Parent's Guide: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (360, PS3) - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a racing game where players speed around a series of courses themed around old Sega games, and much like Mario Kart, pelt each other with weapons to slow their opponents down and help them win. While the original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing was concerned with racing cars, it's sequel 'transforms' the genre by taking the race into the skies in planes and over the waves in boats, with each character having their own unique transforming vehicle depending on the terrain you're racing on.

These sort of games are mainly popular because of their multiplayer, and Sonic is no different, letting up to four people compete at once in few different modes. First off there's the straightforward race of three laps with whoever finishes in first place being declared the winner, as well as a Battle Arena where you can pummel each other with power-ups to your hearts content. There's also Battle Race, where each player can take a maximum of three hits before they're out of the race and Boost Races, where you're relying on speed alone to get you to the podium as items are banned. Finally, there's the Capture the Chao mode, where players need to pick up the Chao creature and carry him to the UFO to get a point - although your friends will do everything they can to prevent you getting there.

It's not all competitive though, as the World Tour mode can be played through in four-player co-operative - a career mode of sorts, you need to complete a wide variety of different events to earn stars. Earn enough stars and you can move onto the next world, unlock new characters and more. The single problem here though is that in order to unlock all the characters in the game, you need to collect far more stars than it's possible to get by just playing on Easy or Medium difficulty - and moving up to Hard is such a huge leap in difficulty few will manage it, particularly if they're younger or less able players.

As it stands, Sonic & All-Stars Racing is a pretty solid racing game with plenty to do, but is marred somewhat by it's uncompromising difficulty. Easy should be fine for everybody, while medium offers more of a challenge - hard is far too unforgiving and only really suited to masochists, and it seems rather unfair that you need to play on hard to even be in with a chance of unlocking a fifth of the game's characters. That said, for it's multiplayer, it's well worth a look - just make sure you play predominantly on easy.

Much like Mario Kart, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a kart racing game for all ages - players race round a bunch of colourful tracks competing for first place, and while the weapons you pick up give you the competitive edge, there's no blood, guts or gore. Players simply spin round when hit with a weapon, before carrying on as before.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360