CRASH TEAM RACING NITRO-FUELED
We take to the track to experience the remaster’s crackpot karting action.
Lush' is really the best way to describe the worlds in Crash Team Racing. Yes, worlds - they're so good-looking that simply calling them tracks doesn't feel like you're doing them justice. They're the kinds of places that make you want to pull over on the side of the road so you can get out just take it all in. If that wouldn't get you bombarded by a bevy of missiles, explosives, and magical spirit masks, that is.
While the tracks in the original PS1 Crash Team Racing were incredibly inventive, in this remake they’ve been truly brought to life by Beenox, the game’s developer. Wonderful details have been added, making the racer feel more like an extension of the Crash platformers than ever before. You can almost imagine the bandicoot himself crunching over the beaches of Crash Cove or slipping across the ice in Polar Pass, and Dingo Canyon feels like it would be right at home in Crash Bandicoot 3. The tracks have been filled out, peppered with little references to the rest of the Crash games. Each starting line is decorated with something unique, such as a polar bear struggling to stay balanced on it in Polar Pass.
And it’s not just the other racers who are out to are spill your oil, the tracks themselves are too. They feel almost alive, and you need to watch out for crumbled pitfalls and criss-crossing wildlife as much as the other karts. The Crash series has always required a certain degree of finesse, and that’s still the case when you get inside a kart. The tougher tracks feel just as unforgiving as the best nail-biting levels found in the platformers. To think of Crash Team Racing as being completely discrete isn’t quite right; it’s cut from the same cloth as its platform siblings. Crash is as Crash does – and that’s chaotic mayhem, whether in his big red shoes or his shiny motor.
Having played the original Crash Team Racing pretty much to death back on the PS1, it’s only natural we’re combing over everything in our hands-on to death too, playing each track over and over as every one of the eight characters. While in the full game you’ll be able to customise your karts, we’re confined to the default models for now – though as in the original, each character handles differently, with stats for speed, acceleration, and turning. Who you’ll want to play as depends on what you’re comfortable with. We love having good corner control, so we can hit as many boosts as possible.
PIMP MY RIDE
“YOU’ LL NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR PITFALLS AND WILDLIFE AS MUCH AS THE OTHER K ARTS .”
As well as performing differently from one another, each character looks unique. Just as the tracks are now more detailed, Beenox has used the power of PlayStation 4 to put in all the little things that add up to a massive amount of personality, from super-huggable fur on the animals (we want to bundle Polar up in our arms) to quirky animations as your racers hurl weapons at their race rivals, and have things hurled at them in return. Jumping off ramps you can perform a trick – one that conveys your chosen driver’s personality – to earn a small boost, and all the game design oozes that level of charm. Beenox is doing as good a job of capturing the orange growler’s magic in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled as Vicarious Visions did in the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy.
Even though we’re familiar with the original Crash Team Racing, it’s almost a surprise how similar Nitro-Fueled feels to play when it couldn’t look more different. If you’re expecting a big change-up in the on-track action you’d be wrong. Mechanically, everything is pretty much just-so. This is no reinvention of the Crash racing wheel, though
“IT COULD SURPRISE ANYONE EXPECTING TO BE ABLE TO PICK IT UP AND CRUISE TO VICTORY .”
in many ways that’s a great thing for a remake like this. As enjoyable as some of the later Crash racing games were, they never captured that feel of the original PS1 game like NitroFueled absolutely does.
WUMPA DRIFT
The accuracy of the retro gameplay does mean you might find Crash Team Racing harder to get into than some more modern kart racers – it could surprise anyone expecting to be able to pick it up and cruise to the winning trophy. There are some fiddly technical elements. For example, you can hold ou or to glide around tight corners, and if you hit the shoulder button you’re not holding at just the right time during your drift, you’ll get a boost. You can chain up to three of these if you hit it at the right moment every time – though try too early or hold too long and you’ll lose your chance. It can take some getting used to.
Like in the original, there’s a meter in the bottom-right that indicates your charge level, as well as a smoke indication on your kart – though with so much more going on in Nitro-Fueled than in the original it’s harder to pay attention to this, so you might be better off just feeling things out. This meter is also used to give you a starting boost on the line. Like drifting, tricking off a ramp requires precision as you need to tap the jump button (which is also either o or u) just before you hit that ramp. It’s something you get used to, and learning a track’s obvious and slightly less obvious places to grab some air means you can boost all over the place, but it doesn’t give you a huge amount of leeway.
As the hops and drifts are mapped to the same shoulder buttons, you need to make certain you’re hitting the direction you want to drift when you press, otherwise you might end up doing a little hop instead or drifting the wrong way. The game might be cartoony, but you need a certain amount of precision to succeed. But that’s because that’s the way it is in the PS1 original, which has been recreated with an eye to true mechanical faithfulness.
That need for precision does make it rewarding when you know how to control your character, when you can hit those level three drift boosts, and pull off those trick jumps. Even if you didn’t have to worry about the other racers there would still be quite a bit of challenge in trying to perfect your runs. But you do have to worry about the other racers. Quite a bit. That’s thanks in no small part to the litany of weapons and power-ups scattered around the track.
Crates are the backbone of Crash Bandicoot. They hide all sorts of goodies in the platformers, so are obviously perfect for use as weapon receptacles in the kart racing