YMMV / Team Sonic Racing

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • One of Shadow's lines to Rouge is "I'm almost on top of you, Rouge!"
  • Sonic has the similar "You'll never top me, Vector!"
  • A non-sexual example: One of Sonic's lines is "Give it up Silver, I'm smoking you!", which can elicit some giggles considering what Silver's quills are shaped like. It is played straight when you take into account the fact that "smoking" someone is also a popular slang term for something COMPLETELY different.
• Awesome Art: Thanks to a higher budget and only having to handle content from one game, the models of the characters nail down every feature of them as if they were in a CGI movie. For example, in this render of Team Vector,◊ the gloves have polyester texture, Silver and Blaze have textured fur, and Vector's skin is obviously scaly. The racetracks are also all stunning as well with even returning courses being given new life and energy through the artistic tweaks and sheer level of polish and elbow grease put into the presentation.
• Awesome Music: It's a Sonic game, so of course there's guaranteed to be loads of this.
  • The main theme, "Green Light Ride", performed by the one-and-only Crush 40.
  • Every Team Ultimate theme is this, but Team Vector's songs get special mention: a pumped up remix of Team Chaotix's theme for Vector, a fast-paced EDM remix of "Dreams of an Absolution" for Silver, and a kickass hard rock remix of "Vela Nova" for Blaze.
  • A plethora of remixed BGM from past games, all of it great, plays on most of the race courses. There's a couple of new songs, too.
  • The new original track for Lost Palace also deserves mention. Rather than going for an overt rock theme as per usual for Seaside Hill-related tracks, Lost Palace instead relies heavily on a piano lead with a more flighty sounding melody with guitar playing backup. The result ends up sounding like it came straight from Sonic Runners with the same "Stealth Anime Opening Theme" vibe that made those tracks so memorable.
• Broken Base: The team-based mechanics are either considered to be fun and unique, with many enjoying them due to the extra layer of strategy they add to races, or they're obtrusive and annoying, with many wishing Sega and Sumo Digital simply made a traditional racing game with the Sonic characters instead. It is generally agreed upon, though, that the team-based mechanics are more fun and engaging in multiplayer than they are in single player, where you're at the mercy of the CPU.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Previous games played up some of Tails' different traits to less than stellar reviews. In Lost World, his scientific side was played up to Insufferable Genius levels, while Forces played up his childish side to the point of being scared to take on Chaos 0 (whereas he had no real issue facing its fourth form in Adventure). This game has a balance between the two while also showing him willing to step up to a challenge, a trait fans have missed since Heroes (while it came back in Mania, this was a different Tails who didn't talk to show all of his personality).
  • Knuckles doesn't exhibit the Hair-Trigger Temper Dumb Muscle traits that have overshadowed his whole character since Sonic Advance 2 for over a decade, instead being more thoughtful after the fashion of his Dreamcast era characterization.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Zavok is by far the most used character for time trials due to his high speed/boost stats.
• Fridge Horror: In the intro, Team Rose and Eggman are shown exploding, never to be seen again. Did they actually die, or were their cars just crushed?
  • They're in the other games, so they're fine. Definitely just cartoon violence.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The wonky collision code can lead to amusing moments for the cars, such as being flipped over (a spectacular example).
  • An issue with the online multiplayer syncing can lead to cars being flung off the track and shot into the sky like crazy.
• Moment of Awesome: Team Vector gets one during the intro. After seeing Eggman take out Team Rose, they use Cube Wisps to take care of his Egg Pawns, then box the mad doctor in to ensure he takes himself out on an icicle.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Silver, who has white Shonen Hair, is now voiced by Bryce Papenbrook. This has resulted in many humorous comparisons to Nagito Komaeda. Not at all helped by Papenbrook using a near-identical voice for Silver as the one he uses for Makoto.
  • "Who's your daddy, Shadow?", spoken by Tails, is arguably the most infamous quote in the game.
  • The mobile version of the game (Sonic Racing) received one as well thanks to the Apple Arcade Teaser with Sonic commenting on various car crashes instead of a race.
• Narm Charm:
  • Zavok is now voiced by Patrick Seitz. More specifically, he sounds like how Seitz voiced DIO. It's pretty amusing to hear from a dead serious character.
  • General consensus for the story mode is that while it's still cheesy as ever, the more lighthearted situation and tone of the game along with more consistent writing makes the story a lot more enjoyable to get through.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This isn't the first time a member of Team Rose has been replaced. Big was absent entirely from the team in Sonic Free Riders, replaced by (of all people) Vector. This was before Big's resurgence in both use and popularity, it should be noted, the act of which is likely why he's back on the team now.
  • As aforementioned, Sonic Free Riders featured Vector as part of another team (Team Rose) instead of Team Chaotix, before this game did.
  • This isn't the first time Silver has been associated with the Chaotix. He worked with Espio in Rivals 2.
  • This also isn't the first time a Chao has been playable in a racing game. You could unlock a Chao as a character in the Kart Race minigame in Sonic Adventure 2 by collecting enough emblems.
  • Likewise, this isn't the first time Zavok has been a playable racer, either; he is one of the rarer characters in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
  • Rouge has used terms like "sugar" and "honey" in at least two other games (Sonic Heroes and Sonic Battle).
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • The Chao replacing Cream in Team Rose did not go over well. This alongside her conspicuous absence in Forces left many fans to question if she'll still be in the games, or has been phased out of the cast altogether. Making matters worse is that one of the playable Chao is Omochao, often seen as one of the most hated and annoying characters in the whole franchise, and Cream is never even mentioned in Team Adventure Mode; everyone, including Amy and Big, goes through the whole story acting like she never existed.
  • Carrying over from the mainline games is the Colored Wisps. Specifically their implementation into the game as the power-ups in lieu of more traditional monitor based power-ups or more varied and unique styles of power-ups found in previous Sumo racing titles. The fact that the Color Powers are far more disruptive and unavoidable than the items in previous games with certain Wisps (Ivory Lightning, Jade Ghost) seemingly ripped straight from Mario Kart's playbook makes races feel a lot more luck-based and don't really gel well with the more technical racing style that Sumo racing games tend to have.
• Scrappy Mechanic: For some, the very core concept of the teams in the first place. Want to progress in the story mode, or finish a regular Grand Prix? You have to rely on your teammates not suffering from Artificial Stupidity and feeding them items you could have used in hopes that they don't waste them, or you can end up entirely stonewalled in progress by them falling back too far and too frequently. While there are solo races available, they notably feel rather empty and gimped because the entire game is designed around teamwork, and not even online multiplayer could save it because most people stopped playing the game within the week of release which kills the entire point of getting players to work together. This leaves the team system as an underbaked concept that only really works if you have friends to co-op with you locally, and that's usually just a game mode in most racing games rather than the main focus.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus is that the game is a solid racer with interesting mechanics and a very well implemented team-based system, but is brought down by having a relatively small character roster, a decent but not very noteworthy story, and the fact it doesn't really stick out that much from other racing games (aside from the fact it stars Sonic). As a result, it has been compared and viewed unfavorably to the Sega All-Stars series and to an extent the Sonic Riders games.
• That One Level: Daredevil events in Team Adventure. Daredevil requires you to skim past giant Star Posts to earn points. That sounds easy... until you realize each point earned is small, the skim areas by the Star Posts are quite small, the time limits imposed happen to be dangerously short, and you need flawless driving skills in order to ace them, making the events difficult to earn even a bronze medal on. Daredevil would be That One Sidequest if it weren't for the fact that Chapter 6 has a Daredevil event in its main path, requiring you to complete one to proceed to the next chapter. Many players reportedly gave up when they encountered this level.
  Kotaku's review: "Daredevil races are BS and should be set on fire"
• That One Sidequest: Ring Challenge events in Team Adventure, which require you to collect rings to earn points, face the same problems as Daredevil, except with an even shorter time limit. Thankfully, unlike Daredevil, there are no Ring Challenge events in the main path of any chapter.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The fact that this Sega racing game is only focused on Sonic series characters and no other Sega properties like in the Sonic & All-Stars games caused many Sega fans to be disappointed with the company for narrowing its focus. What doesn't help this case is that fans had already been accusing Sega for years of over-shilling its mascot at the expense of its other franchises, especially those that have been Out of Focus for a long time. However, certain others are okay with this decision, since the Sonic cast was the most represented in the All-Stars games anyway, and it gave the developers much more freedom to choose from a wide spectrum of characters, from fan favorites to middle-of-the-road cast members. That being said, it probably would have gone better if there were some hints of DLC for the other Sega characters and levels.
  • A noticeable degree of fans were also disappointed to hear that the transform mechanic from All-Stars Racing: Transformed wouldn't be featured in TSR, rendering the game car-exclusive. The other side of the spectrum feels that the cars can carry a multiplayer experience on their own and forgive the removal of transforming vehicles for giving the gameplay more consistency. There's was also grumbling about the lack of speed compared to previous Sonic racing games, though Sega responded that faster Grand Prix classes would be available.
  • The wide variety of voice actor changes in this game were met with mixed reactions from fans. On one hand, there are those complaining that the new actors either sound too distant from the previous ones, just don't give good performances at all, or both. The most rebuked seem to be Knuckles (who sounds like someone doing a bad Travis Willingham impression) and Silver (who doesn't sound like his old self at all), though Blaze and Zavok's changes have been more widely accepted in comparison (some have noted that Erica Lindbeck's Blaze voice was so close to Laura Bailey's, they wouldn't have known the role was recast without looking it up). On the other hand, there are those who feel that all these replacements are inoffensive and the actors did passable performances with the material they were given.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Eggman's Egg Pawns mainly exist as computer players for you to beat in the single-player mode, but considering they're fully animated and are already part of an existing team (Team Eggman), many deem it a waste that they aren't playable also.
  • Despite being a member of Eggman's team in Team Adventure Mode, Zavok is extremely underused within the story. His interactions with the rest of the cast are extremely undercooked, with him only interacting with Eggman and no one else despite the variety of other characters he could have had interesting dialogue with, and he doesn't even get a reason to help the man who enslaved him beyond a token mention of getting "paid." The only notable thing he actually does in the story is kidnap Dodon Pa, and Metal Sonic could have done that easily.
  • Orbot and Cubot themselves lampshade how unfortunate it is they weren't Promoted to Playable by Eggman, instead doing grunt work for him in the story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Out of nowhere, the manual states Zavok is the former leader of the Deadly Six. How and why he lost his leadership is never stated or explained. If anything, Zavok working with Eggman in order to regain control of his pack would have justified his role in the story instead of them randomly working together for no reason.
  • According to Vector, Espio and Charmy are apparently investigating Dodon Pa, which could have been a potentially fun side-plot. However, it is all off-screen and mainly exists as an excuse as to why they're not with Vector.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Considering how small the initial roster is, very few expected a group of Chao to be the third member of Team Rose, especially in lieu of team mainstay Cream.
  • Zavok for Team Eggman. While Metal Sonic obviously makes sense, there is little justifiable reason as to why Zavok would be on Eggman's team; Lost World made it clear the two hate each other, and the Zavok seen in Forces is a mere clone made by Infinite. Realistically speaking, it seems like the devs just couldn't think of another Power character for Team Eggman so they just threw Zavok in there.

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