This game is awesome, but if you hear me playing you may well think it's terrible because it sure makes me hurl a lot of abuse at the screen! Make no mistake, this game is HARD!! You can choose your difficulty for every race, but you need stars to unlock things. I have had no problems unlocking things, but I start out on medium and then try for hard (I think I cleared about 2/3 on hard and left the rest on medium so far). If you're more of an easy-maybe-trying-for-medium kind of player, you may end up stuck or frustrated that you can't unlock additional characters.

If you do decide to take the plunge, be sure to visit the steam forum page for this game and take a look at the top pinned topic for some awesome tips. You really need to learn how to boost-start and drift to start getting anywhere in the game for instance.

The weapons are imaginative and they're not TOO disruptive (there are no "I win" weapons), but they're definitely not useless as I saw one reviewer state. The thing is you need to learn to use them, as everything in this game. The game is really designed to be a challenge in every way.

There are definitely things to complain about, drifting feels a bit counterintuitive and I have to repress some automatic behaviours from more realistic games, flying is hard to get used to as well and although the weapons are not too bad you can still be 1st for 2 rounds only to then be hit by 5 weapons in a row and end dead last (although I guess this is sort of inherent to the kart racer genre), just to name a few... but what it comes down to is that I keep coming back, it's very addictive.

Unfortunately one big drawback is one that Sega can't help much, and that's that the online multiplayer community just isn't very big (at least not anymore now). I've only tried a few times* but once I got to play a couple rounds before a couple players left and there was just me and 2 seasoned pros that I stood absolutely no chance against, the other time there was no ongoing game at all and after waiting around to see if anyone would join me for 10 minutes or so only one person had and they left again. A big plus though is that there is local multiplayer, so if you have the gamepads or someone doesn't mind using the keyboard you can have a sonic racing party in your livingroom. You may have to dial back your own built up skills though if they havent played before or they wont enjoy your company for long ;-) (since the game really does require some practice).

* I feel I should mention, I just tried looking for a matchmaking game again tonight and actually ended up in a nearly full game with people near to my rating, so it might just be a matter of playing at the right times.

This game is awesome, but if you hear me playing you may well think it's terrible because it sure makes me hurl a lot of abuse at the screen! Make no mistake, this game is HARD!! You can choose your difficulty for every race, but you need stars to unlock things. I have had no problems unlocking things, but I start out on medium and then try for hard (I think I cleared about 2/3 on hard and left the rest on medium so far). If you're more of an easy-maybe-trying-for-medium kind of player, you may end up stuck or frustrated that you can't unlock additional characters. If you do decide to take the plunge, be sure to visit the steam forum page for this game and take a look at the top pinned topic for some awesome tips. You really need to learn how to boost-start and drift to start getting anywhere in the game for instance. The weapons are imaginative and they're not TOO disruptive (there are no "I win" weapons), but they're definitely not useless as I saw one reviewer state. The thing is you need to learn to use them, as everything in this game. The game is really designed to be a challenge in every way. There are definitely things to complain about, drifting feels a bit counterintuitive and I have to repress some automatic behaviours from more realistic games, flying is hard to get used to as well and although the weapons are not too bad you can still be 1st for 2 rounds only to then be hit by 5 weapons in a row and end dead last (although I guess this is sort of inherent to the kart racer genre), just to name a few... but what it comes down to is that I keep coming back, it's very addictive. Unfortunately one big drawback is one that Sega can't help much, and that's that the online multiplayer community just isn't very big (at least not anymore now). I've only tried a few times* but once I got to play a couple rounds before a couple players left and there was just me and 2 seasoned pros that I stood absolutely no chance against, the other time there was no ongoing game at all and after waiting around to see if anyone would join me for 10 minutes or so only one person had and they left again. A big plus though is that there is local multiplayer, so if you have the gamepads or someone doesn't mind using the keyboard you can have a sonic racing party in your livingroom. You may have to dial back your own built up skills though if they havent played before or they wont enjoy your company for long ;-) (since the game really does require some practice). * I feel I should mention, I just tried looking for a matchmaking game again tonight and actually ended up in a nearly full game with people near to my rating, so it might just be a matter of playing at the right times.