Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Review (PS4)

When news got out that good old Crash Bandicoot is getting a new game, I have to admit that my first instinct was to go to my closet and clean the dust of off the only library I was ever truly proud of, my gaming library

Crash has been with us since 1996 and even 23 years later he still manages to entertain kids….or the kids from that time that eventually grew up.

A fresh coat of paint will make it good as new

This latest title is called Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled and it is a remake of 1999’s Crash Team Racing. When I say “remake” I mean remake in the truest sense, as everything from the maps, karts, characters and mechanics are the same, just that the visuals are now on par with what it means to be a 2019 game.

As far as visuals are concerned, the remake looks amazing, as the character models are smooth and well polished, the textures look great, and the animations are very fluid and cartoonish at the same time, all while being hilarious or very, very cute.

Some of you may still feel nostalgia gnawing at the back of your head, so the developers introduced the ability to play the game using retro character skins as well ( you know, from when Crash’s model was made of about 12 polygons).

Will this features make the game run any smoother? Highly unlikely. Will this feature pull on the heartstrings of anyone who grew up with Crash Bandicoot? Most certainly!

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Remember the original? This will seem familiar

Nitro-Fueled includes all 31 race tracks from Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart, so if you remembered those games, then you should be prepared to play them again. Everyone you know and love from the Crash Bandicoot series will be here in one way or another, and they are still competing in the same wacky kart races as ever.

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Of course, the game isn’t about how well you can drive, but how well you can avoid obstacles and navigate the various tracks to reach the finish line. As expected from this sub-genre or racing games, you have your boosts, your weaponry and the only thing missing is a good excuse to use it all against whoever was bold enough to take 1st place away from you.

Racing is not all sunshine and rainbows (Ok...in this game it is)

Being an arcade racing game where getting boosts for yourself or launching attacks at enemies is just your average Tuesday, it isn’t hard to figure out that some matches may get frustrating at some points. Maps have the same obstacles you may remember, but I could swear I never got that mad whenever a giant barrel squashed me and made me jump from 1st to 8th place in just a matter of seconds.

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More so, another issue encountered was that whenever you got off track and were repositioned by the system, you'd sometimes be placed on the track facing the wrong way, and unless you were very careful, you’d end up racing a good chunk of the track backwards.

Additionally, getting hit by enemy weapons never seemed as frustrating either, since getting slowed even for a few seconds can make you lose all the advantage you may have build throughout an entire otherwise perfect race.

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Customize your sweet set of wheels

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled follows the trend of latest arcade racing games and introduces the ability to customize your vehicles. You can change anything from the simple paint job to the car chassis, wheels, stickers and even the skins of the drivers.

All of these features are initially locked but they eventually get unlocked with time, either by winning certain trophies, meeting certain criteria, or by simply grinding out the in-game currency you get at the end of every race.

One thing you should take note is that a character's stats are fixed and cannot be modified by any of the kart parts, as they are all purely cosmetic in nature.

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For when matches against NPCs just don't cut it anymore

Despite trying to be as close to the original as possible, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled has added a few new elements that bring it up to date with today's gaming environment. For example, back then when the term “Internet” was a term that was only used together with things like “N.A.S.A”, there was no online multiplayer mode. There are tons of available game modes for both online matches and local multiplayer matches, so getting bored isn't something you'll be having in your agenda anytime soon. Local matches can be played by up to 4 players, and I loved the fact that by default, the split-screen feature is side-by-side and not one over the other. One thing I did notice is that the FPS started dropping when playing in split screen mode with another player, so I didn’t even bother trying to get 4 people together to see how a 4-player match would go.

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The Good

The faithfulness to the original
Smooth graphics
Kart customization
A large roster of recognizable characters
It is a Crash Bandicoot game

The Bad

FPS drops during split-screen
Easy bots are too easy to beat and Advanced bots are impossible to keep up with
The kart noises can get annoying pretty fast

Conclusion

A lot of titles have been coming out recently that market themselves as remakes after old classics, but my blue ribbon will always go to remakes that manage to recapture the feel of the original game. As such, one very big blue ribbon goes to Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, as aside from the updated visuals, online multiplayer and the kart customization features, it manages to preserve the game’s atmosphere to the point where you’d look at the calendar and see whether it is 1999 or 2019. The game as a whole looks great, it is funny, it is frustrating to lose at it (figures) and it is an overall great experience that any player, young or old, should try.