Sonic Racing: Crossworlds review – a fun racer with eye-watering DLC pricing

Cassie Mammone

18/9/2025

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Pictures: Cassie Mammone

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds isn’t just a solid entertaining racer, but serious competition to Mario Kart. The blue hedgehog even overtakes the Italian plumber in some areas.

Sonic and Mario: eternal rivals. By pure coincidence, both are bringing out a racing game with World in the title within a few months of each other. After multi-year breaks. While Mario provides the exclusive release title for the Nintendo Switch 2 (check out fellow editor Domagoj’s review here), Sonic´s launched on all consoles.

While playing Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, I thought to myself, «This could just as well be a Mario Kart spin-off.» Although the two joyful racing games differ in some respects, both hit the right fun nerve – even if the DLC pricing for Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is disappointing.

Plenty of possible combinations

Thanks to Mario Kart, I no longer need to really get into how a fun racer works. You race against CPU or real opponents on colourful race tracks. To reach first place, you have to steer and drift skilfully through levels. You also have random items at your disposal, all distributed along the track. For example, you can reach the top spot with a turbo boost or a targeted attack on your competitors. During speedy runs, you’ll collect rings, the total number of which changes your speed. With 100 rings in your inventory, you’ll move faster than a driver with 20.

After a little time getting used to it, I really liked the driving experience. This is mainly thanks to the fact I felt very fast at all speed levels, and wasn’t easily slowed down by enemy hits or my own driving mistakes.

The unique selling point of Sonic Racing: Crossworlds are the race tracks, all made up of different building blocks. They work as follows: if you select a route such as E-Stadium, you’ll drive through a total of three laps. Laps one and three take place on the selected track, with the music becoming way more intense in the third lap. During it, you’ll also collect more rings and stronger items generally. Other elements in the track design also change to some extent. During lap three, dinosaurs that were initially plodding around on the sidelines suddenly throw themselves onto the track, ready to attack.

Lap three offers even more variety in terms of routes. You’ll cross a portal through a huge ring into one of 15 dimensions, which represent the titular Crossworlds. The player in first place at the end of round one chooses a Crossworld between two portal rings. So even if you first find yourself in a jungle full of dinosaurs, you might end up driving through the middle of a casino on lap two.

Tracks combine classic road sections for regular karts with water areas for hovercraft and flying passages for aeroplanes. Depending on the situation, your vehicle will automatically transform into a kart, hovercraft or aeroplane.

Karts handle smoothly and benefit from long drift times, which trigger a speed boost varying in power. With hovercraft, on the other hand, you have to charge up energy using the drift button and let go for a hefty jump. If you jump over a ramp with the kart or hovercraft, you can turn the analogue stick in a circle to trigger a speed boost when you land. The more you spin in the air, the stronger the boost.

Aeroplane controls are a bit different. Again, you build up energy for a speed boost by drifting. However, the inverted Y-axis controls confused me too much, and my first time in the plane wasn’t very intuitive. Over time, however, I got used to it and lined up a weirdly successful drift without going off-course.

The controls may sound a little complicated on different vehicles when explained, but they work intuitively and feel good. I learned them quickly, same for my racing partner who joined me in two-player mode. After a small introduction on my part, he became a serious opponent from race three onwards.

Variety thanks to individual optimisation

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds also isn’t lacking in variety when it comes to your choice of driver. On release, 23 characters from the Sonic universe will be available to you. They all fit into one of five types: Handling, Power, Turbo, Speed and Acceleration.

However, your chosen character won’t really affect the racing experience. The kart you choose or build yourself out of 45 original machines is more important. As you race, you automatically collect tickets. You can use them to unlock new parts or cosmetics for your vehicle.

But that’s not all: you can also unlock up to six slots with room for useful gadgets. These allow you to personalise your vehicle even further. For example, you have the option of tuning your vehicle to recover quicker from enemy hits. Alternatively, you can give your vehicle the ability to perform tricks faster in the air for bigger speed boosts when landing.

The customisation options are huge. You’ll have over 70,000 possible combos at your disposal to switch up your driving experience. This makes Sonic Racing: Crossworlds the perfect playground for tinkerers who like to experiment with options.

DLC strikes back

While Sonic Racing: Crossworlds will initially feature only Sonic characters, the familiar roster will be expanded with new riders including dedicated race tracks and vehicles. A good way to guarantee the longevity of the game. Unfortunately, it’s also a missed opportunity to stand out positively against the greedy DLC policies plaguing modern games.

Currently, the 23 characters, 24 race tracks and 15 Crossworlds offer enough content in the base game to deliver some fun games as a casual racer alone, online or against a group of friends. However, a fundamental concept of Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is the addition of future content to the game. However, Sega usually asks you to pay for these.

The only exceptions are characters from the Sega universe such as Ichiban Kasuga from Like A Dragon or Joker from Persona 5.

Not so with crossover content. On the game’s overview page in the Nintendo eShop, six DLC packs at CHF 5.90.– each are currently planned. This adds up to a hefty total price of CHF 35.40.–.

Although Nintendo isn’t pursuing the best pricing policy either right now, you can get the track pass for 25 francs with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It may feature fewer interesting characters without all those crossovers, but the racing game still boasts 48 extra tracks. Right now, it looks like Sonic Racing: Crossworlds will offer significantly less extra content in its pricier DLCs. Ouch.

Where’s the variety?

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds also performs worse than its competitor Mario Kart in another respect. Beyond classic races, there isn’t as much content.

If you want to jump into a fun racer every few months for a casual run, the new Sonic Racing has you covered. However, if you’re looking for a change from classic races, either alone or in multiplayer, you’ll unfortunately come away empty-handed.

The classic Grand Prix with four races per lap, the Race Park with its various gimmicks and the time trial, where you can try and beat your record, are all you get. While the Grand Prix and time trial are self-explanatory, the Race Park offers content that’s best enjoyed with others. If you’re hoping for the low-threshold balloon battles and tag games from the Mario Kart series, I’ll have to disappoint you. All Race Park has is classic races merely expanded with new rules.

Two or three groups are formed from a total of twelve racers. Your job is to fill a turbo bar by collecting rings or ramming opponents, for example. If the bar’s full, the entire team receives a huge speed boost for a short time. Another divergence from Grand Prix mode: ramming your own team members triggers a small speed boost for both racers.

While these gimmicks are fun and have a right to exist, I’m still missing variety in the multiplayer modes. I’d also have liked to see a story mode with a dedicated overworld and unique missions on individual race tracks. The only motivation you have to explore race tracks in detail are the red coins spread across them. However, they only unlock a few extra tickets anyway. Sadly, this never really put me in a mood to explore.

In online mode, you’ll cover the usual races on familiar tracks – only against real people instead of CPU opponents. In a twelve-person lobby, you vote for one of three race tracks. The one you’ll end up on is chosen randomly.

This mode should be particularly suitable if you like working your way up rankings. Starting at E-tier, you can collect points until you reach the Legend rank. Along the way, you’ll receive rewards such as gadgets to improve your vehicle in each new tier you reach.

By the way: Sonic offers cross-play. No matter which platform your friends are playing on, you can all take to the race track together. I really like that feature, especially since you can switch it off if necessary.

Rivals and visuals

After criticising the pricing policy and lack of variety in its racing modes, I still have two positive points to make about Sonic Racing: Crossworlds.

Unlocking more content by completing Grand Prix races always feels rewarding. This is still the case in Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, since two more Grand Prix with new levels can be unlocked as well. But my second point is even more important: you can compete against rivals in both Grand Prix and Race Park modes.

Rivals are randomly selected characters who drive better and more aggressively than the CPU competition, really giving you a run for your money. If you defeat all characters once each as a rival, you’ll unlock a new racer. I also like the trash talk at the start of each race between the player character and their rival. Now that’s what I call fanservice!

The game’s also visually impressive. Levels are colourful, creative and in no way inferior to Mario Kart. In parts, they even offer a decisive advantage: Sonic Racing: Crossworlds appears on all current consoles and PCs. This means that most platforms will offer extra processing power to deliver prettier graphics and a smoother racing experience than Mario Kart, which is exclusive to Nintendo consoles.

The music consists of upbeat remixes of popular Sonic soundtracks. Anyone familiar with the franchise knows about its iconic music.

Just listen to the songs for the Apotos and Radical Highway tracks, which come from the games Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Adventure 2 respectively – wonderful:

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds will be released on 25 September 2025 for Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The PS5 version was provided to me by Sega for testing purposes.

In a nutshell

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds – more than worthy competition for Mario Kart

This new fun racer from the Sonic universe is at the top of its genre, neck-and-neck with Mario Kart. Races against both real and CPU opponents are tonnes of fun. The CrossWorld mechanics provide extra spice to races too, as do the numerous customisation options for vehicles.

The solid racing feeling stays the same in both single- and multiplayer – just look at Race Park or online mode. While individual races across any track are given more variety thanks to the team features or extra rules, that’s basically where the buck stops. No story mode or multiplayer battles here.

The crossovers with other franchises such as Minecraft and Spongebob Squarepants offer new content even after release. Unfortunately, the questionable pricing policy spoils any fun this could add.

Pro

• Great driving experience
• Includes many racers from the Sonic universe and planned crossovers
• Varied customisation for vehicles
• Beautiful tracks with solid soundtracks

Contra

• Meagre content and game modes apart from races
• Questionable DLC pricing policy

Video games

Sega Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

PS5, FR

3

Cassie Mammone

Freelance Editor

cassie.mammone.freelance@gmail.com

I wrote my first text about video games when I was eight years old. I haven't been able to stop since. The rest of my time is spent on my love for 2D husbandos, monsters, my cats and sport.

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