【Hard Soap Hard Soap (1977)】

Team Sonic Racingis a huge disappointment.

Yes,Hard Soap Hard Soap (1977) it’s a very mediocre and even frustrating kart racing game, but what really makes it such a bummer is the fact that its predecessor, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, is perhaps the best kart racing game of all time.

Perhaps my own expectations were too high, but Team Sonic Racinggave me whiplash. It’s astounding how a series could regress so much and seem to ignore every aspect that made it stand out from the kart racing pack.

Where did Team Sonic Racing go wrong? And what exactly makes kart racing game great?

Let’s take a step back real quick.

The greats

The Mario Kartseries is well-regarded as the pinnacle of kart racing games. With its smooth controls, delightfully varied courses, and fun items, Mario Karttends to get better and better with every release.

Look at Mario Kart 8, an amazing game. The tracks are fantastic (and have great music) and the vehicle handling is the best of all time even as paths twist upside down and dip underwater, and racers soar through the air.

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Dipping back into the '90s, Diddy Kong Racingon the Nintendo 64 took the popularity and success of Mario Kart 64's take on 3D racing into new directions. Introducing a light story mode and a hub world, Diddy KongRacingadded an extra dimension to the genre while simultaneously expanding our definition of what vehicles can be used to race.

Diddy Kong Racingallows players to choose if they’d like to race with a regular kart, a hovercraft, or a little airplane. Each has its own perks and they add a fun extra layer to the game.

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In 2012, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformedbrought together the polished feel of Mario Kartwith the varied vehicles of Diddy Kong Racingand smashed it masterfully into its own imaginative courses. The variety is honestly stunning as tracks veer through flooded tunnels, grounded tracks open up into air battles, and racers drive and soar through the world of dreams.

Shifting between driving, boating, and flying is seamless, the controls are smooth, and the items add some fun variety to races. It’s a spectacular kart racing game.

Team Sonic Racing took everything that made Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformedand threw it out the window.

Falling short

Team Sonic Racing’s unique selling point is its team-based racing — players choose a single racer like Sonic, Blaze, or Eggman, and hit the tracks with two other racers at their side, either human comrades or NPCs. Teammates can trade items with each other and give each other boosts.

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Sometimes that’s all fine and good and you all end up taking the top three spots in a race, but sometimes the team races can be frustrating. I can be in first place for the entire race, sending items to my teammates every time I get one to give them a leg up, and then they end up in last and second-to-last place at the finish line.

The driving is very clunky

Having such little control over how the team does as a whole is a pain and seems like an unnecessary gimmick, especially when it can cost you a race.

There is the option to play solo races, which works like your standard kart racer, but without the added opportunities to boost off of your teammates and share items, it's a bit less exciting and feels slower.

The driving is very clunky and the handling is rough, to say the least. Oftentimes the game feels pretty slow, which for a racing game (especially one starring notorious speed junkie Sonic the Hedgehog) is a huge bummer.

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One particular annoyance that I don’t understand the idea behind is the items. Only certain racer types get certain items, and for some reason they all look very similar. They’re called whisps and they look like little squids. Unless you use them, there’s no way to know what they do, and even if you do know what they do, it’s easy to confuse them because they’re just different colored little squids.

SEE ALSO: Voice actors overdubbed the worst ‘Sonic’ game to make it the best ‘Sonic’ game

On top of that, the tracks themselves aren’t very exciting. They're very standard, grounded levels without much flair, and a few of them look pretty similar to each other. The designs are just plain unimaginative.

All of this adds up to a disappointing experience. Team Sonic Racingdoes not get my heart pumping and after playing for a few hours, I wasn't compelled to jump back in at all. But I put a whole lot of time into it regardless, hoping things would click. Nothing clicked.

Everything in Team Sonic Racingjust falls short. You're better off playing almost any other recent kart racing game.

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