So here’s a spin-off of the Crash Bandicoot franchise, and if I am not mistaken, the last Crash Bandicoot game that was actually developed by Naughty Dog (and don’t tell me Crash Bash, because Google it; you’re wrong). Crash Bandicoot 2 and Crash Bandicoot Warped are two of my favorite games of all time, and although I remember renting Crash Team Racing as a kid, I did not actually play it again until a friend forced me to buy it on PSN recently. So I’ve given it another go, and am going to use the gimmicky format I’ve been using to tell you how I felt about playing it a few times after many years of forgetting about it.
VISUALS/SOUNDTRACK: 2/2
Now when I say “2/2” I mean that there really isn’t much flaw, but there really is not much to wow you either. The only thing that stands out on the visuals and soundtrack of this game is that they both make you feel like you are really racing through the world of Crash. Fans of the series will appreciate it a lot more than newcomers, I’m sure. The soundtrack isn’t just ripped melodies from past games either (like a lot of Mario games like to do for instance), but it just captures the overall essence of the old games by using similar MIDI instruments. The visuals are passable and for a 64-bit game released in 1999, they look “good”. They’re clear enough, they’re immersive enough, but again, nothing extravagant.
Am I going to knock off points for its video and sound not being absolutely groundbreaking? No. But there’s not much else to talk about that I haven’t already noted, so on to gameplay.
GAMEPLAY: 1/2
Cover your nostalgia’s ears:
One: I HATE when people say a game is fantastic because it was good when they were kids. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and not everyone dissects games as much as I do, but when people argue with me that a game was good because they played it when they were 8… ughhhh… it just grates. It infuriates me to the point of bleeding hands, from clenching fists for hours in a dark corner by myself with no one else to watch me but my laptop!
Two: This game has some clunky and borderline boring stage design. Which is why point one (above) was important there. Play it again.
If you have not played this Mario Kart knock-off, let me explain to you.
First off I should mention it is a Mario Kart knock-off. There is just no way around it. There’s a stage called Cortex Castle… and… I mean… it’s Bowser’s Castle. Look it up.
Some of the stage designs are claustrophobic and have far too many places to fall or too narrow of a stretch of road for a decent power slide (of which you get boosts from). This is not a problem when playing as half the characters, but others have issues, which brings me to another pet peeve of this game. I apparently just love to make people loathe my reviews.
From a cast spanning three revolutionary games, there are a total of eight characters in the beginning. This is not the problem. The problem is that the stats on each character are broken. There are basically only 4 characters. Crash and Cortex are the same, Coco and N. Gin are the same, Pura and Polar are the same, and Dingodile and Tiny are the same. This was supposed to go with the good and evil feel of the game, since both good and evil in the story mode are racing towards the same goal (hahahahahahahahahahahahaha). But Tiny and Dingo are both evil and Pura and Polar are both good soooo… I call laziness.
What really grinds me about this is that there are only two characters that aren’t finicky. Crash and Cortex’s stats are balanced (and you won’t know anything about anyone’s stats unless you look at them when you start a new single player game by the way). There are three stats (acceleration, speed, turn), and each duo of clones (the partnerships I listed in the previous paragraph) excels in one of those stats. This isn’t a bad premise, until you find out that all of their other stats were pretty much thrown out the window, making the vast majority of the characters much harder to use in a situation where you will be using that character for more than one event (which is most of the time) (I like to use parenthesis on this review).
The game is fun, and there’s something that draws you to keep going through the race, but I can’t help but feel that the game could have been more, especially with such an imaginative team at the wheel… these puns…
Speaking of imaginative, I will have to say that they implemented Wumpa in a very creative way, or at least it was a very nice theory. You start the race with zero Wumpa Fruit, and have the capacity for ten. If you collect ten during the race, you accelerate faster and all items you collect become more potent upon use. The items are fine the way they are and add a very fun mechanic to the game, but the acceleration basically means that if you are good at the game, don’t ever fall off the edge, and get ten Wumpa early in the race you are almost guaranteed a win.
There are a lot of other things I don’t like about this game, but I don’t want to over-emphasize on those, I would rather move on to the next section.
REPLAY VALUE: 1.5/2
Now I know I just spat on this game quite a bit, but that is not at all to say that I don’t like the game, I’m just not its biggest fan per se. I never threw the controller out of pure disgust or anything, and that’s because this game does give you incentive to keep holding in the X button for hours. The story mode, once completed, ends in a cutscene that implores you to get the relics and gems and such from all of the stages. Even the co-op Cup mode gives you incentive by letting you unlock different difficulties (you can only start this mode on Easy and unlock other cup difficulties after one of the human players comes in first at the end of all four cups) (and you just unlocked more parenthesis).
These incentives may seem a bit hollow, and they are, that’s true. There just seems to be something about them though that makes it worthwhile. I have found that the best way to progress through the game, even in the single player mode, is with a friend. I guess the times shared by this game are probably better than the game itself, granted you aren’t playing with a grade-A douche bag.
STORYLINE: 1.5/2
I don’t know if this rating is fair or not. I’m not taking off for the story itself but the way it was portrayed. So basically a new character named Nitrous Oxide came in from space and wants to take over the world for his intergalactic uses. The heroes of course will always want to protect Earth and the villains want the Earth for themselves. This is fine, but when starting the campaign, whatever mask accompanies your character talks your ear off, making one care less and less about the fate of a world where this monotony prevails (granted you can press a button to make him go away, his approach still makes the game lose its immersion from the get-go). This problem slowly fades as you progress, and practically ends when you get to about world 2 or so. When you finally beat the game, the “final” cutscene feels so shallow and nearly void of emotion that it gave me nearly no incentive to get the other secrets, although there are supposedly more characters (of which I just found out recently), but there’s nothing in the game up to that point that lets you know that. I suppose to sum up how I feel about the plot of this game, it’s all about delivery. A little guy and a wizard find a ring, the guy gets old and gives one of his only blood-relatives the ring, and the new little guy goes on a crazy long journey to cast a ring into a volcano of which he does and then comes back home. I just made The Lord of the Rings sound horrible. Obviously it isn’t horrible, but it’s mostly about portrayal. Granted this game isn’t a 3 hour new line cinema movie, or one of the world’s most prestigious novel series, it still could have used a little more spice to draw you into the storyline as opposed to just relying on nostalgia of past games in the series and cute, cartoony racing as a means to keep playing.
ORIGINALITY/CREATIVITY: ½
I mean this is a blatant Mario Kart wannabe. Play it for yourself, or now in our modern age, YouTube that sheezy! It’s painfully obvious. The story mode’s overworld also feels like an uncomfortable version of Diddy Kong Racing’s overworld to me. Even if you can look past the dire want to be as successful as other cartoony cart racers of the time, it just flaunts worlds that sort of resemble some of your favorite moments from the original trilogy in hopes to hook you, and it just doesn’t give you the same feeling as your heart sinking as you were jumping over cyborg lizards or going on a mad dash on the back of a polar bear cub through the snow.
OVERALL SCORE: 7/10
You can love the original Crash Bandicoot games and not like this game. It is very possible for you to look back on a game you loved as a child and realize now that maybe there are different things about it you like and don’t like in comparison to other games. It’s perfectly okay.
For those of you who have not actually played this game, I have two suggestions. If you are looking for a good Crash Bandicoot game, look for 2 or Warped, you shan’t be disappointed. If you are looking for a fun kart game to play with your friends, give this one a shot, it’s only $6 on PSN, but I can name five games off of the top of my head that may serve a better purpose. Am I going to name those? No. I’ve done enough damage here.
Thank you all for reading my review, I know you’re out there from my past reviews and I thank you for looking in to this one and I hope it did something…. Positive for you… yes… good day.