Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Looks to be a Return to Form, and Runs Great on Steam Deck

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After Team Sonic Racing's slight disappointment, I was hoping Sonic Team would rethink its strategy and come back strong with its next iteration, and it's looking like they may have done just that with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

There was an open network test for the game over the weekend, allowing us to check out its single-player and online functionality ahead of its release on September 25th, so we went ahead and checked it out.

Gameplay Impressions

Unlike Team Sonic Racing, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds brings back traditional kart racing formulas, leaving us on our own on the track in a free-for-all frenzy for first place, and yes, that is too many words beginning with "f".

The driving mechanics feel really solid when you get used to them. I wouldn't say they've changed much from previous entries, but that's okay because I never felt like driving was an issue in the previous games. Drifting, transforming into different vehicles, and using items all feel pretty great, and I don't really have any complaints about the gameplay from what I could test.

The big new mechanic of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the "portals", which essentially allow you to transport between tracks during a race. You may start on one track, but depending on the chosen route, a portal can teleport you to another track for one of the laps. It's a neat system to enhance replayability, much like Mario Kart World's "drive between tracks" method, but Sonic's method keeps you on purpose-built tracks the entire time, and thus is a bit more action-packed.

I have seen some reports of players saying the game felt "too slow", but that wasn't an issue for me. I still think Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds gives a better sense of speed than Disney Speedstorm, as I definitely have an issue with how slow that game feels. Plus, there are different speed categories (similar to the CC in Mario Kart), which let you increase the vehicles' power, at least in single-player.

Items are perhaps a little unbalanced; one item, for example, teleported me from 5th to 1st, a couple of seconds ahead in the lead. It does suffer from Mario Kart's "issue", where if you get shot by an item closer to the end of the race, you pretty much have no hope of recovering, but as we've grappled with that issue for 30 years now in this genre, we may have to live with it.

We also saw some kart customization in the network test, which will allow you to change the color scheme, apply your own decals to various parts of the game, and adjust body parts to create your ideal vehicle. It's a nice touch, something I wish more kart racers did. You can also equip "gadgets" that affect your kart skills.

The actual network performance was good. I played a few online races and never noticed issues related to network lag, and I did not experience any disconnects either.

Steam Deck Performance

This is where Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds stood out to me. The game is fantastic on the Steam Deck. For whatever reason, the test defaulted to low settings, which looked terrible. Still, I was pleasantly surprised that adjusting to high settings, and then simply lowering Anti-Aliasing to the FXAA setting, gave us really strong performance, and the game looked great.

Generally, the game stuck to 60 FPS, but when entering the portals to different tracks, you could see dips into the mid-50s. Fortunately, this only accounts for about 3-4 seconds per race, so that's perfectly acceptable in my eyes.

The game has already been "Verified" on Steam Deck.

Final Thoughts

If you were hoping that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds would bring Sonic Racing back to the glory of its first two entries, you should be in for a treat here. As kart racers go, this is looking to be the best available on the PC platform in recent years, and you should definitely check it out.

Steam Deck's performance is beyond what I was hoping for, and provided they don't make drastic changes to the game in the next three weeks, you should be able to buy with confidence, knowing that some smooth racing awaits.

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