Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

Eh. The reason I think a lot of people called this better than Mario Kart is because they didn't have Mario Kart and had to substitute it with something. Like it's fine, but it just feels kinda messy. Also those microtransactions are pretty bullshit.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is essentially a recreation of the first Crash Team Racing game, but also includes tracks from the other PlayStation 1 & 2 era games.

Mario Kart is seen as a very accessible karting game, where Crash Team Racing is regarded for the more skilled gamers. There's multiple difficulties, but Easy is very easy, and Medium is really difficult, so it can be frustrating if you want a competitive race until you really master the intricacies.

Even in the game's other modes, it seems erratic. I love playing Time Trials, and some tracks I found it hard to even chart on the game's default leaderboard, whereas others I was taking the top spot with ease. I refuse to believe I'm that inconsistent across the tracks.

I initially played the Adventure mode which I thought would be a great place to get used to the tracks. You play individual races but have to finish in 1st place to progress. This is really challenging, but then there's the variations like Relic race and CTR Challenge which are even harder. Relic race is where you smash crates to freeze the timer, with the aim of completing 3 laps under the target time. Ring Rally starts you off with 5 seconds and then the rings give you an instant turbo and more time. In CTR Challenge, not only do you need to know where these collectables are, but then you have to finish 1st to actually be successful. You can play these race types outside of Adventure mode, but the menus don't make it clear which tracks you have completed successfully. Another frustrating aspect of Adventure mode is that when you finish a race, you are brought back to the entrance, so have to tediously drive to the location.

When you complete races, which takes great skill (unless you play on easy), Aku Aku will then be like "do you know you can boost by power-sliding?". "Erm, how do you think I won the race? I have to know that, and way more."

There's 42 karts, and 53 characters, with loads of colour palette swaps for each character. There's loads of unique characters, then many characters that are basically copy-and-paste, then some baby variants. Spyro also makes an appearance. Some of these are unlocked via Adventure mode. The rest are bought by coins. You earn coins by racing, and for some reason, you get double when you play at the weekend. I was generally getting around 60-90 coins per race if played at the weekend, but you are generally buying characters at 2500, vehicles for 3200 so it’s a huge grind. You spend your coins in the Pit Stop which has a limited selection which is switched out after a period of time. Unless you gain loads more coins by playing online (I played this game late and I don't have Xbox Live), it seems like a money grabbing scheme to make you purchase coin packs from the store.

The graphics are brilliant, with vibrant colours, detailed textures, lots of background objects. However, maybe you pay for that with the fairly long load times.

I initially found the power-slide angle hard to get used to. The boost mechanic is different too. You initiate with one of the slide buttons but then tap the other when the gauge fills (your tires also flash) - which fills up to 3 times for a more powerful boost. You also gain boosts from air-time, so you are constantly leaping off any kind of ramp, or bump. I believe by chaining boosts, your boosts are stronger, indicated by the constant blue flames.

When racing, you collect Wumpa fruit which increases the power of weapons, so TNT crates become Nitro Crates. The weapons were fine, but since the emphasis is on racing, I didn't often feel I was using weapons with much benefit. There's usually one or more shortcuts on the tracks; some are more obvious than others. I wasn't a fan of the points system since there's no incentive to fight for positions in the bottom four:
1st: 9
2nd: 6
3rd: 3
4th: 1
5th: 0
6th: 0
7th: 0
8th: 0


Once you get used to the handling, the racing is excellent. The track designs are great, and there's a great number of them. The character roster is also huge, and I do love having lots to unlock. However, the emphasis on microtransactions, and the erratic difficulty let this down.

Nitro-Fueled is a decent enough remake of the original PS1 Kart racer, and it is easily the best Kart Racer of that console generation, hell CTR even surpassed the best Mario Kart games in some aspects. Nitro-Fueled has everything the original game has, the same tracks, the same relic and coin challenges, the same boss races and characters. This game adds more Kart customization and has different skins for the characters. And this game gives every CTR fan what they've been wanting, you actually can unlock Oxide in this game. It brings back the annoying ghost races with Oxide except they are made a little bit easier. I mean I really can't say much this is a near exact remake of the original in every way with improved graphics. The only reason this isn't as highly scored is because the controls just feel a tad off to me. Like the N Sane trilogy, I feel the turning and drifting isn't as tight in this game as the original. In the original I could just keep drifting through the level without hitting walls and I could easily access all the shortcuts where in this I was constantly hitting walls and traps. But really outside the controls not being as tight everything about this is better than the original, the graphics are good, the redone music is good, the character models and designs are good, the voice acting is alright, although I do prefer the original voice actors for some of the characters. Here's to hoping Crash Bandicoot 4 is a great game that ends up improving the formula. Also Nitro-Fueled does somewhat have a microtransaction system where you can buy fruit to unlock accessories, and this feels kind of scummy coming from a Crash game.

If not for the pit stop and grand prix system, this game would be a 5/5, no questions asked. On the face, it's just Crash Team Racing again, but with almost everything you wanted the first time and more. Sure, they didn't add in the Crash 1 and 2 bosses missing from CTR, but they added all the Crash Nitro Kart characters and courses, in addition to every CTR character and course, AND the adventure mode. It's CTR translated very well to HD (unlike certain other Activision HD remakes) with the ability to play as any character in adventure mode, and more tracks.

Beenox also added karts from other Crash racing games, full-on alternate costumes for most of the cast, and a bunch of different paint jobs. These are locked behind the pit stop, which is what brings the game down from perfection to annoyance.
The contents of the pit stop are decided by Beenox every day, and rotate out at 8 PM EST to the next set. If you buy something, it is replaced by the next thing in line. So far, buying a lot of shit if the only way to get to certain things. I checked every day for nearly the first month this game was out, and never once saw the thing I wanted (Pinstripe's alternate outfit).
This issue is compounded by the monthly grand prix system. Every month, they're adding more characters, more outfits, more karts, more paint jobs, and a free new track. The new tracks so far have been pretty good, except for the Spyro track, which is godawful. Unfortunately, the other new items simply serve to clog the pit stop. Every day of the grand prix (which lasts nearly an entire month), items from that grand prix are pushed to the top. Characters can be acquired individually or through expensive bundles. It doesn't help that the current grand prix (Back in Time) introduced everyone's favourite from Mario Kart [マリオカート], baby versions of the main characters.

The pit stop's rotation wouldn't be an issue if not for the currency. Wumpa coins are earned through races. As someone who does not pay for the online services of any of the consoles, I am left in the dust. If I want anything, I have to grind out the same races over and over. What's worse is that in the first update, Beenox actually nerfed the payout of the former best grinding race, Jungle Boogie.
This, of course, led our glorious saviour Activision to hear our complaints about wumpa coins and generously offer us the chance to pay real money for wumpa coins. 11,000 wumpa coins can be yours for just $10. This can buy you one (1) character bundle OR two (2) karts OR four (4) costumes OR seven (7) full characters with no frills. What a fucking deal.

Nitro-Fueled's pit stop and wumpa coin systems are so fucking terrible that the game would unironically be better if nothing from the pit stop was even in the game at all.
edit: The October update did help the currency problem. On weekends, all of your wumpa coin gains are doubled. So just spam Lab Basement crystal challenge on hard, keep failing it, and get 30 coins every minute. It's not so bad if you just idle grind for 300 hours
I have since idle grinded my way to owning everything in the pit stop. It's not bad at all if you're playing on Switch, because you can just mash the button every so often while doing something else.

edit 2: November's update added a new mode called Ring Rally. This mode is amazing, and the second wave of updates has been incredible so far. If the December update goes in just as hard as October and November, I may have to call this game of the year.

edit 3: When I originally wrote this, I had it at 4/5. Clearing the pit stop combined with grand prixes 4-6 really got me past my complaints. It's a shame that there's so much grinding to get to that point, but not having to worry about anything but racing really lets the actual gameplay shine through. It's the best kart racer around.

Technically there's a few gripes I can have with the porting of the systems; there's a lot of density in the back-end not fully expanded upon and explored, with most of the track layouts remaining identical when they could have been fleshed out with better boost pad and especially wumpa crate placement. But that is the eternal debate when making a remake; how close to the original do you really want it? In reality, it met all my expectations, which means it's still the best kart racer out there. I popped in MK8 on 150CC right after, it was way less fun and way slower (yes, I know 200cc is a thing, but it was an add-on after the fact).

The adventure mode framework is still the absolute right way to do a single player campaign, the different modes all test your skills nicely, the new Hard Mode is suitably trying, the customisation options are hampered by the almost DRM-like progression system but has the right mix of accessibility and depth, the Nitro Kart tracks could have been better implemented in terms of mode placement and difficulty scaling, but they still look, play and feel great. And while online is a big laggier than I'd like, the presence of human players still makes the game even more fun. So, no real complaints, just minor areas to improve on to make a classic even classic-er.

12am Whatsapp voice recordings with a friend of mine, put into a transcript:

Rezzo:
"I just did the story mode for Crash Team Racing (the new one), the adventure mode is pretty much exactly the same as the original game, so I don't have much to go over regarding that.

On the first 16 tracks in the game (they did most of them alright), they kind of f***ed up the tracks and explain to you why."

My friend, reflecting:
"[Tiny Arena] did look good in the gameplay trailer that you sent to me. As long as they stuck to original stuff as much as this tracks appears to, it should have come out well."

Rezzo:
"Well, that's the thing, Tiny Arena possibly plays the best out of all of the tracks and I'll explain why. Some of the choke corners do suffer in this game. Let me go over all the tracks [and how they compare to the original game]."

"Crash Cove is... it's Crash Cove man, it's not an exciting track but it's really well designed to be honest. It's one of my least favourite tracks in the original game, but it looks really nice and plays really well. When you're playing with 8 karts and flailing weapons at each other... I think there's only 2 boost pads on the entire track and it ends up being fairly random with who comes first. Overall I'm happy with the design."

"Mystery Caves is fine, I didn't take the usual shortcut through the stalactites so I don't know how that looks but most of the track plays fine. The fireballs seem even easier to dodge than usual, I think they go higher or something? And the tortoise shells are even harder to bounce on than usual, I think they have a different animation as well!"

"Sewer Speedway is one of the tracks that I don't like so much [in Nitro Fueled], and that's because the timing for jumping seems to be slightly off? If you jump even slightly too late from a ledge, the game flat-out doesn't register it and give you the extra air boost that you would. Something else that's strange is that you don't get a flat air boost from falling from a high ledge when you land (in the original CTR you did get a boost from this). It's noticeable in this track and also in Polar Pass, where I jumped over the boost pad at the end of the track, but I'll get to Polar Pass later.

...I didn't take the shortcut [here] because, as I was saying, timing jumps seems to be way more difficult and I couldn't get myself high enough to make it.

[In the original game] you can hug the top of the tunnel and go ridiculously fast through it... you can't do that anymore! It was a lot of fun but it was obviously a glitch.

Definitely a hit or miss track for me."

"Roo's Tubes... boring, boring track! I think it's the shortest track? It also has only 1 wumpa fruit crate and it really shows as you're all bunched together for most of the race and you can't really get ahead. [The] shortcut works as how it used to. It's redesigned well enough."

"Coco Park is exactly the same... you can't really get the track wrong to be honest; there's nowhere that you can get any air, so all there is to do is pick up crates and throw weapons around. Seemed more fun than the original, maybe it's the new design and the new mechanics that give things a fresh look."

"I don't like this [new] version of Tiger Temple. Like I was saying with the timing of the jumps, it's really awkward on this track and it goes to show. Those little humps that are everywhere in the track are really difficult to gain any speed from, because when you do time the jump you just land on the hump in front of it... (By the way I played as Cortex through all of these tracks!)

The original Tiger Temple could be fun sometimes but it didn't pull through well here [in Nitro Fueled]."

"Papu's Pyramid? Oh boy, I'm going to come back to this track at the end because it quite amazingly summarises every problem that I have with this game! But as a preliminary, no, I don't like this track."

"I've never really been a fan of Dingo Canyon. It's still boring. The middle bit in the valley is still boring. You can't do anything; everybody bunches up and nobody can overtake because there's no space to boost. The only two decent places to get a powerslide going is at the start of the track and where the road splits into 2 sections. It's still the same in this one. But it's remade well."

"Ooh Polar Pass! It's still the best track in the game! I'm really happy with the way they've done this one. The jumps get you the right amount of air! I remember earlier that I mentioned that some of the tracks don't give you enough air from the jumps? Well, on some of them [like here], you do. You f***ing blaze it around the track if you do it correctly! Really well made, probably the best remake out of all of them.

...the ice mechanics are different - when you go into a powerslide you immediately swing in the direction you're drifting. It's disorientating at first but I guess it makes more physical sense? It really threw me off at first!"

"...Tiny Arena - they did the corners really well! You still jump over the [pickup] crates if you're going to fast, that still happens... you get lots of airtime off of the humps, you can powerslide through mud and fly out of it. However, there's a new mechanic where if you brake you seem to lose a lot more momentum... I don't really like that. You also can't brake mid-air any more either, it's affected how I approach some corners [and] I've had to take some corners wider. I guess it makes more sense and was probably a glitch in the first place."

"*sighing* Dragon Mines... Dragon Mines... really slow track. There's only... 1 boost pad before the lap line? The spiral platform slows you down to a halt as you can't corner it without almost stopping. There [seems to be] a theme [that] you seem to lose your boost speed more easily, but Dragon Mines really shows that more than any other track, which is a shame because overall it was a decent track in the original."

[Blizzard Bluff] "Jesus Christ this track! I'm not happy with this one. It might just need a bit of getting used to, and it could end up being good, but on first impression I'm not liking it. As I was saying before, the ice mechanics are all different (which obviously applies to this track as well), but on top of that the shortcut jump over the canal... you have to be going a lot faster than the original. I fell off the track 3 times in a single race as I thought I could make it. There's also the cornering for the mini-shortcut at the start of the lap - it seems to be narrower, and you're punished much more for bashing even slightly off of the wall, which slows you to a halt as you're driving through the thicker snow."

"Hot Air Skyway: [you know, it's] the only character track which doesn't have the character's name in it! It plays really well! I think it plays better [than the original] to be honest. I slowly fell out of love with it in the original and this has brought new life into it! It [also] shows off the new ultra-boost pads... These pads make you f***ing fly it, you get blue flames from your kart which looks really cool! If you slow down even slightly you lose the speed, though.

After playing Papu's Pyramid, I was expecting them to mess up the final choke corner of the track and they didn't, which I was really happy about!"

"Cortex Castle and Polar Pass [were] probably my favourite tracks. This one is weird; I found myself taking different paths that I wouldn't normally [take], such as at the fork - I found it easier to go right instead of left... The air-braking affected my cornering here quite a lot like I said earlier, and the bell tower shortcut seems to be even harder to jump... I don't know what they've done - I think they've made the lip of the ramp a lot more punishing."

"N Gin Labs is still as fun as ever. The track plays exactly how it used to. The boost tunnel makes you lose speed instantly as soon as you leave it - it also seems to be narrower than it used to be... I don't know if it's the new visuals or not! I used to powerslide through here in the original out of boredom, and I think you have to do that now to keep your speed boost as you exit."

"Oxide Station... I think they've changed the track?! There seems to be an extra bit of the track after exiting the outer space area, if my memory is serving me correctly... I don't know why Oxide Station remains to be so weird wonderful! It's still probably the hardest track to master! All of the corners are as tight as ever.

I don't know if any of the glitch jumps work anymore but I did try one once yet didn't have enough speed, so you might not be able to jump off and skip half of the track as easily as before!"

"