonic characters and a mix of cameos from other Sega or non-Sega material (including series like SpongeBob SquarePants and Mega Man). Anyone who isn't one of the main Sonic cast is unvoiced and doesn't participate in the rival gimmick. It makes them feel secondary and awkwardly included, and it leads to the sense that the Sonic characters are "real" racers and everyone else is a fancy skin.

There's quite a lot to do in Crossworlds. While the focus of the game is on the multiplayer racing, there are a lot of options for single-player content. You get tickets for finishing races, which can be used for unlocking new cosmetics or gadgets. This in turn means you can do more races and unlock more stuff. There's an absurd amount of different things to unlock, including some of the aforementioned bonus characters, so you'll be playing for a while. Tickets can also be used in the Grand Prix mode to redo a race you lost without starting over from scratch. This is nice when a last-minute mistake costs you a race.

Crossworlds looks gorgeous. The game runs buttery smooth, and the constant shifting between different environments while racing at blazing speeds is a delight to watch in motion. The characters have nice little touches of animation that bring them to life, particularly when they're performing tricks. The soundtrack is where the game absolutely shines. It's filled to the brim with music from the franchise's history and a few original tunes, and it's all incredibly cool. The voice acting is the usual cheesy Sonic fare, but the back-and-forth barbs add some flavor to the races, even if it underlines the annoyance of unvoiced characters.

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is an excellent kart racer from start to finish. It's not just good for a Sonic game but arguably the best kart racer this year, and that's saying something in a year that gave us a new Mario Kart. It's easy to pick up, fun to play, packed with details for fans of the characters, and it remains accessible to newcomers. It's unbelievably fun to blitz around a corner, pop a boost, and rocket through a portal into a land of dinosaurs. If you're looking for a good racer, then Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is everything you could want.

Score: 9.0/10