Crash Nitro Kart

"Good but could be better."

There are many good and bad points of Crash Nitro Kart. If anyone knows about Crash Team Racing, the first of the Crash racing games, you will find out that it was a lot better but there are a lot of similarities. One thing that is the same is the control style. Like before you can hop using R/L and turbo using the opposite. You can get a starting boost and boosts when hopping off ramps. There are a lot of extras to CNK that CTR did not have such as lap time trial where you can race unlimited lap trying to get a good lap time.

There are many things to do that will keep you playing CNK. The first is Adventure Mode: in this mode is basically a story. Crash and friends/villans must race in a galaxy grand prix or their planet (Earth) will be destroyed. Your team must race in 12 races and win first out of 4 teams. In each trophy race there are 8 racers in 4 teams. So it is 2 per team. Another thing you have to complete is the CNK challenge in which you have to collect the three letters: C, N, and K and win in first. This is a challenge at first but after a couple of tries you get use to it. The last mission in each race is the relic race where you hit boxes during the race to stop the timer.

Another mode is 1 player mode. Here you can compete in races for fun, for better times, and to compete in grand prix cups. Time trial mode is the most fun as you can keep playing forever to try to succeed with new best times in each track. You will have to learn more new strategies to get better.

The third mode is multi-player mode where you can race your friends in many other sub-modes such as capture the flag, battle mode, or just plain race. Either way you will have fun!

Other things you can do is watch the funny scenes from adventure mode, view your best records, or change options.

And there are also some bad points...
Some sounds are pretty annoying like when sliding you here a screeching sound and when hopping you here a "boink!" sound. You can't go back from time trial mode pause menu to the select track menu. You have to go all the way back to the main menu. Also if you are an unexperienced racer racing seems to be very slow when you are not boosting. The programmers could have at least made you go faster.

Over all this game is great but lacks a few thing that could have made it better. If you were a big fan of CTR then you might want to check it out by at least renting this game. If not then stick with the Mario Kart.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/06