WeView Verdict: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

While Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed didn’t draw quite as much attention as F1 Race Stars’ WeView did, it certainly seems to be a lot more popular amongst those who took the time to jot down their opinion of the game. This isn’t really that surprising to be honest, all the indications were that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a much better game, and it beat out F1 Race Stars and LittleBigPlanet Karting in our face off between the the titles.

However, as with most games the love wasn’t completely universal. While parryman was a little lonely in their dislike of the game, they do still make some valid points. Based on their time with the Vita version of the game, they felt that the “levels are over long,” and the “weapons are unresponsive”. They also criticised the differences between cars not mattering enough, finding that even when you “have the speed maxed out and boosting, someone can breeze pass and take the win from you,” a real problem in any racing game.

However, on the positive side they did feel that the game’s AI was good, and that “winning isn’t a formality, you have to work at it.” teflon took a different view on this, finding that the AI uses “hefty doses of rubber banding” to succeed. That wasn’t the only point teflon disagreed on either – he was a lot more positive about the game overall. In particular he enjoyed the “metric ton of Sega nostalgia” that the game features.

Starman shared that positivity, calling Transformed “a very polished, impressive racer.” Commenting on the game’s core mechanic they “found the tracks and the transforming feature quite innovative in a genre that can be quite samey,” something I can certainly get behind. They did find a small problem with the game though, saying that “the difficulty could do with being more forgiving” given that the game is clearly at least partly aimed at kids.

Finally, we turn to Sitorimon, who appears to have come straight from the 1960s with advice to “Buy It Now you bunch of crazy cats!” I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone use the term “crazy cats” outside of an Austin Powers film. In a slightly less retro piece of advice they simply said that “If you get one fun racer all gen – please make it this. I actually think it’d be in my top 5 PS3 games.”

It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that the verdict this week were very one sided. There was just one vote for Avoid It, while five selected Buy It. It seems like Transformed has really lapped the opposition in terms of quality, doing significantly better than F1 Race Stars did a few weeks ago.

Now, onto this week’s poll. We’ll be looking at Hitman: Absolution in tomorrow’s WeView, with it coming top of last week’s poll with a comfortable margin; I didn’t know it was so popular. At the other end of the scale was New Super Mario Bros. U, which drops off the bottom of the poll after coming dead last. In honour of the recent start to the baseball season MLB 12: The Show has been added to the poll, unfortunately MLB 13 came out a bit too recently to be in consideration. Also appearing this week is DmC: Devil May Cry, a game I really enjoyed. As always you’ve got until the end of Sunday to get your votes in.