+- Tendo City (https://www.tendocity.net)
+-- Forum: Tendo City: Residential District (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: The Somewhat-Monthly Review (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=46)
+---- Forum: Sony (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+----- Forum: Playstation 4 Reviews (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=41)
+----- Thread: Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled (/showthread.php?tid=7345)
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled - Dark Jaguar - 20th October 2021
In the spirit of a new era of true remakes instead of remasters, we get one of the best cart racers of the 32 bit era. I adore that true remakes have finally become relevant again. We had so many years of "HD remasters" just shoving out the same old game graphics and all, just with minor patching to operate at a higher rendering resolution and frame rate. Sometimes, if we were lucky, they'd improve the controls and the music. Then we have this. The Crash trilogy, the Spyro trilogy, this, and the Medi-evil remake are all amazing in their own rights (though I'll get into my issues with those trilogies another time), but here we're discussing a racing game.
I recently reviewed the original Playstation game, and so for this review I won't rehash what's already been said about that game. Suffice it to say it's a game that was worthy of a remake, and even the original still holds up. (Now give us Diddy Kong Racing remade on Switch!) Here I'll be covering the changes and how well they were done. The game is available on PS4, XBox One, Switch, and PC, but for this review I'll be covering the PS4 version. I'm only aware of one thing this version has the others don't.
Visuals: This is no mere resolution bump nor is it limited to higher resolution textures here and there. The ENTIRE game was remade from the ground up and it looks like a Playstation 4 game. They managed to avoid the mistakes of other remakes like Halo in that while the tracks are far more detailed, they keep those details off the track itself. Everything you need to pick out is still easy to distinguish from things that don't. Characters and their cars always stand apart from the tracks, as well as collectible items, traps, boost arrows and the like. The "boost meter" now rests beside the car you're driving instead of in the corner which makes it easier to keep an eye on while you're focusing on the race. Artistically, the added details to each level don't so much reimagine as recontextualize a number of levels. One of the tracks is a hovering road darting between airships, for example. Now, the airships are all part of a casino in the sky. That added bit of flavor is perfect considering who the level is meant to be for (a savvy weasel criminal mastermind). Every track received these overhauls, though in terms of gameplay none of the changes affect what matters. This is a positive simply due to how well designed the tracks were to begin with. Cut scenes have all been remastered as well and received expanded bits of slapstick and detail. I'm not exactly a fan of the added gags myself, but for the right age group I'm sure they'll get a laugh. All the cars have one little bit of detail removed. In the original, certain kinds of cars had totally unique controls, like a mind reading device or duel levers instead of a steering wheel. This time, they all have wheels. This may have been done to speed up the process of defining character animations since otherwise every single character would need a set of unique animations for each one of the control methods. That's a cute detail lost in translation, but in the end a worthwhile sacrifice for what we get in return, the ability to mix and match carts and racers!
The new version's frame rate is a locked 30FPS, matching the original but even more consistent. Unfortunately, they didn't go for 60FPS on a decades old game, and that programmatic lock also means that even if you play the game on newer hardware like the PS5, it is still locked at 30FPS. I suppose the only way to get improved performance is a PC version mod at this point. As before though, a consistent and decent frame rate are more than enough to keep the game running and feeling smooth.
Sound: All the game's voice acting, sound effects, and music have been completely redone. Music in particular is fully orchestrated lovingly accurate to the original (as opposed to the Secret of Mana remake which entirely reimagined every track to the point they often don't even have the same tone as the original). The voice acting manages to nail every character very well. The penguin with two developer test samples even got a strange homage to that glitch, in that now the voice actor cutely uses the proper voice to say "Penguin Yay 1!" in such a way that it comes off like an adorable claim that the penguin is number one. A few little changes were made as well. The alien no longer threatens to make everyone his "slaves" so much as his "minions". The end result is pretty much the same of course, everyone is enslaved working on a concrete earth, but perhaps referring so directly to slavery wasn't the most inclusive way to word things in the original. The change is fine. The sounds still resemble what they originally did, but have all been retuned in much higher quality.
Controls: They're as tight as they were in the original, with one exception. The original allowed you to use the right stick to accelerate and reverse instead of buttons, but the new one does not. This doesn't really affect the way I play, since I preferred using buttons for that anyway, but it's notable. Other than this, they've kept the handling and timing for boosts identical to the original which means performance on the tracks is also identical, with the exception of the brand new tracks which I'll get into later. All in all, this is the one area of complaint I had with the changes made to the Spyro and Crash trilogy collections, and it's good to see this team didn't make the same mistake here.
Gameplay: Every bit of the challenge found in the originals is still present and still as tough as before. Even the cute penguin is still unlocked with a password exclusively, which is a nice touch. That leaves the new additions to cover. Namely, they've really focused in on the "team" aspect of Crash Team Racing this time around. They've made full "teams" of characters, including the former "award ceremony girls" who are now full fledged racers all on their own team. New multiplayer modes allow you to race as a team rather than a pure focus on getting first just for yourself. This changes things up online especially and can really make it more engaging to group up with friends.
That's not all. They've made the alien boss playable as well, if nerfed. The penguin has also received quite a nerf but both these changes make sense just to keep those character competitive and not "easy mode". They even added numerous other characters and tracks, though unlike the ones already built into the game, these ones are unlocked in a... more modern way. I'll note that the PS4 exclusively has a "retro style" PS1 era track and Crash model to use.
Now, about one particular chunk of new tracks. There were two sequels to Crash Team Racing, neither made by Naughty Dog, and neither as good as the original. However, of the two Crash Nitro Kart came the closest. It's controls and poor inconsistent framerate were the biggest detriment, but it had solid track designs and another full story mode like CTR and Diddy Kong Racing. It was even the first game to implement "hover sections", parts of the track where your cart converts to a hover mode including "floaty" handling. You thought Mario Kart 8 was the first to do this? Think again. In recognition of this, we get the "Nitro-Fueled" part of the title finally explained. They put in every single track from Crash Nitro Kart, just as lovingly recreated but sadly missing their hover mechanics. They also included all the playable characters from that game. All that's missing is a recreation of that game's story mode and challenges, so you really only get to enjoy the new tracks in multiplayer. Now there's the elephant in the room. Like platformers, racing games are particularly sensitive to changes in their control mechanics. These tracks were designed with different mechanics in mind, so how do they play? Good news, these tracks received tiny tweaks here and there in their layout which add up to making them "feel" just right in the original game's mechanics. This is not a Crash/Spyro trilogy situation, I'm happy to say. They did just what needed to be done to make the tracks "work", and as a result they feel far better to play than even the original game. As I mentioned, the controls and mechanics of CTR were superior to what we got in Nitro Kart, so the level designs feel more "at home" here than they did in that game. I imagine if they did bring over the entire story mode from that game, they'd also have to relocate time crates, crystals, and other such things by a smidge here and there to account for mechanics differences, but such things would be appreciated.
Alright, it's about time I covered the biggest problem with this game. While all the original content is lovingly recreated and unlocked in that same classic way of accomplishing specific game challenges, that only serves to highlight the terrible "modern" way all the brand new characters and tracks are unlocked. First off, they have time limited events. I detest these with a passion. Don't get me wrong, I adore adding new cups and challenges over time, what I object to is limiting their availability to one month and then removing them forever. There's no reason at all they can't just leave every new cup available permanently and just add more to select from over time. This is meant as a trick- a method of selling us something after it's "no longer available" for "free". Then there's the other half. Doing these events doesn't unlock the new tracks and costumes from things like winning a cup, completing a time trial, or stuff like that. No, you have to grind up digital currency. The grind is... tediously slow. Once you manage to get enough together, THEN you can buy tracks and characters and carts and skins and the like. Compared to beating a challenge once to unlock something, well there is no comparison. One is rewarding, fun, and potentially quick; the other is tedious, monotonous, unsatisfying, and slow. This is the second part of their scam.
You see, when the game first came out, grinding coins up by racing was the ONLY way to get them. It was annoying and tedious, but it wasn't microtransactions, and thus all the reviews happily announced the game didn't have them. The rating they got from the ESRB also didn't need to state that. This was a trick, and I felt it coming. The mechanics felt exactly like a microtransaction system without the purchasing part. They fixed that the moment they added new DLC, the coins can now be BOUGHT! It's a convenient solution to the problem they themselves created in the first place. If you are paying real money in order to AVOID playing the game you bought, the game is badly designed. No one likes grinding stuff, and they know it. That's why they made it take such a long time instead of being possible to get all the coins you needed in a single pass of story mode or a few runs of the cups. People are only going to buy coins if they feel it's their only option. So, exchange real money for virtual money, then exchange the virtual money for time-limited items "before they're locked away again in the Disney Vault". Enough time has passed that "season one" of the game's events is now over. They've done us a favor everyone, they "unlocked" all the previous time limited rewards permanently! Sort of... you still have to "purchase" them. You still have to deal with their microtransaction ecosystem.
Oh, and there were exclusive preorder bonuses blah blah blah you can also purchase the preorder exclusive stuff for a tiny fee, that fun on-disc-DLC. It's bad, but hey it doesn't feel as bad as the other thing so it barely registers to me any more. The mosquito bite isn't so bad after the bee sting I guess.
I spent a LONG time discussing the microtransaction issue, and yes it ONLY affects the new content, not the old, but it's such a bad black eye on an otherwise excellent remake that it needs addressing. It's the worst part of the remake by far, and it's especially egregious because the original method of unlocking content still exists for the older stuff. Any player can SEE for themselves in real time the stark difference in how things used to be unlocked in games vs how they are now, and note just how bad we now have it compared to then. My advice? Buy the game on PC, download the latest patch, then MOD the dang thing to unlock all that content without going through their stupid coin grind. Screw them. Or, if you don't want to reward anyone who even dares adding this modern nonsense to classic games, just don't buy it at all. That's an option too.
Multiplayer: This game adds a fully functional online mode complete with team racing. It's amazing and fun and drastically adds to it's replayability especially today in covid times. They even regularly add new cups to race in (though they also regularly take them away, as noted above this is a terrible modern habit). They kept in four way split screen, so when the servers one day go down, the game's multiplayer will still be fully functional at least in one form. All in all, online mode is a flat improvement over the original made for a console that never had any sort of modem addon. (A shame Sony missed out on that chance, considering both the SNES and Genesis had online play a generation before thanks to XBand).
Overall, normally I'd highly recommend such a polished faithful and "Nitro Fueled" improvement over the original. In almost every way, this game is now the definitive version of the experience and would flat out replace the original...
Except...
There's the microtransactions. They mar the experience so deeply it's enough to make me reconsider my recommendation. At the very least, I'd say it warrants consideration, and if you are the sort with an addictive personality who may be vulnerable to the predatory behavior microtransactions feed on, I'd stay far away. The game isn't even being honest and up front that it has them in the first place, slyly holding them back until after the game's been rated and reviewed before springing them on the world, so let this review be your warning. Is it as bad as loot boxes? No, but it's still really bad.