It’s a million leagues better than Mario Kart World.

When Team Sonic Racing came out in 2019, I thought there would never be another Sonic Racing game. Team-based racing was a fine idea on paper, but it was poorly executed. I played it only once, took the disc out of my PS4, threw it into the farthest depths of the ocean, and vowed to never play another Sonic kart racer ever again (Actually, I’m joking; I care too much about the environment to do that).

Then came Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. From the surprise teaser trailer with Shadow driving into the Travel Ring at The Game Awards to the Open Network Test, the latest Sonic Racing has proven to be the most challenging and innovative kart racer in history – even above Mario Kart World. Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka said that Mario Kart World, which came out alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 earlier this summer, didn’t have any influence on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds – and for good reason.

Honest to Chaos, CrossWorlds is a breath of fresh air compared to Team Sonic Racing and Mario Kart World.

Playing Grand Prix, the CPU racers did not go easy on me in terms of speed and attack strategies, so I had to properly time my attacks with my items in order to gain the upper hand. If I picked up the Green Rocket Punching Glove and Cream the Rabbit was in front of me, for example, I had to lock on with my crosshairs and fire that glove at her instead of just letting it ricochet from wall to wall. 

I also needed to customize my Gadget Plate to give myself any type of advantage I could over everyone else in the race. I added the ability to increase my Ring limit to 130 to drive faster than those with the 100-Ring cap, hold three items at a time instead of two, and perform mid-air tricks faster. If I was feeling feisty, I would give myself a Monster Truck starter and crush everybody at the beginning of every race. The chances of picking up a Monster Truck, the equivalent of the Super Star in Mario Kart, during a race were slim to none, so using it from the get-go is a nice feature. No matter how I customized my car, my Gadget Plate helped me manage to win first place almost every time – even if I dropped to second or third place in some races.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds lives up to its name with Travel Rings, which transport racers to a “CrossWorld” during the second lap of each race and back to the original track for the third lap – a mechanic taken from the original Sonic games, comics, and recent films. If you’re leading the race by the end of the first lap, two paths lead to different worlds of your choosing. For example, the first Travel Ring leads to Sky Road, and the other leads to a random world, be it Dinosaur Jungle from Sonic and the Secret Rings, Roulette Road from Sonic Heroes, or Holoska from Sonic Unleashed, just to name a few. The two CrossWorld choices sometimes clash with each other if another racer is neck to neck with you for first place, but that makes the CrossWorld destination mystery even more fun. I especially love how the final race in a Grand Prix is cumulative, meaning the Travel Rings take you between the first three tracks instead of the CrossWorlds.

There’s certainly no story mode with static cutscenes, either, which was another big problem with Team Sonic Racing. The dialogue between you and your rival racer at the beginning of every Grand Prix – and there’s a lot of dialogue to be had indeed – will allow you to use your imagination and think of a story between the two (and post on social media later). For example, if you play as Shadow and your rival racer is Sonic, Sonic will say, “I didn’t think you knew how to have fun. What’s the occasion?” To which Shadow replies, “I relish any chance to surpass you. Prepare for a humiliating defeat!” The dialogue varies depending on the character you race against – and by extension, the character you race as – but the dialogue brings out the comedy and drama between them, proving there’s no need for a story mode.

CrossWorlds also stands out from Mario Kart World because of an emphasis on drifting. Drifting in Mario Kart World is optional depending on the situation because of its casual style, but CrossWorlds takes after The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. You have to drift your car every five seconds to avoid sharp edges and smooth out curves without hitting walls to gain a boost of speed on top of using White Wisps, which act as rocket fuel to speed up your car if you need it. It’s both exhilarating and suspenseful, because you never know if you’ll be able to pass the racer in front of you or stay ahead of them. This is especially the case in Time Trial mode.

I noticed the ghost I raced was just as ferocious as the characters I raced against in Grand Prix and Online Mode. When you race against yourself to beat your previous time record, the ghost moves so fast you either finish a few seconds slow or a few seconds fast, but no quicker. The only way you can beat the ghost is to get creative with your vehicle by changing the type, adding accessories, and customizing your Gadget Plate to boost your stats and speed. 

There’s one more comparison I’d like to make between the two main race modes before I wrap this up. Grand Prix mode feels easy breezy; you can win in the top three by the end of it since all the racers are CPUs. Online Mode is more challenging because other players souped up their vehicles and Gadget Plates to the point where they go all out and make you finish somewhere below third place most of the time. In other words, online races make you feel like you’re in the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones. It’s all a matter of skill and tenacity to win the race.

Sonic Team learned from the mistakes it made with Team Sonic Racing. The team took great care to make Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds more challenging and fun to play with other people without any team-based mechanics and more customization options to suit everyone’s play style. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the best arcade kart racing game I’ve played in years, and I can’t wait to play it with my friends for months and years to come.

Score: 9

A PlayStation 5 code was provided by the publisher for this review.