Crash Team Racing

"A Mario Kart clone, but still a lot of fun"

It's me, Last Avenger... again... anyhow this time I'm reviewing Crash Team Racing (also known as CTR.) It was a great game, and it deserves a 10, but it owes soooooo much to Mario Kart.
GRAPHICS: 9/10
All the racers look reasonably good, the environments are nice... I only wish they had more exotic levels, like inside a volcano or something, because some of the courses are gaudy (Coco Park especially.)
SOUND/MUSIC: 6/10
I don't really care about the music, and I can't think of any, it's not particularly memorable... the voices are okay, but kind of annoying. Coco's voice almost gave me a heart attack when I heard it. I don't care for this section really.
STORY: 7/10
Typical Crash story. Save the world from the latest threat. Boring.
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
Ahh, the meat of the game. You race against seven racers or a friend or three, and try to win first place. Alternately, you can do Battle Mode, but the arenas tend to be a little boring. The idea behind it is collect power-ups and blast the living crap out of your friends. Of course it's battle mode, but again the arena could have been more exciting and the environments better.
The Adventure mode is okay, but since you can't change racers, Crash and Cortex are really the only ones who can expect to make it through. The rest have some sort of crippling weakness, like Tiny in Hot Air Skyway. Still, it's lots of fun unlocking new characters (Komodo Joe is my personal favorite) and the new arenas, even if I don't use them much.
The bosses at first seem hard, but looking back on them, you see that they were quite easy (except for Komodo Joe.) They are faster than everyone regardless of natural speed, and can use a specific power-up at will. Of course, this means that they can't get any others, and you usually get missiles, so it's easy to blow them up. Nitros Oxide was too easy in my opinion. I beat him on my first try.
REPLAY VALUE: 2/10
This game takes forever to get through, what with all the modes and all, but after that there's really nothing left. That is, until your friends catch up...
RENT OR BUY
Buy, since you won't be able to get anywhere if you don't. If these games don't interest you, don't bother because there's really no other challenges besides racing. Of course that's why it's called Crash Team RACING.
OVERALL: 9/10
This is certainly a good game, but as mentioned before, it can't really be called original. Too bad, because it was so much fun.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/09/01, Updated 02/09/01