In 2010 Sega created a hit game under the name of Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing the game was a huge success and a sequel wasn’t far behind, in 2012 we were treated to the sequel we wanted with Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed. I don’t see why they dropped the Sega name from the tittle it is still pretty much Sega characters with two exceptions. Very much like its predecessor, Transformed brings back the original racing formula from the first game but as the title suggests this games main new feature is that the vehicles now can transform into a boat and a plane when they pass through certain gates. Just like the original we start the game off with a faced passed intro which brings about my first problem, in the opening the vehicles are show to be able to transform at a moment’s notice in the game you can’t it’s kind of annoying because the game kind of based around being able to transform your vehicle it just is not right, but other than that there is no big problem there. The game starts up the same way as the last but this time instead of a mission mode there is this World Tour mode in which you complete different tasks to earn stars, stars are used to unlock more missions, get certain upgrades and buy new characters. Oh yeah Transformed is boasting an impressive cast of 22 characters including NiGHTS who has been promoted from Flag Man to Racecar so not much improvement there.  The returning characters consist of Sonic the Hedgehog, Amy Rose, Tails the Fox, Dr. Eggman, Shadow the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna from the Sonic franchise,  Aiai from Super Monkey Ball, Beat from Jet Set Radio, BD Joe from Crazy Taxi, Ulala for Space Channel 5, Amigo from Samba De Amigo with Alex Kidd and Ryo Hazuki as DLC. Sadly some characters had to be cut from the roster including Billy Hatcher (who still makes an appearance in this game), The Chuchu’s and a bunch of others that no one remembers and really cares about. That means the rest of these characters are our newcomers from Skies of Arcadia we have Vyse the Sky Pirate, Gillius Thunderhead from Golden Axe, NiGHTS and Reala from NiGHTS into Dreams, MeeMee from Super Monkey Ball, Gum from Jet Set Radio, Pudding from Space Channel 5, Joe Musashi from Shinobi and AGES a character who comes from no game and looks like the Dreamcast’s AMU if you know what that is. Like any kart racer there are of course Grand Prix mode, Time Trails and multiplayer mode. The track selection is very diverse unlike the first game now with tracks that span a lot of Sega games, there’s even one from Billy Hatcher even though the little guy wasn’t in the game and there’s only five Sonic tracks, unlike in the first game which had nine, I’m sad to say that not every track has a representative or else we would have Sugar Rush from Wreck-It-Ralph, oh right there are two third party characters Wreck-It-Ralph from well Wreck-It-Ralph and Danica Patrick from the real world. There is also DLC but it’s not that great a lot of it is just for PC like Yogscast, Team Fortress 2, Alex Kidd (returning from the first game) and Metal Sonic who is still DLC he hasn’t moved up from that position, poor guy.  The character models look great from this game and flow well with the interactions with the player just look at Temple Trouble, there are actually waves in the water to bounce your ship off of. The grand Prix’s throw together a bunch of different stages and even the stages themselves are very creative and they change throughout the race look at Graffiti City, the jet Set Radio track which has you racing on the road for the first two laps but on the third the road blows up and you have to go airborne or Sanctuary Falls which has you stating the race in the plane and by the end of the race the sanctuary has fallen apart enough that you have to fly again thought the crumbling ruins, they don’t all do this but it’s nice to have some variation in the game. The only things I don’t like about this unlike the first game is that now every character drives a car this is a step down for characters like Tails who flew in a plane in the first game is stuck in a car or Shadow who drove his Motorcycle the Dark Rider now drives a G.U.N. tank where he got it I don’t know there is no story to this game, and some characters who did drive cars now get different looking cars mainly I’m looking at Beat and Dr. Eggman who drove great cars in the first game and now there cars look less creative and more like boxes. From a technical and graphical standpoint the game looks and plays great it’s fun and vibrant and has very good controls, but from a sequel standpoint I find it delivers less than the original, yes it does deliver the new and unique gameplay style of transforming cars but having to sacrifice characters in order to create the new play-styles I find it just is lazy from the consumers standpoint but that is only because I looks at it from the sequel perspective and not on its own. Transformed for the most part is a great game and it holds up well, the l switch up of characters from the first game is annoying, but at least we  don’t have Big the Cat this time so there is a plus and the tracks contain a fresh and new design  that I find works well for this game ‘s transforming nature, the sad thing is that like I said earlier there is no way to switch you cars at a moment’s notice so I find it lacks in the transforming department ah well, something for the third game where we get transforming cars and Billy Hatcher make it Sega make it. I’ll give it an 8.5/10.