Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Review
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
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By Janet Garcia
Updated: Apr 28, 2020 10:11 pm
Posted: Jun 21, 2019 4:00 am
Twenty years ago, Naughty Dog’s Crash Team Racing made a name for itself as “the other good kart racer.” And to this day its dynamic courses, flavorful lore, challenging-yet-clear power-sliding mechanic, and lack of catch-up items make it a game that deserves better than living in Mario Kart’s shadow. Despite a few seriously frustrating single-player races, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a thrilling ride that keeps the excellent original game intact while adding some quality of life updates, such as an improved HUD, and obligatory modern trappings such as unlockable cosmetics.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled instantly transports me back to 1999 and the early 2000s with its familiar tracks, cartoonishly bright colors, and ridiculous plot of stopping Nitros Oxide from turning Earth into a parking lot. But this remaster is far from stuck in the past: visually, it looks stunning with vivid details around every corner and animations that give each character plenty of personality. The ability to swap between characters during Adventure mode and the cosmetic options are welcome additions, and learning to master each of these 31 tracks proved to be a real challenge because of their frequent tight turns, competent (though sometimes cheap) competition from the AI.
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CTR Nitro-Fueled has an Adventure mode, local and online play, five battle modes, and three challenge modes building on the foundation of the original, but what matters most is how it feels to get behind the wheel. In that regard, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a success. The wickedly fast speed, which is significantly faster than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, can be jarring at first but it was a welcome joyride once I got a feel for the course. The karts are fast in nature but the power-slide mechanic takes that speed to another level.
The tracks were designed to make the power slide shine and the result is something fast, playful, and memorable.
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Power sliding, aka drifting, is a classic mechanic across kart racers but CTR Nitro-Fueled has a unique approach to it. The bottom right-hand corner has a HUD equipped with a bigger and better turbo meter than we’ve seen in previous games in the franchise. Here’s how it works: you initiate a slide by holding L1 or R1, and move the joystick based on which direction you intend to drift in. The meter will fill and, once it’s red, you can tap the opposite trigger to perform a “good” boost that rockets you forward, but if you wait a bit longer the meter will fill to the second section and get you a “perfect” boost that blasts you ahead even faster. Chain three of these together and you’ll get an even stronger boost, calling into question the so-called perfection of the individual boost.
The amount of feedback the turbo meter gives you makes power sliding easy to understand and yet still hard to master.
You know exactly when and why you fail. And when you succeed, you can feel proud as you slide to victory.
Tracking Well
There are 31 race single tracks in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled cutting across both Crash Team Racing and Vicarious Visions’ 2003 sequel, Crash Nitro Kart. Given that, it’s a disappointment that the Adventure mode only sends us through just 17, (minus a few optional challenges), all of which come from the original CTR.
I adored just about every single one of them, from sewers that encourage major power sliding to tunnels completely lined with turbo boosts. And although they have predictable patterns, environmental obstacles prove to be an actual challenge. Do you go for the boost even when the next barrel drop makes it a close call? Can you deal with dodging beakers without getting eaten by the plant waiting on the sidelines? The tracks were designed to make the power slide shine and the result is something fast, playful, and memorable.
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It’s not a kart racer without items, and all 11 CTR favorites are back (two of which are exclusive to the Battle modes). Most of these items function in predictable ways given the genre: one provides invincibility and increased speed, turbos give a boost, beakers function as traps on the track, and so on. But I’ve always loved how much the Crash racing series draws from the story and world of mainline Crash Bandicoot platformer games. The Aku Aku mask generally provides invincibility, but when Dr. Neo Cotex picks it up it’s the Uka Uka Mask instead. TnT Crates crates take a few seconds to explode once touched, just like in the platformer. But once you drive into it the crate is placed on your head, allowing you to jump over and over again with the hope of getting it off of you before it explodes. Likewise, wumpa fruits may seem like “basically coins in Mario Kart» but, in addition to increasing top speed, once you’ve collected 10 you’ll earn “Juiced Up!” power-ups.
For example, TnT crates become nitro crates that explode as soon as you touch them and green beakers become red ones that don’t just spin you out. Instead, these souped-up beakers also add a rain cloud above your opponent’s head to slow them down for several seconds after they recover.
Casually Difficult
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled’s mandatory fast-pace and lack of catch-up items make it the most exhilarating kart racer I’ve played, but this isn’t the kart racer you want on the TV during Thanksgiving or a friendly get together.
If you’re bad, items will not save you.
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If you’re bad at CTR Nitro-Fueled, items will not save you – and that’s not an insignificant hill to climb. Multiplayer was fun when my competitors quickly got the grasp of power sliding, but other times I just found myself explaining how to play more than playing. CTR Nitro-Fueled has a few items that can even out a race, such as the Warp Orb that tracks the leading driver while hitting other drivers along the way, similar to Mario Kart’s blue shell.
But these don’t appear frequently enough to stop someone from creating a gigantic lead.
The casual nature of kart racers and the skill it takes to master CTR feel at odds at times. While I find the rigor unique and refreshing, it makes it hard to pass the controller to those who are less seasoned. Mario Kart takes skill too, but items like Bullet Bill make it easy to get a decent finish even if you drove poorly.
Even with all my experience, getting on the podium was no easy feat. The point system during Cups mode is particularly old school and unforgiving, with 0 points awarded to anyone who finishes 5th place or lower.
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While some may stick exclusively to local or online play, CTR Nitro-Fueled has a fully built-out single-player campaign across five hub worlds which can be played in Nitro-Fueled or Classic mode.
Nitro-Fueled mode lets you switch characters and karts as you please. Being able to swap characters at will, unlike the original game, can come in handy if you’re ever having a hard time earning that coveted first place trophy because stats vary across the roster.
I spent most of CTR driving with one of my favorite characters, Coco, who I remember fondly as one of the first women characters I ever played as. But Dr. Cortex’s balanced stats helped me finally nab first in Hot Air Skyway. And the beginner class driver, Polar, was great for precision challenges at the end of the campaign. He’s also just adorable.
Those who are craving that old-school feel can play in Classic mode with one character from beginning to end and just a basic kart. Even the cast will be identical to the original and difficulty options will be non-existent. Personally, I prefer the modern version because character-swap options are convenient and cosmetics are fun to mess around with. But the classic mode is a nice way for the remaster to stay faithful to the original while making improvements modern players can opt into.
Aside from some of the earlier tracks and cups, getting first in CTR is challenging. You have to power slide like no tomorrow while dealing with the randomness of your opponents’ arsenals.
But getting first in every single track in order to unlock the boss and then beating the boss to progress to the next area can be grueling.
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By the end of the campaign, you’ll probably be great at CTR but you may also hate CTR. Besides some difficult tracks, all the bosses are rubber-banded, which means it’s essentially impossible to be ahead of them for all three laps. No matter how much distance you put between you they will eventually come back. Your goal is really to be ahead towards the end of the track, when it actually counts.
At first, this was just a little annoying with some especially painful and cheap losses. But towards the end of the campaign it became laughable, to the point where one of the final bosses was tossing bowling bombs nonstop on a track without bumpers and with several blind spots. A good boss should challenge you to put all your knowledge and skill to the test but this design is just a part of the 90s we need to leave in the trash where it belongs.
By the end of the campaign, you’ll probably be great at CTR but you may also hate CTR.
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Twelve Battle-specific courses are available, all of which pull from settings of the main tracks. Battle mode also introduces the Super Engine and Invisibility items, both of which feel pointless in this more combat-focused challenge. The Super Engine just sends you flying around the course and Invisibility would be good if your wheels weren’t 100% visible to everybody the entire time. Being less visible isn’t invisible.
The catch is that all of these modes are point-based and involve hitting opponents with weapons, taking a flag back to your base, or collecting crystals while avoiding and attacking enemies. So despite having five modes there isn’t actually much variety in the gameplay. Battle is serviceable but not anything to write home about. I might boot it up just to do something other than race but that’s it.
Challenge Modes With Mixed Success
Time trials are straightforward and ultimately uninspired: get the fastest time you can and race against ghost versions of yourself as you try to beat the CPU high score.
The Crystal Challenge is equally mundane: grab all the crystals (in the circular arenas exclusive to Battle modes) before time runs out. It’s a challenge, sure, but not an especially interesting one.
On the other hand the Relic Race and CTR challenge are two of the best modes in CTR Nitro-Fueled. Relic Races involve beating the track under a set amount of time – just like the Time Trial, here you’re racing alone but with an added twist in which numbered crates pause the timer for 1, 2, or 3 seconds, respectively. This adds a new layer of excitement and strategy to otherwise familiar tracks.
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The CTR Challenge mode requires you to collect the letters C, T, and R while also finishing in first place to beat the track. The combination of having to locate the letters, successfully grab them, and also manage to have a clean race adds a fun dimension to racing. And unlike other challenge modes, this one is populated with CPU players so it feels a lot closer to the main game.
The Nintendo Switch version of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled isn’t quite as sharp as the PS4 version I reviewed it on. In docked mode the difference is noticeable but doesn’t detract from the overall experience. The Nintendo Switch version is a bit more jagged. You can especially tell when looking at the lap counter in the upper right-hand corner. The Switch numbers look a bit pixelated versus the smooth PS4 ones. But in handheld mode, the difference feels negligible with no more jagged numbers or slightly more pixelated character models. In handheld the Switch is 720p so it’s not as refined as the PS4 which is 1080p but the Switch screen is small enough that it still looks good. While many Switch versions of games have a noticeable performance drop against its Xbox One and PS4 counterparts, this fast kart racer still runs well.
Looking Bandicute
Customization is available for both karts and characters, but these items don’t have any effect on racing so the playing field will stay even.
Some of these are unlocked during adventure mode though the constant screen pop-ups saying “you got a new paint job!” interrupt the flow between the races and the hub world the tracks exist in. Other cosmetics can be purchased with in-game currency called Wumpa Coins in The Pit Stop, earned from racing. The character skins are pretty sleek but the paint jobs and most of the wheels leave plenty to be desired.
When you take into account the characters, character skins, kart bodies, wheels, paint jobs, and stickers only about a third of these cosmetics can be unlocked by simply finishing the Adventure mode. Some require completing extra challenges and the rest need to be purchased with in-game currency.
Character skins are sleek but the paint jobs and wheels leave plenty to be desired.
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This in-game store features Daily Deals for skins, paint jobs, and stickers which are labeled as basic, exotic, or legendary.
This feels awkwardly out of place, because while cosmetics are a welcome addition the rotating storefront feels like it’s trying too hard to make this an ongoing game in a genre that’s normally contained to the couch or a few online matches. The storefront and CTR’s load screens in general look like something from 2008. They stand out, in a bad way, against the otherwise beautiful art direction.
Overall, there are some great cosmetics in CTR Nitro-Fueled but some of the cutest and coolest items, such as Polar’s fisherman’s suit and Robo-Cortex, are stuck in The Pit Stop. Moreover, some of the cosmetics aren’t worth their challenges. For instance, achieving 100% progression in the Adventure mode gets you the Hovercraft’s green paint job. That’s it! But for 101% progression, you get a Nitros Oxide skin so at least that’s something.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled’s difficulty, memorable track design, and addictive Power Slide mechanic make it a kart racer worth playing, especially competitively (though new players should check out a guide or two first).
In single-player it’s richer than what the genre normally provides, but at the expense of a cheap and unforgiving Adventure mode design that can become overly frustrating. Overall, a new HUD, cosmetic options, and the ability to swap characters during the campaign mean there’s simply no contest between playing this and the 1999 original.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Review
great
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled’s difficulty, memorable track design, and addictive power-slide mechanic make it a kart racer worth playing but it’s not without its frustrations.
Janet Garcia
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Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled review — a generous remaster of a cult classic
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is a gold-standard remaster, capturing the loveably janky, off-brand spirit of classic CTR — and then some.
Crash Team Racing — the original one — is my life-or-death game: the one I’d pick if some cartoon, alien villain came down to Earth and told me I had one chance to beat them in a video game to save the world, and one where I reckon I’d actually have a decent shot at pulling it off, too.
I have played it quite a lot, basically — so much that I apparently can’t even describe it without referencing it’s race-to-save-the-world Adventure Mode — and it’s probably the only game I’d say I’m actually, genuinely good at. I’m equal parts relieved and delighted, then, to say that with Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled Activision and Beenox have absolutely nailed it. This is a lavish, fantastically polished remaster.
For the uninitiated (sort your lives out), Crash Team Racing is like Mario Kart only objectively loads better, firstly because it has lots of odd, Prongles-tier characters in it that signify everything great and awful about this era of ’90s brand nostalgia, and also because it actually introduced some great mechanics back in the day: namely an active power-slide function (similar to but I promise not exactly the same as Mario Kart’s) that not only let you drift around corners to stack up speed boosts, at the risk of fluffing your timing and spinning out, but also required you to actively hit the second shoulder button at the right time to actually get the bonus speed.
The later you leave it the more chance of spinning out, but the higher the potential boost in speed. It added — and adds — a brilliant layer of complexity to the game’s already cracking, intuitive handling: rather than being just about a good line or good braking, cornering in CTR is about knowing when to hop, when to break and turn mid-air, when to power slide and whether or not to chance a chain of boosts.
Boring caveat alert: We haven’t been able to test online multiplayer on live servers before launch, but feature-wise it’s fleshed-out well enough. Adventure Mode, meanwhile, is still a cracking nostalgia trap.
Then there’s the other standout feature, Adventure Mode, which it borrowed from Diddy Kong Racing (a game I didn’t play and so will assume nobody cared about, because it definitely didn’t earn a world record for selling fast or anything). It’s the main «story» for Diddy Kong Racing and CTR alike, setting you up in a sort of 3D platformer cluster of consecutive hub worlds to pootle about in, each with a set of races and challenges within.
Win the world’s four races and you can face that world’s boss on their home track, beat that boss and you’ll unlock time trials and collectable tasks in that world, and the right to proceed to more races in the next. Beat all the worlds’ bosses and you face the big boss, Nitrous Oxide, in a showdown for the fate of the planet.
It’s a little on the short side, if you’re just ploughing through the races — it only took me three and a bit hours, although I should stress just how uncomfortably familiar I am with this game and the fact I mainlined the races only — but it’s still a simple and surprisingly neat hook, even now, providing a gentle, gradually scaling introduction to the game’s tracks and characters. If you do want a little more challenge, and maybe have a craving for the days of hundred-per-centing games like they were the only thing left in your life, there is still a decent chance to test yourself in the much tougher time trials and crystal-collecting arenas, which drag the mode out far, far longer (but do also feel like someone’s using all their powers of creativity to squeeze every drop of «content» out of driving a kart around a track).
For the nerds who care, Nitro-Fueled locks things to 30fps in both single-player and four-player splitscreen, although to my eyes it still looks great. Digital Foundry will probably be digging into that more, shortly. We played on a base PS4 and a Pro.
Where CTR really shines though, obviously, is the co-op. Couch-wise Nitro-Fueled is maxed out at four players, as you’d expect, but the split screen works a dream, bringing a familiar level of chaos that you get from any kart racer like it. There’s no detectable rubber-banding to my eyes, in terms of raw speed, but again like any kart racer there are better items that’ll appear more frequently the further back you go — masks that make you invincible, much faster, and knock up anyone you bump into while they’re active for a brief time; blippy blue thingies that are basically blue shells, homing in and zapping most opponents in front of you; and a clock that puts everyone else in slow-mo and locks them out of using items themselves as you catch up.
Naturally, things get more bogged down in the middle of the pack, where there are more people there to catch you with items and zone you out of crates or booster pads, which means at the other end of the scale it’s easier to pull away even further once you get a good lead — but I’ve still always found the item distribution to be a good balancer. You rely on them a little, sure, but they’re more a counterweight to the crowding-out of the main pack than a total crutch: you still need genuine skill if you want to close a gap from 8th to 1st.
CTR’s remastered tracks are stupidly pretty, and still retain the original’s delightfully off-brand wonk, but it’s the game’s lasting, weirdly intricate layer of complexity that helps it stand out.
The nicely-tuned balancing is just one part of it though really: a lot of Nitro-Fueled’s karting just feels like a natural enhancement of features you’re already familiar with. You can collect Wumpa fruit, for instance, for a boost to your top speed when you reach the cap of ten — but having ten also means your items all get enhanced, too.
Masks last for longer; dropped TNT crates, that you normally have a chance to shake off, become Nitro crates that explode on impact. Subtle things like the placement of item crates, meanwhile, means that you need some incredibly fine mechanical prowess to actually reach them, more so than most kart racers I’ve tried. I still struggle with reliably hitting one or two of the shortcuts or teasingly spaced-out crates even now, when most tracks are committed almost entirely to muscle memory. There’s a constant sense of active decision-making going on — some shortcut jumps, for instance, can only be made with something like an item giving you a boost; some you can easily make without one and some only if you time it immaculately, leaving them ever-tempting and ever-disastrous, at least for the weak-willed like me, who seem determined to throw away a lead.
I’d normally say that level of intricacy is what gives CTR its longevity, the temptation always there to go back and shave an extra few seconds off by nailing a certain jump, chaining a near-impossible set of boosts or just getting all Forza and finding a better line.
But with Nitro-Fueled that’s sort of moot, because Beenox has just gone ahead and added another fourteen tracks — thirteen from the PS2’s lesser-known, locked-in-the-attic sibling Crash Nitro Kart (we don’t talk about that one), and an extra retro one for a laugh. There are also ten more characters that I know of, again from the sequel we don’t talk about (CTR has a thing for hiding the odd secret unlockable but if there are any more, barring the old cheat-only one I shan’t spoil, I haven’t found them yet). And there’s a surprisingly fleshed-out customisation system too — all cosmetic only, and all seemingly only unlocked with coins earned from gameplay, too, not a microtransaction in sight. Every character has a handful of skins, and there are a wealth of kart-tweaking options — from bodies to wheels and decals — again cosmetic only, again unlocked with in-game progress. Beenox is also promising at least three free «seasons» of DLC after launch, bringing new tracks and characters including, you guessed it, an inevitable appearance from Spyro.
The tracks brought in from Nitro Kart are naturally less iconic, but if you’re anything like me you’ll relish having something new to learn.
Critically speaking I’m left with little, if anything, to say. I was worried that revisiting CTR might feel a bit like going back to your old school, where everything’s much smaller than you remembered — and maybe if it were just the base game that might be true. But Nitro-Fueled feels more like seeing and old friend than an old classroom, even if it’s a pretty weird friend who refuses to grow up and still wears jorts in public. It’s just plain, dumb fun, a game completely unashamed of itself even now. I think that’s probably why, even beyond the enormously generous treatment it’s had from Beenox and under the nice, polished-up hood, CTR is still one of the best kart racers ever made.
Nitro-Fueled — DTF Games
The perfect remake of an outdated game.
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Almost any racing arcade with cartoon characters and shooting is doomed to be compared with Mario Kart.
You can treat the Nintendo series as you like, but the authors of such games are equal to it, sometimes adding something of their own, and sometimes simply borrowing mechanics.
Innovations, as a rule, do not take root. For almost 27 years, Nintendo has perfected the kart racing formula almost to the ideal, so the “chips” of competitors that the authors of Mario Kart did not borrow do not cause enthusiasm at best, and at worst look forced and out of place. Take the same team races from Team Sonic Racing.
However, Crash Team Racing (CTR), released in 1999, stood out from the galaxy of Mario Kart clones thanks to a special acceleration mechanic that added great depth to the gameplay. But that was 20 years ago. The 2019 CTR had to answer two questions: has this mechanic stood the test of time, and is the game capable of attracting new players who aren’t nostalgic for the original?
How old
At first glance, Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is just as neat and meticulous a remake as the N.
Sane Trilogy. And for the most part, it is. “Veterans” will be familiar with everything here: you need to ride on familiar tracks, control familiar characters and use familiar “power-ups”, such as homing missiles, acceleration or boxes of dynamite, which can be left on the track to break away from the pursuers.
As before, there are several modes to choose from: «Cup», in which the winner is determined based on the results of four races; single races; battles in special arenas and «Adventure» — a story campaign. Everything except the storyline can be played both alone and in multiplayer on the same console (up to four players) or online (up to eight players).
The campaign itself has not undergone any changes either. As in the original, the evil alien Nitrous Oxide flies to Earth, who offers the heroes a deal: if one of them can win the race with him, he will go home, otherwise he will turn the planet into a parking lot. Crash and the other characters in the series begin to compete among themselves to see who will represent Earth’s honor.
The player has to complete 16 tracks in four «worlds» inspired by levels from the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy. At the end of each location, you need to chase the boss — and this test is not an easy one. All the «leaders» have their own abilities: for example, Komodo Joe leaves behind a trail of boxes of dynamite, between which you have to maneuver, and Pinstripe Potoroo throws bombs at the player. After defeating the bosses, they become available as playable characters.
Cosmetic changes
Like the N. Sane Trilogy, the CTR remake looks amazing. Character models, animations, tracks — everything is done with great love for the original and attention to detail. Yes, the game runs at a frequency of 30 frames per second, unlike the same Mario Kart, but it also looks much more technologically advanced. When you see a bright rainbow over the statue of Coco on the Coco Park track, for some reason you rejoice like a child.
There are also more locations.
Tracks from the original CTR were added with tracks from Crash Nitro Kart, a direct sequel released in 2003. It is impossible to ride these levels in the story campaign, for obvious reasons. But they can be unlocked for other modes.
New characters can also be unlocked. If in the original game there were 15 racers, then in Nitro-Fueled there are a dozen more of them — they even let you play for the main villain. At the same time, all heroes have their own animations and skins. And here they are, perhaps the most significant difference between the remake and the original.
As in the 1999 CTR, for completing races in the «adventure» mode, the player earns cups, relics, and CTR coins. But if before they only opened access to new tracks, now they also unlock characters, skins for them and items for customizing cards. There are really a lot of the latter — different cases, wheels, coloring pages and stickers.
You can also open «cosmetics» in the in-game store for the currency that is issued for participating in races.
The size of the reward is mere pennies, but the prices for some stickers start from a thousand coins, and for some «packs» they ask as much as 7.5 thousand.
Obviously, it takes a long time to save up for the skin you like, but the game itself makes you hurry, because the assortment of the store changes every day. At the same time, you cannot buy in-game currency for real money — moreover, Activision assured that they were not going to introduce microtransactions into Nitro-Fueled. How the economy will actually work in the game, time will tell, especially since the publisher plans to turn the arcade into a real service by holding temporary events, adding new challenges and characters.
Test by time
The most controversial aspect of Nitro-Fueled is its gameplay. Beenox has gone the Vicarious Visions route, with the result that the CTR remake plays exactly like the original. The cars feel the same, the tracks run the same. Even the letters that need to be collected in the CTR Challenge mode are located in the same places as before.
For those who want to dive into Nitro-Fueled out of nostalgia, there’s no problem, but the tracks of the original CTR are ungodly dated. Narrow and linear, practically without forks and ingenious obstacles, they frankly lose in variety and abundance of interesting game design finds to tracks from All-Stars or the latest Mario Kart. Moreover, the tracks of the original look poor and pale even against the background of locations from Crash Nitro Kart.
Finding fault with the architecture of levels directly transferred from a game 20 years ago is stupid. However, this exposes the remake’s problem: it doesn’t seem to be able to offer players anything they haven’t seen in other arcade racing games. Yes, Nitro-Fueled perfectly «parasites» on nostalgia, but people who have followed the genre in recent years, it has nothing to surprise.
It’s still nice to play with friends on the same console, but the feeling that you can find a more fun race for the company, because due to the poor level design, the game almost does not generate any crazy and funny situations. The same Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is much better suited for parties.
On the other hand, the situation changes dramatically online. Each race here is a test of endurance, a real test of skills, so it is strictly not recommended to go there without going through the story campaign.
At the time of writing, there were problems with Nitro-Fueled’s online mode. In addition to lags, there were also bugs: here, for example, a box of dynamite hung over me, the weapon suddenly failed, and after the final of the race, Crash suddenly began to bounce
Remember how N. Sane Trilogy was jokingly compared to Dark Souls, because of the archaic controls and game design it seemed incredibly difficult? So with Nitro-Fueled, the situation is exactly the same — even the average level of difficulty is made by computer opponents to really sweat. Already in the first “world” of the story campaign, I had to replay the tracks several times in order to come first, and it’s scary to remember how much effort I spent on the boss.
Nitro-Fueled is the most hardcore arcade racing game of recent years. Here you could again complain about the outdated game design, forcing you to suffer, but the essence of the problem lies elsewhere. Among other things, the CTR remake inherited from the original one more feature that is characteristic not only for it, but, perhaps, for almost all games of the end of the last century — it is demanding on the player.
As mentioned above, the gameplay is based on the mechanics of Power Slide. In fact, it works like an acceleration that the player receives after drifting, but unlike analogues from the All-Stars series or the same Mario Kart, just going into a controlled skid is not enough.
Press the L1 key while turning. Then the player’s card will bounce, and a special scale in the corner of the screen will begin to fill. When it reaches a critical value, and black smoke pours out of the exhaust pipes, you need to press R1. Only after that acceleration is activated, but only the first level.
To develop maximum speed, it is necessary to repeat the procedure two more times.
It doesn’t sound that difficult, but it can take hours to master this mechanic, because the player is required to perfectly observe the timings. And learning how to use Power Slide is vital, because without it you won’t even be able to go through the campaign, let alone playing online.
The CTR remake doesn’t discount newbies — you either learn or get out of here (well, or play on the lowest difficulty). In vain, now the filling of the scale can now be tracked by the glow of the tires. Like 20 years ago, Power Slide adds depth to arcade racing. Because of these mechanics, Nitro-Fueled simply cannot be perceived as entertainment after a hard day at work — the game makes you tense up and carefully follow what is happening.
In the finale of the story mode, as well as the original game, they show how the fate of the characters developed in the future
However, if you still get used to this mechanic and learn how to use it, then you begin to look at CTR from the other side.
Yes, the tracks from the original game still look pale and archaic, but now every victory is perceived not as the result of a happy coincidence (a well-placed “power-up” here rarely decides the outcome of the race), but as a fair reward for skills.
In this situation, even the opponents in the network game begin to feel genuine respect. Despite the fact that CTR does not offer any separate progression for online, it is for him that the harsh school of single player prepares and it is in it that the hottest battles flare up. And exclusively on the tracks from Crash Nitro Kart, which are superior to the original ones in everything and provide more scope for tactical thinking.
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is an almost perfect remake. It looks amazing, it has a lot of new content, and the gameplay of the 1999 game is carried over without significant changes. There are almost no problems in it — all of them lie in the original, frankly outdated for 20 years.
Without completely new inventive tracks, Nitro-Fueled will suit the «veterans» of the series, and beginners looking for an alternative to Mario Kart will rather be scared off by hardcore acceleration mechanics and levels poor in interesting obstacles.
But those who still manage to overcome the high (by the standards of the genre) entry threshold will discover one of the deepest and most beautiful racing arcades of recent years.
Review Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
In recent years, I’ve been mentioning «nostalgia» more and more in reviews. In fact, I write the same thing: everywhere, wherever you spit, the aesthetics of the eighties and, now, the nineties are returning. This applies to cinema as well as to the video game industry, where remakes and remasters have been around for a long time. It wasn’t until 2017 that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was released, and in 2018, Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Well, today we’ll talk about a fresh remake of the cult arcade racing called Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled .
Before us is a traditional in every sense representative of the genre of arcade racing or kart racers (or simply karts). We recently talked about another such fresh title — Team Sonic Racing, which seemed frankly weak to us.
Surprisingly, in 2019, this genre stuck in the nineties refuses to die even though the hegemony of Mario Kart is not in doubt, and most of its analogues disappear from public consciousness months after the release. Do you remember El Chavo Kart, LittleBigPlanet Karting or F1 Race Stars? The last prominent representatives of the «opposition» were ModNation Racers and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, released back in 2010! And while 2012’s Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed was good, it didn’t succeed in turning into a franchise, a kind of alternative to Mario Kart for non-Ninendo platforms. Why? How do I know, ask Sega.
I myself have tried almost all of the above games, but none of them sunk into my soul as all representatives of the Nintendo series succeeded. There is always something missing, although such a genre seems to be elementary!
See also: Team Sonic Racing review – Team boredom
Many tracks will seem familiar to the seasoned fan of the genre – there is no getting away from the usual “archetypes”.
For example, the «Castle of Cortex» is very reminiscent of Bowser’s castle from Mario Kart 64 with sharp turns and atmosphere.
Okay, what’s the point of this introduction… and to the fact that Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled was the first such kart without a mustachioed plumber, which really wanted to return to and which will definitely be registered on the hard console for a long time. No, it’s not perfect — we’ll discuss some of the nasty details below — but it’s still very, very good. Thanks to Beenox (you may know these guys from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered) and thanks to Activision for not only not sparing money on the remake, but also releasing it at a reasonable price.
Despite the fact that I love the genre, the original Crash Team Racing in 1999 bypassed me — unlike most of my compatriots, in the nineties I was an adherent of the N64, not the PlayStation. But every now and then, rave reviews reached me about the debut for the eminent studio Naughty Dog (yes, that very one) arcade race.
However, I did not want to return to the rudimentary graphics of that time, especially since Nintendo kept throwing up new masterpieces. Now I have no excuses — absolutely nothing betrays the fact that Crash Team Racing is 20 years old. The plastic surgery went well.
Read also: Spyro Reignited Trilogy review — Grass is always greener on Unreal Engine 4
Characters in Crash Team Racing are traditionally weird. Next to the crazy bandicoot (yes, they exist) are a cute polar bear, a shark in an armor and an alien. Everyone will choose an avatar for themselves.
Yes, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled looks great. Animations that bring the characters to life; tracks that have increased in volume and received many new, previously missing details; all sorts of little gameplay stuff — that’s what a remake should look like. But if visually everything is fine, from a technical point of view there are problems, even a few. The first is loading times. It is always unpleasant when you have to wait until the menu is loaded, and before each race you have to be patient.
Approximately the same problems affected the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. It seems the remake is so ambitious that it turned out to be, well, very heavy — so heavy that the frame rate was limited to 30 FPS — both on the hybrid Switch and on the more powerful PS4 and Xbox One. But this is already a shame, because the still amazing looking Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which I specifically turned on the day before for comparison, produces reinforced concrete 60 FPS. For racing, it’s a shame to be limited to 30 FPS, but it’s still better than ~ 60 FPS Team Sonic Racing, which fell off every now and then.
The sound in the game does not lag behind the visuals — all your favorite songs sound in a new way, but if you really want to, you can return the classic sound of the original PlayStation in the settings.
Comparisons with Mario Kart 8 are logical and appropriate, but for the time being. Still, it’s worth turning on Crash Team Racing, as it becomes clear that in many ways it is on its own.
Yes, on the surface, the game shares many elements with its counterpart — here you have bonus items, and combat modes, and traditional tracks — but it only seems so. In fact, Crash Team Racing has always demanded more from the player than Mario Kart, which is just trying to attract the widest possible audience — for this reason, the Deluxe version has got annoying «helpers» for less experienced racers. But Crash Team Racing is more complicated: it requires «skill» — a word not traditionally associated with this genre.
For example, if drifting in Mario Kart is a simple and non-risk activity, then in Crash Team Racing it requires attentiveness and speed of reaction. If you release the opposite «trigger» too late, the car will stall. And if it’s on time, it will take the lead. At the same time, there are no “blue shells” that hang as a threat even over the leader. If you are good, it will be much more difficult to catch up with you. The characters themselves are also divided into several classes — «beginner», «intermediate type A», «intermediate type B» and «advanced».
The faster the class, the harder it is to manage. In other words, Crash Team seems less «family», more «serious», if such a word can be used.
See also: Review of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — The best fighting game… ever?
There are very, very many levels in the game — and there will be even more in the future. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game with so much content for such a fair price. This alone motivates me to write good things.
Once your hands start to get used to the crazy speeds and sharp turns of the game, you begin to truly appreciate the work done. I immediately want to leave Nintendo and recall Sega, which perfectly illustrated how don’t do arcade racing. Let’s start with the track design — while the Team Sonic Racing tracks looked good, they were too many elements to make it almost impossible to react quickly — especially when playing in split-screen mode. A mode that split the screen horizontally instead of vertically, making visibility even worse! There are no such problems here: the frame rate remains stable, and the tracks are still logical and understandable.
Of course, a lot has changed compared to the original, and almost everything is for the better. All levels are instantly recognizable and stand out with many details that were previously impossible due to the limited hardware of the PlayStation. A few things I didn’t like — for example, too aggressive obstacles (or rather, plants), which were slower in the original. If you believe the experts, finding secret passages has also become more difficult. But these are quibbles. If you want to sit behind the screen of one TV and plunge into local battles, then Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled will suit you with everything — on any platform.
But if you want to race with friends or strangers on the network, then you may have to wait. In its current form, the network multiplayer leaves much to be desired: the game suffers from big connection problems. Players appear and disappear, teleport all over the map, or refuse to connect. Beenox acknowledged the problems and promised to fix everything.
The life-giving patch for Switch is already out.
Playing with two people in split screen mode is a pleasure. It’s nice to be able to completely turn off AI — surprisingly, not all developers see a need for it.
But I have a claim and not only a technical one. I’m honestly pissed that Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled didn’t get two-player online multiplayer, which means split screen over the network doesn’t work. This is an omission completely incomprehensible to me — after all, even Mario Kart 8 for Wii U allowed you to play together! I hope that the functionality will expand after the release, because the developer has big plans for further support: a map of new content has already been announced, which will include characters and levels. And everything is free. Not bad for a $40 game.
By the way, it’s easy to forget that Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled has a full story mode — well, as «full» as a go-kart can be. To many (specifically the hub) it reminds of Diddy Kong Racing, another great exponent of the genre that deserves a remake._(No_EDC)-1546797562.jpg)
But there is no point in retelling the “history”, since there is only two sentences of material here. In short: the evil alien Nitros Oxide claims that there is no one faster than him, and invites the others to prove otherwise; otherwise, the planet will end. In general, a complete «space jam». It’s good that you don’t need to understand, because the Russian localization was not brought up. Although after Glacierlands and Ice Mountains, Team Sonic Racing might be a good thing…
Read also: Review of Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer featuring The Legend of Zelda
The built-in colorful store allows you to buy new characters, skins and cars with in-game currency. And skins for the car.
And finally, we can mention the «combat» mode, which includes several classic modes: «Limit Battle», «Capture the Flag», «Crystal Grab», «Last Kart Standing» and «Steal the Bacon». If you are tired of coming last in races, or if Twisted Metal is fondly remembered, then try yourself in a different role.
There are many reasons to pass: you can earn wumpa coins, new skins and cards, and win trophies, of course. You can choose a classic plot or updated, with customization and difficulty levels.
Speaking of coins. For a long time, the community has been tense, fearing nasty upgrades like loot boxes or microtransactions. But it seems to have passed: despite the fact that there is an in-game store, it is based on «wumpa coins» that can be won after each race. All of this is reminiscent of the Super Smash Bros. system. Ultimate — everything is fair.
We’ve been waiting decades for the return of Crash Team Racing. Without a doubt, this is the best kart on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and in the future, given the huge amount of content and plans for further development, Crash may completely leave the already bored Mario Kart 8 far behind. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled I advise everyone — both nostalgic and those who first learned about the game.
UPDATE: As many suspected, Activision did something very ugly and added microtransactions to the game after all the reviews had already been written.
