Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing: Culmination is a spinoff kart racer and the third addition to the Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing series and the sequel to Sonic and All Stars Racing: Transformed. It was developed by Sumo Digital for the third time and published by SEGA.
It would later be confirmed to be the last Sonic & SEGA Kart Racing game to be developed by Sumo Digital by the head of Sonic Team, Takashi Iizuka. Effectively, marking this game the final game in its series.
Development[]
After the highly successful sequel Sonic & All Stars Racing that released in 2012. SEGA enquired about a possible third entry into the kart racing series, thus turning it into a trilogy after being given the green light in 2015, with production starting in early 2016. Richard Jacques was asked to remain as sound director for the third entry, of which the offer was made and accepted. The whole game was to be made "even bigger" and to "culminate everything in a colossal entry to satisfy the ending to a complete trilogy". The title was suggested and stuck after they all decided that they wanted to let the player know about the weight of the game from the title alone.
The game would be revealed to the public as a teaser at SXSW 2018 by the official Sonic Panel, which would lead to loads of hype before the game was released in November 2018.
Modes[]
World Tour[]
- Grand Prix
- Races
- Missions
- Time Attacks
[]
Story Mode[]
The story mode involves Sonic and his friends getting invited to an event by Nights, who when arrive are challenged to many Grand Prixes as well as other characters from other SEGA franchises. The overall winner from all of these grand prixes (the player) is declared the winner and gets a big prize. The prize are the seven chaos emeralds. Unfortunately, Dr. Eggman ends up snagging the chaos emeralds. The player has to end up giving chase and defeats Dr. Eggman in a race for the ages.
Online[]
- Races
Multiplayer[]
- Grand Prix
- Races
- VS Races
Playable Characters[]
Sonic Characters[]
During Story Mode, you can only play as Sonic Character's.
- Sonic
- Tails
- Knuckles
- Amy
- Shadow
- Silver
- Dr. Eggman (Unable to play as Dr. Eggman during Story Mode)
Other Characters[]
- Alex Kidd
- Beat
- BD Joe
- Ulala
- AiAi
- MeeMee
- Amigo
- Ryo Hazuki
- Nights
- Reala
- Opa Opa
- Lua Lua
- Samba
- RAX Coswell
- Slash
- Xavier Pendragon
- Trident
- Bahn
- Jetta Maxx
- Larcen Tyler
- Raxel
- Segata Sanshrio
- AGES
- Vyse
- Gilius Thunderhead
Reception[]
| Aggregate Scores | |
|---|---|
| Aggregator | Score |
| Metacritic | 75/100 |
| GameRankings | 74.02% |
| Reviewer Scores | |
| Reviewer | Score |
| IGN | 7.8/10 |
| Gamespot | 7 - Good |
| 1Up | B- |
| Eurogamer | 8.3/10 |
| Famitsu | 36/40 |
| GamesRadar | 7.2/10 |
| Game Trailers | 7.6/10 |
| Nintendo Power | 8.5/10 |
| Gamespy | 2.5/5 |
Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing: Culmination was considered a financial success, by ending up selling 2.5 million copies worldwide by January 2020. However, the critical reception was mixed to generally positive. The game got praised for its visuals, the wide character selection and overall smooth gameplay. However, the biggest criticism was the lack of variety in modes, as highlighted by Gamespy: "You can only do so much with the arsenal of characters when it comes to the lack of variety of different modes." The people from Famistu each gave the game a solid 8 out of 10.
Nintendo Power gave the highest score, labelling the highly addictive and fun World Tour as the main reason as to why the game is as good as it is "The main attraction of the new Sonic and SEGA Racing game is the highly addictive World Tour which will make you want to play for hours on end and never get tired of it." IGN who rated the game a 7.8/10 reiterated this point by explaining their enjoyment over the incredibly fast paced action that transpires in the World Tour. "Use Shadow on his motorbike on the highest difficulty in the World Tour, and this will offer for the greatest fun challenge to be made during the highlight of this fantastic entry into the Sonic and SEGA All Stars series."