Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed VS Mario Kart 8

[kamikazekeeg]

I think All-Stars offers more gameplay opportunities than what Mario Kart 8 does.  Certainly Mario Kart 8 is much better designed and polished, undeniable, but All-Stars offered more gameplay modes and variety I thought and at the time, I was hoping that Mario Kart 8 would take some cues from it, instead of just being a standard Mario Kart game, which it turned out be.  That's not a knock against the game, it's a perfectly fine game, but I think the Mario Kart formula is slightly stale to a certain degree at this point and its only real big "feature" was anti-grav wheels, which looks cool, but doesn't particularly affect the racing too much.

All-Stars had unique characters with their own vehicles and specials, there was progression oriented mode for all the unlocks (Which got way too damn hard towards the end lol), and alternate game modes.  It had multiple vehicle play styles all in one map and some really exciting levels that changed as you played.  The vehicle options are what make me want a Diddy Kong Racing 2 so much.  If they could do something similar with that, it would be an incredibly epic kart racer introducing the adventure map overworld and bringing back even cooler boss fights.

[spac316]

5 players with Sonic & All-Stars, MK8 missed that opportunity.
But S&ASRT was rather difficult in single player GP. It was just to aggravating to unlock anything racing against the AI. And at least MK8 didn't add a real life nascar racer to the roster that didn't really belong instead of another character from one of the company's popular franchises.

Cool video, though!

[aliensstudios]

I think All-Stars offers more gameplay opportunities than what Mario Kart 8 does.  Certainly Mario Kart 8 is much better designed and polished, undeniable, but All-Stars offered more gameplay modes and variety I thought and at the time, I was hoping that Mario Kart 8 would take some cues from it, instead of just being a standard Mario Kart game, which it turned out be.  That's not a knock against the game, it's a perfectly fine game, but I think the Mario Kart formula is slightly stale to a certain degree at this point and its only real big "feature" was anti-grav wheels, which looks cool, but doesn't particularly affect the racing too much.

All-Stars had unique characters with their own vehicles and specials, there was progression oriented mode for all the unlocks (Which got way too damn hard towards the end lol), and alternate game modes.  It had multiple vehicle play styles all in one map and some really exciting levels that changed as you played.  The vehicle options are what make me want a Diddy Kong Racing 2 so much.  If they could do something similar with that, it would be an incredibly epic kart racer introducing the adventure map overworld and bringing back even cooler boss fights.

Maybe Rare could just make a Kart racer for the XBone sans Diddy Kong but it could have Banjo and Conker, Lord knows the XBone needs a good Kart racer (as does PS4 too)

[sworddude]

A game can have many different modes and multiple gameplay options.

While sonic transformed has more gameplay variety, the polish of mario kart 8 is excellent. The character selection for sega is really interesting, with uncommon charater appearances from shenmue and skies of arcadia but alas not as memorable as the cast for nintendo's kart racer.

Sonic transformed is better than I imagined but the polish is lacking by quite allot wich can be seen through the whole game, in my opinion not comparable to mario kart.

Polish is really important, sonic transformed has a cheap feeling compared to mario kart 8. (allot of the newer sega games feel really cheap) Mario kart 8 has less options yet it does those few things that it has really well (except battle mode). Only complaint is that the battle modes have been downgraded since mario kart wii. Before that battle modes were excellent.



Diddy kong racing has a really mediocre roster of characters. I wouldn't mind never seeing a sequal of diddy kong racing not to great of a game in my opinion pretty comparable to crash tag team racing on the ps1.

You can't beat mario kart. The 1P adventure modes are fun and all but i'd rather have a solid kart game wich looks great and is tons of fun with a great and memorable character roster. But than again I usually play these games with friends. For single player maybe but even than I'd say the games are just less solid. Having few options is not always a bad thing furthermore the main attraction for kart games is racing against eachother and in the past also battle modes especially for multi player fun.

 

[aliensstudios]

A game can have many different modes and multiple gameplay options.

While sonic transformed has more gameplay variety, the polish of mario kart 8 is excellent. The character selection for sega is really interesting, with uncommon charater appearances from shenmue and skies of arcadia but alas not as memorable as the cast for nintendo's kart racer.

Sonic transformed is better than I imagined but the polish is lacking by quite allot wich can be seen through the whole game, in my opinion not comparable to mario kart.

Polish is really important, sonic transformed has a cheap feeling compared to mario kart 8. (allot of the newer sega games feel really cheap) Mario kart 8 has less options yet it does those few things that it has really well (except battle mode). Only complaint is that the battle modes have been downgraded since mario kart wii. Before that battle modes were excellent.



Diddy kong racing has a really mediocre roster of characters. I wouldn't mind never seeing a sequal of diddy kong racing not to great of a game in my opinion pretty comparable to crash tag team racing on the ps1.

You can't beat mario kart. The 1P adventure modes are fun and all but i'd rather have a solid kart game wich looks great and is tons of fun with a great and memorable character roster. But than again I usually play these games with friends. For single player maybe but even than I'd say the games are just less solid. Having few options is not always a bad thing furthermore the main attraction for kart games is racing against eachother and in the past also battle modes especially for multi player fun.

Agreed on most points; I wouldn't say Transformed feels "cheap" per se, but it definitely lacks polish for sure (it's a common downfall of the majority of multi-plat releases)
I think the fan-service in Transformed is incredible, some of the courses are ripped straight from the source games but redone in a way so it becomes a race course, the most stunning of which is the Curien Mansion from The House of the Dead which lends itself to be an incredible race track in terms of representing it's source material as the racers follow the exact path Rogan and "G" go through in the game. It's clear the team working on the game wanted to do Sega proud.
Characters like Gilius, Alex Kidd and Joe Musashi harken back to a time before the blue blur and it's nice to see that Sega still recognizes these franchises that helped lay the foundation for their successes in the 90s.
Mario Kart 8 is stunning, it has beautiful tracks and perfectly represents Nintendo and it's innovations over the years. Is it the be-all-end-all of Kart racers? Perhaps, but I can't deny I'd get bored of playing it after a while, that's why it's nice to have some kart racing variety! 

[sworddude]

Also speaking about character rosters and fan service

If Sega added more characters in the game from the uncommon series that it has added instead of only 1 the main character I would definitely enjoy the game more.

Imagine having for example more characters of skies of arcadia, While you could add more of the main characters as a save pick i think many people would like it even more if you would add charavters such as gilder or alfonso, would be pretty priceless and memorable in my opinion.

If they would give it more polish and add more uncommon characters to the roster of memorable series, I'm pretty sure that more old school sega fans will give this game a chance.