Sonic Racing Transformed is actually a great game. I like it way more than any of the new Mario Karts. The levels are fun and the "transform" elements don't feel like a gimmick. They lead to new paths and a slight change in gameplay. The items aren't broken as hell, and the game is really rewarding towards drifting. You get different levels of drift for how long you do it, and if you "snake" the levels don't drop, they remain intact if it's a clean movement, so you can snake around, then release for a high level boost (lv.3 I think is the highest?) and get a huge speed up off it. Different cars obviously have different stats, so some will give you higher boost, accelerate, etc.
It just feels really well thought out and designed, and just simply overall fun, lol. It gives you a lot of speed with strong ease of control, plus more ways to abuse drifts and boosts to go crazy speeds as opposed to trying to hold you back, which is also enforced by the balanced item system.
As for the recent Sonic titles, I don't see what's wrong with them being built around a "time-attack" idea. Sure, it can sort of seem like it's playing itself at times... But that's only if you let it. Like Life said, there's a lot of quick decision making that leads to better paths and faster times. You need to have the quick reaction times to slide under walls, jump over obstacles, clear through enemies and not abuse your boost meter, etc. But at the same time, the game is forgiving and if you choose to not do these things, you'll pretty easily be able to get to the end of the level, except it won't be nearly as fast of a score, flashy, rewarding, etc. If they DIDN'T do this, people would ***** and moan that the game's too hard because they can't process how to run up a ramp or jump over something. So if you choose to let the game play itself, yeah, it's gonna be kind of boring. But if you take on the challenge it becomes a crazy decision based racer.
If you're not up for it, or it's just not your thing, then clearly you won't like it. Duh. I don't see how that makes it BAD. You're looking for something in a game that isn't trying to sell that said thing to you. I personally do miss the more smooth platforming and not break neck speeds of games like Sonic 3, but franchises evolve and I appreciate and enjoy what the new titles have been. And who knows, maybe Lost World will change the game again. We'll just wait and see.
Also, what's with all the talk of "combat" in a Sonic game? That's never been a real element, lol. Enemies have always been really easy to destroy and only an inconvenience if it's your first time ever playing a Sonic game and have zero reaction time. Enemies are placed in a way that if you use your eyeballs you can react in time to either hop on them, spin through them, or more recently, boost through. If you wanna beat 'em up go play something else and quit looking for that in Sonic games and criticizing them for lacking that. Or better yet, go play Sonic Battle like I mentioned before cuz that ****'s tight.
