The glaring issue with Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is a problem Sega SHOULD NOT HAVE

I want to be 100% crystal clear on this. There should NOT be a problem or an issue with this game. The Sonic racing games, with the exception of Team Sonic Racing, are a special protected series of games.

Hell, I loved Sonic + Sega All-Star Racing so much so that despite holding a level 421 trophy account on Playstation, one of my only three Platinums I ever got was from Sonic + Sega All-Star Racing. I literally could not put it down and came to the trophy without even realizing I had gotten it.

So when I saw that Crossworlds was going to be a complete return to what I wanted, I was hyped. And then I played the beta and, admittedly, I'm a little worried because, for all intents and purposes, this should be a Mario Kart killer. Let's look at a few pros.

One, there's only 12 racers to a match. Mario Kart not only proved that you could have 24 people in the same race but also proved that that sucks. It's too much chaos. Shadow couldn't control that much chaos.

Two, they go wild and feature people from other franchises. Mario Kart started to do this with Mario Kart 8 before saying "sure, Link and the Inklings are cool and all, but people would much rather have beloved Coin Coffer and Snowman?" Not with Sega, Sega's giving us insanity. Not just characters from the Yakuza series, but Pac-Man, Hatsune Miku, and Persona. And they're also serving as what seems to be a refugee camp for Nickelodeon and featuring a bunch of characters that didn't survive the Nick Racing games like the TMNT gang, characters from Avatar the Last Airbender, and even Spongebob Squarepants. Madness. Which is what kart racing should be.

But with all the fun there is a massive problem with this game, now that I've played the beta multiple times. It's not the controls, they're fine. Not as tight as I'd want but they're okay. It's not the visuals, though they can get muddy, they work pretty well. But no...no no no...this is a big one for Sega heads.

The music — you know, that thing Sonic fans love and go to concerts for — is awful. When you see that first track and you find out that it has massive holograms floating around the arena visually paying homage to the Green Hill Zone, you expect some familiar music.

Obviously a remix, a club banger version, something.

Instead, you get a generic song that sounds like some inspiration Olympics theme overshadowed by a choir from Hell where each singer is trying to be the loud one. At some point, in some of the stages, we can hear lyrics. I promise we can, my brain is telling me there are words there that I'm hearing, but it's so fucking muddied I can't make out a damn word.

And the intro song for the cut scene? What in the Mickey Mouse House are we doing, gang? The lyrics are straight from one of those 90s Saturday Morning cartoons where the show was wild enough where the theme song had to explain the plot. Here's just a chunk of the lyrics:

Gadgets everywhere This race on land, or sea, or air I'll give myself a break If the T-Rex escapes With a stroke of luck...

(brace yourself)

you might become a monster truck

Jesus fucking wept. Yeah, I guess a T-Rex does appear in a pat of a stage and...yeah...there are items. But like, you know the songs don't NEED lyrics. You need to advertise me on the features of the game I already own, man. Please.

And with lyrics like...

It's Sonic Racing all around the world Faster than ever, making your tires burn

It's the lamest intro to rap shit you'll ever see. May as well have Sonic get on the mic and be like, "Well my name is rappin' Sonic and I'm here to say, I like going fast in a MAJOR way!"

Here's my full play through of a tournament. To hear the different songs here's the time marks.

Track 1 - 0:38 / 2:56 for the final lap version Track 2 - 4:45 / 7:20 for the final lap version

Track 3 - 9:08 / 11:35 for the final lap version Finale - 13:38 / 16:00 for the final lap version

So, for this...experiment...let's go over to 11:35 (or 16:00 since it's the same song). The kindest, gentlest, way I can think to describe the lyrical quality here is...boiling dogwater. Like I feel like someone is drowning me in the water they just used to wash their dog and the lyrics are something I'm hearing through the walls of the tub while submerged.

The piano refrain is okay. It stands out. But what are the lyrics? I can't even make out a single word. It sounds like one person in the choir forgot the words and are just making noises that sound like the words and, in the final master recording, they realized that their mic was the only one that recorded anything.

We deserve better. Hopefully, when Hatsune Miku hops into the game she's going to fix this because I'd KILL to hear a Hatsune Miku remake of famous Sonic tracks. But probably not. There's still time for the game to come out, and I understand that betas are what they use to fix problems people find with the game, but I'm really hoping it's something they fix, but in the meantime, if the game comes out like this, it's going to be the newest game on a long pile of games on my Playstation that makes me SO happy for the Playstation's ability to swap out a soundtrack with a Spotify playlist.