(OLD) CTR Nitro-Fueled Review - CB Retrospective

DISCLAIMER: This review is entirely based on my own personal opinions and experience with the game, if you disagree it's fine but you don't need to be an asshole.

This review also contains spoilers
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It's been a while since my last review and since i started to make this retrospective and the reason why i started it was because of this game. I started re-playing those games back in December 2018, and in that same month this game was announced. Since the game was announced i started to get more hyped and the closer we got to the release date, more and more was revealed about the game which made me a lot more excited. After waiting for 7 months, is this game really as good as i expected? Or is it a complete disappointment? Well, let's see.

Before we start i would like to recap my opinions on the previous kart games; the original Crash Team Racing is a really great kart racing game in my opinion, it has great controls and overall it feels very satisfying and fun to play, it still had a few issues mostly because of the PS1 limitations but it was still a really great game, just like Crash 2 and 3 were and still are. As for Crash Nitro Kart, it was better in terms of presentation, storytelling and track design but in terms of gameplay, it wasn't as good, the controls were clunky and it didn't have some of the more advanced mechanics from CTR. As for Crash Tag Team Racing, there isn't much to talk about it because not much content from that game has been included here, we have a few karts and skins which is pretty cool but other than that, there's nothing else to talk about.

Now, there's a lot of things to talk about this game due to the large amount of content here so i will start by the main part of the game, the Adventure Mode. The adventure mode is pretty much the same as the original but one main difference is that now we can choose two different modes: Classic and Nitro-Fueled. The classic mode is pretty much the same as the original where you choose one of eight characters for the whole adventure and the new Nitro-Fueled mode allows you to choose any character, including unlockable characters and now you can change your character at any time if you want which is a great thing, specially if you want to choose a different character that is more suited for a specific track and you can also change the difficulty, easy if you are still learning the game, medium if you want the normal experience and hard if you want more challenge because the hard mode here is way harder than in the original.

And in that topic of characters, the cast has been greatly expanded, as we have all the 8 main characters unlocked from the start: Crash, Cortex, Tiny Tiger, Coco, N.Gin, Dingodile, Polar and Pura, as well as the unlockable bosses: Ripper Roo, Papu Papu, Komodo Joe and Pinstripe who are now unlocked by beating them rather than completing a gem cup and other characters like Fake Crash, N.Tropy and Penta Penguin who just like in the original, is unlocked by a code and he even has the "Penguin Yay 1" lines from the NTSC version and he can get either Aku-Aku or Uka-Uka as a mask, which is a reference to the NTSC version of the game where the Uka-Uka icon would appear but he used Aku-Aku. And not only that but we can finally play as Nitros Oxide which is awesome. 

But this isn't all, probably one of the biggest surprises of this game is that we didn't just get the characters from the original, but also the characters from CNK: Crunch, N-Trance, Zam, Zem and Real Velo but not just the playable ones but also the bosses: Krunk, Nash, Small Norm, Big Norm and Geary, which is also great because one of the most disappointing aspects about the original CNK was that you couldn't play as the bosses at all, however. I really love what Beenox has done to those characters, i was never a fan of Zam and Zem in the original while now i'm starting to like them a little more and the bosses all mantain their original personalities, i specially like Nash and Big Norm. And it's also awesome to see Crunch and N-Trance, two of the most popular characters from the post-ND era returning with the N.Sane Trilogy style and i really hope they return in the next games. However, there's one aspect about the CNK characters that disappointed me but i will talk about that later when i get to the CNK stuff. Also, this is just a note but i'm only talking about the starting roster so i will talk about the Grand Prix characters later.

But the characters aren't the only thing we can choose now, this game has a lot of customization options, and i mean, A LOT, really a lot, we can choose different karts which all come with their own unique sets of decals and we can also choose different paint jobs and stickers to put on the kart which is great. The karts we have here include the standard classic kart, Oxide's hovercraft, all the four CNK team karts and a few karts from CTTR. And not only that but we also have skins, which come in two different tiers: exotic and legendary, exotic skins are pretty much recolors with different textures and every character has three of those and they're unlocked by beating a set number or races as that character and the legendary skins are different costumes that come with unique podium animations and those are some of my favorite skins.

Anyways, that's a lot of customization stuff to talk about and i haven't even started talking about the adventure mode itself, so i will quickly talk about the intro cutscene. Just like in N.Sane, there's a lot more detail added to the intro, like how now Oxide directly talks to the characters through a hologram, rather than just talking in his spaceship which is a really cool thing and there are a few more details to make the cutscene feel more cinematic, kinda like the cutscenes from CNK.

So finally, it's time to talk about the gameplay, and it is awesome, the controls are very close to the original, i would even say it is a bit better to control and it feels very satisfying to play, sure it's not 1:1 but i don't think it's a problem, it feels very close. If that isn't enough we even got the advanced mechanics from the original, like the reserve system, sacred fire and USF, which has been improved as now you can mantain USF by powersliding rather than losing it like in the original. There are also a few more visual cues to help, like an option that makes the wheels change color when powersliding which makes easier to get the time to a perfect boost, as well as an alternate boost bar. It's really great to see how well Beenox has recreated the gameplay from the original.

As for the graphics, they look stunning, absolutely stunning, i can easily say this is the best looking game in the series. The original CTR while it definitely looked good for its time, it looks kinda barren when compared to the trilogy as the enviroments didn't had the same level of detail and the character models had very few animations because of the hardware limitations so it definitely needed improvements, specially when compared to N.Sane which was more of a 1:1 remake with a few added things here an there. The characters now have a lot more animations, like now they react when they win or lose a race and they even have unique jump animations which gives them a lot more personality.

As for the tracks, there's so much more detail added to them, not only they look great but they also have a lot of life in them, with different enemeis and NPCs from the trilogy appearing in the background watching the race and interacting with the enviroment, i can give some examples like the monkeys from Crash 1 appearing in Crash Cove, the dinosaurs from Crash 3 appearing in Mystery Caves, N.Brio's blobs appearing in Sewer Speedway and the list just goes on, every track has those references and easter eggs which sometimes makes me want to stop racing just to appreciate them more. Another thing is that the tracks now fit a lot more the chacter associated to them, one example being Hot Air Skyway which is Pinstripe's track, in the original it was a sky track with blimps which didn't really fit Pinstripe, while now it has been changed to a sky casino track, fitting a lot with Pinstripe's gangster personality. Another example i can think of is Tiger Temple, Pura's track, in the original it was just a temple track based on the ruin levels from Crash 2 which wasn't the most fitting track for Pura, while now, the name of the track makes a lot more sense because there are a lot of tigers running around. And another aspect is that now tracks that looked similar in the original now look different, like Slide Coliseum and Turbo Track which both looked the same in the original, while now Slide takes place at night and it feels more like a festival with big holograms of the cast doing their dances while Turbo Track takes place during the day and feels more like a racing event. There's a lot to say about the tracks and i'm not even done because there are still the CNK tracks to talk about.

As for the music, it has been very well remastered and i would even say i prefer the new tracks over the old ones as the original ones are kinda barren when compared to them in my opinion. But if you don't like them, it's fine because unlike in N.Sane, we have an option to switch to the classic soundtrack, though i usually play with the remastered soundtrack, i only swap to the legacy music sometimes when i want to have some nostalgia or when i race on Retro Stadium, the PS4 exclusive PS1 styled track.

And just like the intro cutscene, the boss cutscenes have been improved a lot, in the original they were just the bosses trash talking outside their boss garage doors while now those cutscenes are more dynamic and cinematic and every boss has a unique introduction, a unique way to enter the race and a unique way to give you the key, my favorite boss being Komodo Joe who's a lot more menacing than he used to be. 

And that's all for the presentation, as for the rest of the adventure mode it's all the same, the CTR challenges are still there and they're just as fun to complete and we also have the relic challenges which are a pain in the ass, specially if you want to get platinum because you have to collect every single crate in most of those tracks while still having to end the race quickly, and the crystal arena challenges. The boss races are pretty much the same which is kinda disappointing because they were the weakest part of the original adventure mode in my opinion and i wish they made a little more to make them interesting rather than just a race with overpowered AI that spams items.

And that's pretty much all i have to say about the adventure mode, and now it's time to talk about the arcade mode which is pretty much the same as the original but there are some changes, like now you can also play the CTR, relic and crystal challenges outside the adventure mode in all the tracks. The battle mode is still there and it has been improved as now you can play alone against AI rather than just playing with your friends and we also have the extra battle modes from CNK, including Crystal Grab, Last Kart Driving, Capture the Flag and Steal the Bacon. And as for the time trial mode, it's pretty much the same as it used to be but now i have started to like a little more, in the original i just played the time trials to unlock N.Tropy and i remember back when i reviewed the game i wasn't good enough to race against Oxide, i didn't even know about reserves and sacred fire back then, now i have already beaten all of Oxide's ghosts and i had a lot of fun doing that and unlocking Digital N.Tropy was pretty satisfying.

And that's pretty much all i have to say about the CTR part of the game, now let's talk about the CNK content. To add to the 18 CTR tracks, we also have all the 13 CNK tracks here as well which is one thing i really wanted because i'm not sure if this is an unpopular opinion of not but i always preferred CNK's tracks over CTR tracks, so having to play all those tracks with the CTR physics and controls it's just a dream coming true. Because of the different physics some of those tracks have been redesigned to remove the anti-gravity sections that the original had so they can fit along with the CTR tracks, at first i wasn't a fan of this change because it removed some unique aspects of those tracks like Out of Time which originally had you driving in the face of a large clock and now has you driving inside a giant clock tower, i think it was needed because most of those sections were pretty clunky in the original, they were definitely cool but they made the karts move slower and many times they had weird camera angles that made them awkward so i'm fine with those changes, because of that tracks that had big focus on anti-gravity like Thunder Struck, Android Alley, Electron Avenue and Hyper Spaceway are a lot different than they used to. 

Visually those tracks look stunning but unlike the CTR tracks which feel like locations from the trilogy, these tracks feel more like their own things as those all take place on different planets and one thing i liked is that they feel a lot more alien than they used to, as in the original they felt like normal Earth tracks. However, since many of those tracks were visually pretty similar to the CTR tracks in the original, they were changed to feel more distinct, one example being Inferno Island, the original track was a daytime beach track with a shipwreck, just like Crash Cove and now, it has been changed to a volcanic beach track at night and the shipwreck was replaced by Oxide's crashed ship so this track can stand out more, and that can be said about the other tracks as well, most of them feel different than before, but they were definitely changed for the better.

The soundtrack has also been well remastered just like CTR but this time there are a few tracks were i prefer the original version but it's just my preference.

However, i have a major issue with the CNK content and that is the lack of the CNK adventure mode. That's bullshit, we already have all 13 tracks and (almost) all the characters so it wouldn't be too hard to include the story mode, we only need a few hubworlds and cutscenes so i see no reason why we don't have that. And even though we already have the bosses, there's still one main character missing, Velo, no i'm not talking about Real Velo, i'm talking about Emperor Velo, the one we race against in the original game, it is very disappointing to see that we still can't play as the main villain of the game even though we can already play as all the other bosses. Even though we can do the extra challenges on those tracks, with the exception of the crystal arenas which gives you a trophy/achievement when completing them all and the Tropy/Oxide ghosts in those tracks are required, there's pretty much NO reward for the token and relic challenges in those tracks, that is just stupid. I hope in the future we get the CNK adventure mode along with Velo as DLC because so far that is one thing that is lacking. Another thing is that not having the CNK story is a bad thing for new players as they will very likely not know who the boss characters are as they aren't introduced anywhere else in the game.

Speaking of rewards, it's time to talk about the Wumpa Coins which are awarded by completing races and are used to buy items in this game's shop, the Pit Stop, the amount of coins you get depends of your position on the race, the track you choose and the online bonuses, while i'm fine with them i think they could have been executed better, i kinda wish you got bonus coins by completing extra challenges and hitting other racers kinda like how in CTTR the amount of hits gives you extra coins.

As for online, it is pretty fun and i have spent a lot of time playing online but at the same time i think it can be improved in some ways. First, online so far is kinda basic, i kinda wish we had more modes and even some online exclusive modes to play as to give some extra variety as right now we only have standard races. But my main issue with online is with the lobby, for some reason, when the host leaves the lobby, everyone is kicked out and that is bullshit, it's specially annoying when the host leaves right before the race starts or right after you join it and makes waiting for lobbies to play online kinda tedious. Not only that but there are some lag issues as well, sometimes i'm hit by items i can't even see when i'm in 1st place which is unfair. So overall, online is good but needs improvement as so far it is pretty basic and not the most functional thing.

And finally, it's time to talk about the Grand Prix, which are monthly events where you can complete challenges to get nitro points to unlock extra content that is exclusive to the event (but that can return in the Pit Stop in the future) kinda like the battle pass from..... FortShite Battle Royale, but unlike Fortnite, it's completely free and it's fun and the rewards are more interesting. In every Grand Prix there's a new track, this month's track being Twilight Tour which is based on the Egyptian and Arabian levels from Warped and it's a really cool track even though i'm kinda sick of seeing it everytime online. And not only that but we also get new characters, this month we have Tawna who was a highly requested character and all the four trophy girls from the original: Ami, Megumi, Liz and Isabella who rather than being small characters that appear in the podium, now are racers with their own unique personalities, with Megumi being my favorite one, specially because she's acceleration.

And that's not all, since we are getting a new GP every month, i'm excited to see more new tracks and characters, the next GP will have a new track called Prehistoric Playground which is a prehistoric track based on Fake Crash and it will have Baby T, another requested character from the trilogy as well as.... Baby Crash and Baby Coco? Seriously? Okay. And September's GP is going to be Spyro themed which is also something i hoped. I'm just pretty excited to see what we will have in the future, i can't wait for the new tracks and to see which new characters are going to be in.

SPOILERS

Well, according to dataminers, we are going to get many new characters like: N.Brio, Koala Kong and Komodo Moe who are the missing characters from the trilogy, Nina Cortex who just like Crunch is a very beloved post-ND character that has been playable before, Von Clutch and Pasadena O'Possum from CTTR as well as other characters that weren't playable in that game like Willie Wumpa Cheeks and Chick and Stew who are already in the game but not as playable characters, we are also going to get a mysterious new character called King Chicken who's probably related to the easter egg chickens seen in every track and most importantly, we are getting our god Rilla Roo, finally.

Overall, i really love this game, sure it still can be improved like online but i expect some issues to be patched in the future seeing that Beenox is reading fan feedback and we are getting monthly updates with each GP event, but even with all those issues, i think this is the absolute definitive way to play CTR, and so far, even though it isn't perfect, it is my favorite game in the series.

Pros:
+The gameplay from the original has been faithfully remade and improved
+Stunning graphics with a lot of attention to detail and hidden easter eggs
+A lot of character and kart customizations
+Well remastered soundtrack
+Overall it's a lot of fun

Cons:
-No CNK Adventure Mode
-Online needs improvements

Score: 9/10

But i still have hope those issues are fixed in the future, if they are then this game will get updated to a 10/10.