Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All it's cracked up to be"

The Wii U version of Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed, is a flawed game. This version has plenty on game breaking glitches that hinder it from achieving greatness. Yet the game isn't a lost cause, in fact its very fun.

The main gimmick in All Stars Racing Transformed, is the ability to change your racer to suit the needs of the course. Each lap of each race changes in some way, keeping you on your toes at all times. Your kart changes into a plane or boat for when you need to take to the sky or glide on water. To do this you drive through blue rings that let you know that there is a change in the course. This changes things up since you'll be fighting against waves in the water, or dealing with inverted flight controls in the air. Driving and drifting on land feels just as fun as the first time around.

The game has plenty of modes to play. In career mode you play different types of missions, gathering stars that can be used to buy characters or different kart mods for your characters, that you can level up. This is where some of the problems with this game occur. There are challenges called "Boost Challenges" that don't include checkpoints, making it impossible to complete the challenge. Also, another challenge turns your car into a boat while on land, forcing you to exit the stage and stopping you from progressing.

The game also features an online and offline multi-player mode. Online mode can have up to 10 players in each race. While offline muli-player (split screen) can go up to five. For me this was a selling point. I love playing split screen with local friends. So for this game you get the ability to play with four people on screen, while the fifth player uses the tablet controller. I think this is really innovative, and brings the fun factor to a whole new level.

Graphically this game is beautiful to look at. Its full of rich color and has plenty of depth in the backgrounds. Each level also does a fantastic job at recreating scenes from the games that they represent. One level in particular has plenty of nostalgia for the hard core SEGA fans out there. Yet again though , even the levels have some glitches in them as well. I found myself slamming into walls that weren't there, or just randomly having my character spin around forcing me to lose a race. This can become very frustrating during the harder missions that you'll encounter.

If your a SEGA fan, and love cart racers, then this is a game for you. The many glitches of the Wii U version really hold it back. Yet the five player split screen is such a great feature in this version, that it may be worth a purchase for you. The choice is yours. With that said choose your version and get ready to race!