Enjoyment - 4/10
Difficulty - 6/10

I was bamboozled into thinking that this game was going to be a smooth ride. Rather, it was a frustrating experience relying on your AI teammates to win races in order to win MORE races and get certain trophies. On top of that, you had a trophy that was so poorly designed because there was no friends leaderboard which meant you had to manually find your friend's time on a particular stage on the GLOBAL rankings! And to round it off, those challenge races, were some of the most difficult parts of the game.
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Probably the worst Sumo Digital Sonic Racing game. Not bad by any means but it pales in comparison to the gameplay, content and personality of the other two games. Customisation is a neat addition, but it didn't feel much like customising my own vehicles because each part has their own stats so I just attached the best parts to all the characters. Colours are also limiting as you can only pick from a pallet instead of just every colour.

Character roster is much smaller than the previous games and only includes Sonic characters. I think point I'd like to see characters now that SEGA owns more iconic IP's.

Story mode is very monotonous, way too long for what it is, and the story itself could've been removed entirely. Just a worse version of World Tour from Transformed. Outside of the story mode you can play offline races in a team or on your own, and you can play online, and that's about it. Good luck finding a full lobby.

Team gameplay doesn't have much to it and only works with other human players instead of CPU's. There is no point playing solo games, the team mechanic is removed entirely and there's nothing interesting.

Maps can be interesting but feel very static and barren compared to previous games. They really shot themselves in the foot by removing the transformed mechanic here. Music is pretty good, love some of the remixes.

Overall it's pretty meh, not much to it.

Taking things in a different direction from Sonic All Stars Racing and Transformed, this kart racing game is entirely focused on the Sonic franchise, but with a twist of its own: you play in teams of three. While it does present some problems, it has some really interesting ideas.

Characters are split into three types: Speed, Technique and Power (similar to Sonic Heroes and Sonic Riders). Speed characters have the highest top speed, technique characters can go over rough terrain with no penalty and power characters can smash through obstacles without taking damage. They all ultimately feel quite balanced, and you can make further customisation to your cart to change stats or colour styles.

The racer on your team in the highest position will leave a “trail” behind them, any teammates following the line will build up a boost, which activates when they move out of it. If you coordinate well enough, you can technically keep leapfrogging each other. You can also pass item boxes between you (which can also increase the power of some items). Doing these team actions will build up your ultimate gauge, which you can trigger an Ultimate power, which makes you invincible and faster for a short period, and works even better if all three people on a team activate it at once.

All the items are based on Wisps, which is a neat idea for items, but unfortunately their icons aren’t very clear, so it’s not as easy as some games to remember what each one does. Different skill types also have their own unique wisps. These are more impactful than in the previous games (especially in speed types), but if an ally swerved in front of you, you get a little boost to recover much faster, so it’s a nice little touch.

Team Sonic Racing has a story mode called Team Adventure. Bizarrely, this is single-player only (I was expecting up to three players locally, especially as it’s literally got the word “Team” in the mode name). This is where one big problem with the team gameplay impacts you the most: you’re reliant on your AI teammates to be good. You can sometimes perform really well and get first place, pass back every single wisp to them and still not win the race.

Having to rely on AI racers also means that local multiplayer feels a bit off, due to having your performance affected by how well your teammates do. The ideal way to play Team Sonic Racing is to organise groups of 6, 9 or 12 people to play online, with voice chat set up between each team, which is a lot of faff to do. You can play without the team mechanics, but if you’re turning off the main feature, you may as well play Sonic Racing Transformed instead.

The 21 tracks are split into 7 locations. The new locations all look stunning: Planet Wisp, Glacierland, Sandopolis and Rooftop Run, and the individual levels feel distinct (although all Plant Wisp levels look quite similar).I really love the three Rooftop Run levels, all with a completely different atmosphere. Glacierland is a brand new icy location, with lots of floating ice crystals that look like more detailed versions of the Laser Wisp crystals from Sonic Colours.

Unfortunately, the other three locations are Seaside Hill, Casino Park and Final Fortress. These nine tracks are returning from the Sonic All Stars Racing games. The visuals have been completely updated and they look nice, but the layouts are the same and they’re all locations we’ve seen before in Racing games. I also find it odd that there’s a complete lack of classic themed tracks. While some main Sonic games have leaned on nostalgia too much, a kart racer is one time where it should lean on nostalgia.

Team Sonic Racing is a very solid kart racer. It has some extremely interesting mechanics which are implemented really well, and the new tracks in it are incredibly good fun. It’s main issue is that the main mechanic only works if you have the right amount of people to play with, and even then the story mode can’t be played as a team.

I have never been so disappointed with a game such as this one. I said to myself "Surely, if I really liked Transformed I would certainly love Sumo Digital's Team Sonic Racing"!

This game was such a let down. All of the tech from the last game was oversimplified in this game, the game has no sense of going fast at all, the items are generic and also seem to not help you at all, and the menu UI is so dumb and if I want to do anything other than online, customization, or tinkering with options I have to play through the story. By the way, the story mode is neat and all but I don’t play kart racing games for the story. Also beware if you play on PC that the FPS is going to be borderline unplayable unless you mess around with your graphics setting on your computer and also in the game settings options. I also especially do not like the new courses. The old updated courses are okay but nothing spectacular as they alter the map slightly. The new courses in this game however are not maps I really liked driving on as they are either to dark or hard tell what is or isn’t drivable. Despite the negatives, the postives I can say I liked was the new characters are cool! I especially like Blaze, Rouge, and also Chaos are playable racers and also that the customization is neat. Regardless though I think the game is awesome with friends but besides that this game was a massive let down and wholeheartedly for you to check out Transformed instead as it not only has more content but also is more refined gameplay wise.

And my final note is that I hope that the next SEGA kart racer has bikes again. I will miss Shadow and Ryo on a bike from the og All-Stars Racing.