Crash Nitro Kart - ShindoDragon Review

Hey all, Dragon here.

In this written review, I am once again revisiting one of my childhood games but not one commonly remembered too fondly among its fanbase.

I'm going to be taking a look at Crash Nitro Kart, the PS2 version of the title in particular.

This game is effectively the sequel to Crash Team Racing on the PlayStation 1, which was Naughty Dog's last hurrah with the franchise before selling the IP to Universal. That said, this game is actually developed by Vicarious Visions, the team behind the Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled remasters on the Xbox One and PS4, and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, both of which were reviewed to critical acclaim. For ease of writing and reading, I'll be referring to Crash Team Racing as CTR or CTRNF for the remaster and CNK for Crash Nitro Kart from this point onwards.

I actually revisited this game, out of genuine interest to relive the game once more, from my childhood years to see if it is as good as I remember it. I had been on a CTRNF streak before and revisiting the Nitro Kart tracks genuinely made me wonder how the remaster had changed from the original.

CNK had a system that was later implemented by Mario Kart 8 nearly eleven years later: Anti-gravity racing. It was a mechanic that was somewhat interesting to use as some tracks nearly never used it but got used way later into the game, in areas like Teknee and Fenomena. CTRNF didn't have this and so some tracks had to be altered to fit the game's mechanics and there was something about the omission that made the CTRNF versions of CNK tracks feel a little, incomplete. 

A good example of this is Hyper Spaceway. CNK on the left and CTRNF is on the right.

The whole cross-jump in the stadium is missing from CTRNF and even an entire part of the track from the original. It didn't feel the same revisiting it in CTRNF and the same can be said for a lot of CNK tracks that were changed for CTRNF. The track "Out of Time" had a part where you actually got to drive on the clock face and that was awesome as a kid. Still interesting now, in my opinion at least.

The controls in CNK were passable but they definitely aren't as tight as CTR's or CTRNF's and the sense of speed is somewhat lacking. It looks slow because it is. The game isn't particularly hard normally but if you're somewhat good at racing games, you should have no issue with the AI. The team racing mechanic is small but you always feel a little bit towards rooting for your teammate. Your teammate also helps you out with the Team Frenzy mechanic, which gives you unlimited powerups for a limited time which needs recharging but you can probably get one or two uses per race. It's nice but it's somewhat useless.

The track design is classic Crash stuff. Lush jungles in Jungle Boogie to the ice-cold world of Barin. The advanced world of Teknee and the mechanical deserts of Fenomena. The worlds are diverse, the tracks are memorable, for me anyway. I really remember some of these tracks for such key features they had. The game has aged quite well graphically too, in my opinion. It's slightly buggy to do with collisions and other things but not badly enough for me to take away from it. Each track always has a trick to it that you can learn in the challenging relic races.

The relic races make a return from CTR and also give that -10 second bonus that you get for smashing every crate, which is critical when going for the platinum relics. That smash all crate mechanic form the platformers very much alive and well here and the CNK token races also appear. These can only be done once you beat the boss races for each world, which you can do by first finishing the races for the first time and unlocking the next world.

There are four teams to pick from in the game for the single-player races but only two for the Adventure Mode. Team Bandicoot, Team Cortex, Team Oxide, and Team N. Trance. Each team has a balanced, speed, and acceleration character. Only Team Bandicoot and Team Cortex are playable in the single-player adventure. The story follows the Galaxy Circuit, organized by Emperor Velo XXVII, as he looks to host entertainment for other aliens. The story isn't really explored much further than that but it gives a feeling of progression from location to location.

In summary, CNK is a slightly underperforming version of CTR. CTR set a very high bar at the time so CNK had a lot to live up to but ultimately doesn't live up to that expectation. It's not a bad game in its own regard but it's not a game that will ultimately be remembered as a must-play experience for the console. It was mixed when reviewers and fans got their hands on it but for me, there are more positives than negatives for this title, it's a fun experience to go through at least once but you probably won't see yourself revisiting this too much.

Fun Fact about the Game - A vast portion of the game's text concerns a mode that was never included in the final release, talking about a "Virtual Lobby", a seemingly long worked on mode within CNK that got cut near to release, probably due to time constraints. This marks a time where online gaming was slowly taking off on the PlayStation 2, not that many people did play the console online but it is interesting that online play was once considered for the title.

- ShindoDragon