Laura Kate Dale from Kotaku UK has uploaded some footage of the recently announced Team Sonic Racing. Select members of the press were able to go hands on with the game, which is coming to the Nintendo Switch later this year.
About the footage
Sadly, it’s only 44 seconds worth of footage, but it shows you exactly what to expect and looks similar to the original Sonic Racing for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
About Team Sonic Racing
Team Sonic Racing is a 12-player kart racer where racers are split up into four teams.
Where kart racers typically reward players for their personal performance and own finishing position, Team Sonic Racing gives each player on a team points based on their finishing position, then adds up those points for an overall team score. Simply put, you can’t win as an individual by just being the best racer; if the team doesn’t do well, then nobody does.
Team Sonic Racing gives players a number of tools to help out their fellow racers, none of which I have really seen employed in this sort of cooperative racing game before. If you pick up an item (called Wisps) while racing around the track, but are considerably further up the pack than your teammates, you can press a button to offer that item to your team.
If one of your team members accepts and takes the item, it’ll warp over to them, allowing them to catch up more easily (and hopefully knock a few people off your own tail). If you’re the player falling behind, you can use that same button to request items from your team, and any players with an item available have the option to pass theirs over.
By passing items between your team, hitting enemy racers with items, or pulling off collaborative racing moves like slipstream boosts, you can slowly build up a team energy meter too which, when full, can be activated to give every racer on your team a short but substantial speed boost.
Our initial response
Well we know that is in no way going to be competition for Mario Kart. But that is besides the point, the footage is short and only gives a small glimpse of what the game will be. That being said; sadly as with all the 3D Sonic titels we will have to go hands on before we give a real verdict. Our gut says … nope … but still it’s Sonic.
