Sega's new racing title is a good game with one fundamental flaw: It has no idea which game it is. On the one hand, it's a surprisingly entertaining Mario Kart clone; on the other hand, it's steeped in the speed and mythos of Sega, which do not gel so well overall. It makes a good start and is leagues ahead of other kart games manufatured by third parties, but is easily pipped to the post by Nintendo's more seasoned veteran.

Naturally, most racers will want to start with Sonic, who really is the most balanced of all characters, but he's also a safe choice because a few other characters in the game are almost useless for beginners. Tails and Eggman are good examples - Tails is prone to massively oversteering, Eggman is sluggish, too sluggish in fact to make it credible that he is capable of rivalling you in terms of speed when played by the AI.

The courses are also a mixed bunch: there are no clear stand-out tracks, but several howlers that should have been thrown out during the beta stage. The casino stages are full of roulette wheels, flying poker chips, enormous dice and stacks of cards which all hold up well in their own way, but the greatest obstacle in many of the levels is the levels themselves. All too-often, colours on the side of the track merge into one and upcoming corners are rendered totally invisible, leading to many head-long smashes into the scenery. Sometimes it feels like an encyclopedic knowledge of the tracks is more important than the ability to drive or even correct errors.

Perhaps the main flaw with the track design is that virtually everything within a "theme" comes from an identical selection of game resources, so one track is only distinguishable from another after repeated plays, whereas in Mario Kart all the levels, though themed around the Mushroom Kingdom, are easily placed and mentally separated. The graphics are overall a nice mix: everything looks pretty good and is fairly clean, though some background details appear to be MIA. The characters themselves are full of personality and regularly flip each other off mid-race or perform strange stunts during jumps and skids.

Now, if you believe that there are too many unfair comparisons of Mario Kart here, then stop for a minute and consider this: the controls are exactly the same as Mario Kart, so much so that as seasoned veterans of Nintendo's racer, we found ourselves needlessly rocking the control stick during a powerslide in order to get a further speed boost. Pointless, yes, but the identical control scheme hooked into that part of our brains that was reserved purely for Mario and pals. Now we're confused.

But before you go condemning All Stars as a rip-off of Mario and forgetting to make that all-important purchase, you should understand that this is by far the best rip-off of Mario Kart ever to grace a home console. Well, maybe Diddy Kong Racing excepted. The controls are tight and mostly executed well. A few characters, though difficult, are worth mastering if not for the advantages they bring, but for the kudos of reining in a tough character from the "unplayable" bin and honing your skills into making he or she a racing powerhouse.

Despite the overcrowding and identikit nature of the tracks, they are as a general rule good fun to play. Samba de Amigo courses are brightly coloured with Spanish/Mexican overtones, House of the Dead-themed areas feature fun cameos from in-game bosses and recognisable locations. At heart these courses are well designed and prove a lot of fun.

Weapons also feature as an important part of the gaming experience, but their effectiveness is not so immediately noticeable as in a certain other racer. Case in point are the mines which replace banana skins as an important part or the staple arsenal. There are homing rockets (red shells), boxing gloves (green shells), rainbows (blooper ink), and an amusing little homing star which turns the racing world upside down and reverses the controls. An interesting inclusion is the "All-Star" which is only collectible by those at the back of the field: it's a character-tailored power-up that gives an enormous advantage to the character using it – Eggman has rockets, Sonic predictably gets a speed boost, Amy uses her Hammer...

While we're on the subject: who invited Big the Cat to this party? Or even Ryo Hazuki? There are some pretty dodgy character choices out there, especially the Chu Pilots from Chu-Chu Rocket. Ulala is a welcome addition as is Billy Hatcher, whose great game featuring his Giant Egg never got the sales or reviews it deserved. For every good character, there's a "Huh?" character - not that they are necessarily bad racers, just that their inclusion seems a little strange in a cartoon racer. That being the case however, who ever said that a Mushroom would make a good driver?

A final word has to be said about the sound and the commentator. The character soundbites seem to average at about three per racer and the commentator has a fairly common set of stock lines that you hear race-after-race. In fact, it's perfectly plausible that by the end of the first Cup you will have heard everything that the commentator has to say, and most of the characters too. A shame, because the thumping soundtrack is pretty standard Sega fare – music is perhaps the only aspect in which Sega is still better than Nintendo, though we're not sure if Richard Jacques was as heavily involved in the sound production as we and others would like.

For those of you craving something a little more unique than simply racing round a circuit three times, the missions are fun, and if nothing else, give you the opportunity to try out racers you wouldn't normally use in the course of the game.

We only had a brief chance to get to grips with the online portion of the game, limited as we are with our "will-it-won't-it" connection here, but the experience is fairly simple to use and mostly lag-free. It's easy just to get up and get straight into some groovy race action with all kinds of people from the world of racing, and fun too.

All in all, All Stars Racing is a good little game, not a great game like the title it rather shamelessly borrows from, but certainly a lap ahead of the efforts of other companies. Like Sega's All Stars Tennis, it's a good start and we're keen to see where the series can progress from this solid foundation.

Correction: In a previous version of this review we incorrectly stated that weapons cannot be fired behind your vehicle, while in fact both boxing gloves and rockets can be fired behind to take out other projectiles with timing. The horn can also be used to deflect incoming missiles. We also did not fully explain the nature of the Missions mode, which sees you race with specific requirements to be met - using specific racers, beating other racers, only using a certain power-up, etc. We apologise for the inaccuracies.

Final scores lie below...