Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Closed Beta: Online Session #1 (12 Races)
5I have not had a racing game featured on here since I finished my time with Crash Team Racing: Nitrofueled.
And morbidly, that game was a big contributor towards "killing" attention towards the previous Sonic racer "Team Sonic Racing" (that and its own issues, really).
CrossWorlds here is looking to be an improvement over TSR. It's no longer a Sumo Digital game as Sonic Team is developing it already. However, it's going to bring back Sumo Digital's innovation of letting the race cars turn into planes in the sky, and speed boats in the water, just like in their Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed.
The biggest addition in CrossWorlds is that... you get to CROSSWORLDS!during a race. The first lap is the main track, but then the second lap takes you into a completely different course that's picked by the current 1st Place racer. Then the 3rd and final lap use the 1st lap's course, but with new frills and changes to shift things up before the race finally finishes.
Pull off tricks in the air to give yourself boosts when you land. Attach certain Gadgets to your car and you'll be able to pull of faster more "JAMMIN'!" tricks!
Item usage in this game is looking to be pretty chaotic. I sometimes had to catch myself figuring out what each item's equivalent was in Mario Kart, or anything different or new to this game.
You can customize your car like you could in Team Racing, but this time, you're not only able to use cars, but also Extreme Gear from the Sonic Riders series!
Sadly, those boards weren't available in this beta, but we can't have everything good in a demo, can we?
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This demo was a Closed Beta, so only a limited number of players was allowed to play it after registering. I was able to get my ticket from this, though I hadn't given myself a lot of time to actually look into it (thanks to most of that time being spent on the new upcoming Fatal Fury game's beta, instead. Busy weekend for me).
Nonetheless, I split all of the footage I recorded of this game's beta into two sessions, with this being the first of them.
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Race Timestamps -
00:00:00 - 00:03:30 | Race 1: Ocean View (& Sky Road)
00:03:30 - 00:07:08 | Race 2: E Stadium (& Roulette Road)
00:07:09 - 00:10:56 | Race 3: Ocean View (& Kraken Bay)
00:10:57 - 00:14:34 | Race 4: E Stadium (& Roulette Road)
00:14:35 - 00:19:19 | Race 5: Metal Harbor (& Roulette Road)
00:19:20 - 00:23:15 | Race 6: Ocean View (& Kraken Bay)
00:23:16 - 00:27:15 | Race 7: Water Palace (& Roulette Road)
00:27:16 - 00:31:05 | Race 8: Water Palace (& Roulette Road)
00:31:06 - 00:34:31 | Race 9: Water Palace (& Roulette Road)
00:34:32 - 00:37:47 | Race 10: E Stadium (& Sky Road)
00:37:48 - 00:41:47 | Race 11: Metal Harbor (& Roulette Road)
00:41:48 - 00:45:07 | Race 12: Rainbow Garden (& Roulette Road)
You get more points as you play, and this can lead you into higher ranks, and you typically get more rewards for it, too.
Also, the more you race, the more Gadget slots you get. Again, these Gadgets are what allowed me to do faster tricks, but there are they can do a lot of other things, such as letting you charge a Level 1 slide boost faster, or automatically boost when you collide with other racers.
Experiment!
Here's an advanced tip. You can store you slide boost charges. while changing directions. Hold one direction to start the charge, and then when you need to turn, let go and then IMMEDIATELY hold the slide again while steering the other way. If you did that right, you should still retain the last full charge level you were on.