Sonic Racing CrossWorlds Review – Sega Speeds Ahead!

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds launched on the 25th of September 2025, and after having played the demo, diving right into the full game really exceeded my expectations. I had originally written about the preview demo here, and a lot of what I stated in that preview still holds true for the final game. Of course, the full release has a massive amount of more stuff going on in it and I was really blown away by how good a game Sonic Racing CrossWorlds truly is.

So, should you pick up Sonic Racing CrossWorlds? Let me tell you exactly why you should.

The Start of the Race

Before I dive right into what makes Sonic Racing CrossWorlds so good, take a look at the launch trailer below.

If that alone doesn’t get you hyped, I’m not sure what else will, but nevertheless, Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is a fantastic racing game and one that both older and younger gamers alike will enjoy. Players will take on the role of a character from the Sonic franchise (and more later on, thanks to the DLC and extensive roster of collaboration characters incoming) and go forth and race!

Fairly straightforward stuff where you’ll pick a character, customise their vehicle to a certain extent and get racing in a Grand Prix. Once you’re on a track, you’ll have a countdown and will have to time your acceleration to hit the sweet spot to start the race off with a boost. This helps immensely on the harder difficulties, so getting your timing right is quite important.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Racing Fundamentals

Once you’re on the track, you’ll accelerate, turn, drift and brake as expected, and the game really feels so smooth to control. Collecting rings on the track will increase your maximum speed, so you’ll want to do this to ensure that you’re able to stay ahead of everyone else and win.

Things, however, are never as simple as that, since there are power-ups on the track which are randomly assigned to you once you drive or fly through the floating question mark objects. These powerups range from race-changing/winning to rather lacklustre, depending on what you get, so you’ll want to make sure that you try to get a powerup whenever possible.

For example, the homing rocket is really great when you’re chasing the lead racer and want to overtake them. Invincibility is also a game-changer when you’re about to encounter an environmental hazard on a map. These power-ups are therefore essential to victory, especially on the harder difficulty levels.

CrossWorlds and Track Design

Moving on to the actual race tracks themselves. What makes Sonic Racing CrossWorlds so great is the track design and the “CrossWorlds” that you can enter once you go through a giant ring portal. This ensures that your races are fresh and different each time, since you’ll cross over into another world, which really changes things up based on what world you’re entering.

For example, you could cross over into a world where you’ll be flying more than driving, or you could cross over into a world where there’s a lot more environmental hazards and water, so you’ll have to race a bit differently with precise jumps or tighter turns. This variety really adds spice to the game and is super enjoyable in action.

Upgrades and Customisation

Players will be able to augment their vehicle’s capabilities with gadgets, and the more races you play through, the faster you’ll unlock more gadget slots to really boost your capabilities. Gadgets, however, do come with a cost, so you’ll have to factor that in when picking the right gadgets for a race or grand prix. Progression in Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, therefore, revolves around racing, winning races and obtaining upgrades and tickets along the way.

Tickets can be spent on numerous cosmetics, which you can then apply to your vehicle. An example of this is stickers or liveries, though I do have to say that seeing specific brand names in the options caught me off guard. Free advertising? Paid advertising? If you want to rock a Lenovo Legion or an Asus Republic of Gamers sticker on your vehicle, you can go right ahead and do so.

The customisation is really quite extensive, though, and I foresee gamers spending a lot of time making their vehicles their own in-game via these options. It’s really fun to do too, and that’s always a plus point.

Game Modes and Multiplayer

Grand Prix and Time Trials

Circling back to the game modes, apart from taking part in Grand Prix races, you can also access a Time Trial mode, which again leads to further progression and unlocks, such as more music tracks to listen to while racing, and this feels super rewarding to obtain. You’ll be hooked in no time, chasing your own fastest race times and trying to get better times on specific tracks.

Multiplayer and Race Park

No self-respecting racing game would be complete, however, without taking into account the multiplayer competitive aspects, and Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is really fun both online and offline. Thankfully, local split-screen exists as an option, so you don’t need to struggle with trying to matchmake if your internet is a pain. You can get your buddies over and take turns racing against each other with the different modes in Race Park.

You can also thankfully set your own custom races too and select or deselect specific CrossWorlds and tracks to race on. It’s like Sega really gave this game a lot of thought, since it truly does cover almost everything I would want in a racing game.

Challenge and Accessibility

So while everything sounds great so far, I do have one minor grievance with the game, and this lies with the fact that it can be quite hard to win against your rivals. If a younger gamer plays this game, they should definitely choose to play it on the easier difficulty options. Anything above normal will have you really sweating and racing like a pro to maintain first place to win. This might be fun for older gamers, but I think kids will struggle a bit here.

To double-check this, I enlisted the help of my nephew, who is around 7 years old. We raced a few times, and his feedback was “Sonic is really cool! The game is sooooo fun!… But it is hard too. You need to use the powerups to win”. I couldn’t have said it better myself (In fact, I did a few paragraphs ago, haha).

Visuals and Soundtrack

Graphically, Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is visually stunning. Being an Unreal Engine 5-powered game, the tracks, environments and visual effects are all top-notch stuff. Surprisingly, the game also runs incredibly well on my mid-range PC with all settings maxed out. Sega once again did a good job here in ensuring that the game runs smoothly.

Since the game features “CrossWorlds”, there’s plenty of room for collaboration, and already we have Hatsune Miku in the game. If you bought the game’s season pass, you’ll get access to Minecraft Steve as well as SpongeBob SquarePants characters later on, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sega continues this trend and supports the game with even more popular characters in the future.

The soundtrack of Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is also filled with absolute banger tracks. The main title theme itself is super catchy, and I found myself humming “Sonic Racing~” a few times during the day thanks to listening to the track in-game. The voice acting is also fine, but some lines being repeated multiple times in a race will definitely start to grate on you over time.

Final Verdict

Overall, Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is a fantastic, all-around, extremely fun racing game. Sega have really delivered a solid product here and one that will be loved for ages and ages to come. If they can address the difficulty curve a bit with a balance patch in the near future, this will be a game that I’ll spend dozens of hours in.

Oh, and let’s not forget that with the extensive roster of characters to choose from, you’ll have a blast with mixing and matching their various vehicle parts and cosmetics from the get-go. If you pick up any racing game this year, make sure that it’s Sonic Racing CrossWorlds. It’s truly a gem of a game.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds Launch Trailer

Read more awesome reviews >>here<<.

Game code was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.