abiscuit wrote:I haven't had a chance to play this yet but I must know. Is this game comparable in quality to Mario Kart? How does the online fare, is it fairly smooth? The whole sonic nostalgia and whatever doesn't appeal to me that much so I'm thinking along the lines of item balance, power sliding mechanics, control, tracks, that kind of thing.
All I want is a good Mario Kart kind of game for Steam... seems to be too much to ask for sometimes.
This one isn't nearly as Mario Kart-ish as the first S&SASR, so it's tough to compare them. Overall though, I think this one is much better - the AI is a legitimate challenge and doesn't seem to rubber-band or always have the right items (at least, not conspicuously...). The items are a little more bland, but they seem to be MUCH better balanced.
I tried online with Biker last night and had no problems. Seems to be about as smooth as the singleplayer. Your mic is on at all times though (likely because it's kind of hard to hit a press-to-talk key with a gamepad in hand, and this game was designed for a gamepad, although it is keyboard-compatible), so be aware of that.
Items seem pretty balanced, although you'll need to aim pretty carefully with some of them to land hits as there are only a handful of homing items, and even they can be evaded pretty effectively if you/the CPUs play it right. Still, hitting enemies with the straight-shot items ends up being easier than it looks as they fly very fast. The more-powerful items aren't as common to receive for players or CPUs, and they aren't that much higher-grade than the items that pop up most often.
Power-sliding is a bit different from other games that I've played - building up your max power-slide boost takes much longer than in other games (15-20 seconds), but you can quickly switch between drift directions without losing your boost charge, so you can charge it up over much longer stretches of track.
Controls feel good IMO, but if you're not used to Xbox-style racing control layouts, it might take some getting used to. Right trigger to accelerate, left trigger to drift, A to use items, left stick to steer, right stick for mid-air stunts - that's about all you need to know. Standard 360 racing layout pretty much.
The courses are pretty awesome, but part of that is probably recognizing the games they're themed after. Some of them are obnoxiously narrow or hazardous at times (Race of AGES, this game's Rainbow Road analog, is very difficult to avoid falling off of - luckily falling off only sets you back about 1-2 seconds, unlike Mario Kart), but for the most part they're well balanced between ease of navigation and challenge. Many of them will change dramatically between laps - for example, the Panzer Dragoon track takes place entirely in a car for the first lap, then mostly in a boat for the second lap, then mostly in a plane for the third lap - which makes for far more interesting races.
TL;DR - Better than Mario Kart in pretty much all ways, but also vastly different in more ways than one might expect (more ways than I expected, certainly).
If you want something more Mario Kart-esque, I highly recommend the first Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, which bears far more resemblance to the MK games. It's about halfway between those and this.
