I’d say it’s a step more “serious racing” than Kart. Transformed had more complex drifting and boosting mechanics to emphasize good racing skills. There are still powerups, but they’re relatively weak. The closest blue shell equivalent is the swarm, which summons a swarm of giant wasps to sit in front of the race leader, but it’s always dodgeable with good steering. The medium-level pickups require good aim or awareness of who’s near you. The Kart strategy of only caring about the last lap is still possible in Transformed, but trying to get ahead as far as possible is also a doable strategy.
My only frustration was that you had to essentially master the game completely to unlock all the racers. Sure, rewards for mastery all the way to the highest levels of the single player mode are good, but I felt they should have changed it up so you unlock all the racers earlier and offered some different rewatds for the end. Or maybe I’m just salty that I had to go to the very end on the highest difficulty to play as characters I wanted to play from the start, in a Sega racer, no less, which are generally harder than most. At least in a game like Smash Bros Brawl, you just had to beat the final boss to unlock Sonic, you didn’t have to perfect it on the highest difficulty.
I’d say it’s a step more “serious racing” than Kart. Transformed had more complex drifting and boosting mechanics to emphasize good racing skills. There are still powerups, but they’re relatively weak. The closest blue shell equivalent is the swarm, which summons a swarm of giant wasps to sit in front of the race leader, but it’s always dodgeable with good steering. The medium-level pickups require good aim or awareness of who’s near you. The Kart strategy of only caring about the last lap is still possible in Transformed, but trying to get ahead as far as possible is also a doable strategy.
My only frustration was that you had to essentially master the game completely to unlock all the racers. Sure, rewards for mastery all the way to the highest levels of the single player mode are good, but I felt they should have changed it up so you unlock all the racers earlier and offered some different rewatds for the end. Or maybe I’m just salty that I had to go to the very end on the highest difficulty to play as characters I wanted to play from the start, in a Sega racer, no less, which are generally harder than most. At least in a game like Smash Bros Brawl, you just had to beat the final boss to unlock Sonic, you didn’t have to perfect it on the highest difficulty.
Sounds worth a shot at least. Thanks for the write up.