Crash Team Racing

"Putting the fun back into, er............. karting....... fun. Yep."

The karting genre isn’t one with a favourable history. Instigated by the fantastic SNES racer Super Mario Kart, karting games have since turned into a long line of dull clones featuring any cartoon character you might care to mention, from Mickey Mouse to Woody Woodpecker (Does anyone actually like Woody woodpecker?). Luckily Naughty Dog has shown with this game that, while there is little room left to innovate, there’s still a lot of fun to be had with the genre.

Story modes in these games have become all the rage ever since the sublime Diddy Kong Racing, and CTR gracefully jumps on the bandwagon. Dr. N Oxide (A new villain to the crash series) is threatening to turn the entire world into a car park, and you must stop him. So you must win trophies (i.e come first) in a bunch of races before racing Oxide himself. Winning will apparently send the evil little lizard into space for all eternity. Mmmmmm

While the story may be desperately tagged on, it is still nice to be able to drive around the hub worlds, doing a little bit of exploring. Unfortunately exploration is far more limited than what you’ll find in Diddy Kong Racing, but it’s a more exciting way to access the races than menu screens. The basic structure of the game is to win trophies for coming first, and then returning to races to collect gems and relics by re-winning the tracks and doing things like collecting the letters C, T and R which are hidden. This can get very difficult, but it adds good replay value and unlocking the extra tracks is good incentive to try it.

So, while having a lot to do is nice, obviously it’s the handling and track design that makes or breaks a game like this. And CTR excels in both areas. The eight characters on offer (From Crash to Coco to Cortex and his minions) all come under the archetypical handling categories such as ‘bad turning but good high speed’ and ‘low high speed but excellent acceleration’. You can’t really expect anything new from this area of the game, so it’s no disappointment. And the remarkably solid control makes up for the familiarity of it all.

While there is power sliding here, it’s not as encouraged as it was in Mario Kart. What is most intriguing about this game is its one new idea: after falling to the ground from a height (Like driving off a ramp for instance) you will be given quick speed boost. To be honest, I always found power sliding a bit tiresome in Mario Kart, and I think this is a much more interesting approach. It encourages you to be a little more adventurous in your driving, seeking out ways to lift yourself off the ground and, in a way, exploring the tracks on offer. Once you get the hang of this new dynamic, it becomes second nature to go zooming about the highest spots you can find, and it’s a lot of fun.

Playing around and taking risks with the tracks only serves to help you realise how dynamic and well designed they are. I’d go as far as to say that they’re even better than Mario Kart’s. Lots of fiendishly placed obstacles and environmental hazards will force you to get that little bit better at veering out of the way at just the right moments. And they are so imaginative and filled with lavish, creative set pieces that you don’t have time to breathe. Racing in this game never gets boring as every few feet you drive you are faced with a new danger. There are many blatant rip-offs of Mario Kart 64’s tracks (Tiny stadium especially is virtually identical to Wario stadium) but they don’t spoil the experience and the major change in pacing (It was a lot more relaxed in MK64) makes it hard to notice when you’re playing.

Pacing is probably the biggest thing that this game has going for it. The wild tracks don’t accommodate cheating AI as much as MK 64’s, but the CPU racers are still good enough to keep on your toes, and you won’t be free of them until the last second. Luckily the explosive weapons (also mostly stolen from MK64, but presented with more oomph) will help you deal with your opponents and are very satisfying to use. Simply bashing your opponent into a nearby rolling toxic waste can or pool of lava can also prove effective, but you must remember to dodge these obstacles yourself. The many tracks throw up a number of environmental hazards that require expert timing and sharp reactions to evade, in this way the game is nicely reminiscent of the crash platformers.

And seeing as it throws in so many features that will please hardcore karting fans, the game should be commended for being so easy to pickup. It takes almost no effort at all to win the first few races, even though the action remains frantic, and mastering the art of boosts after a high fall is a cinch. Because of this, CTR has become a multiplayer favourite (of mine, anyway) as it is something that’s a lot of fun but doesn’t need a lot of practice.

Graphically this is very Crash-like. Tracks are almost mechanical in their layout (none of them seem like actual racing tracks) but are so packed with odd set pieces and visual treats (Such as the Cortex stained glass windows in his castle, or the blimps flying around the sky high level) that you barely notice. And while many of the themes are pretty generic (castle, lava, ice etc) they are animated with such detail and energy that you can’t help but feeling you’re driving through a living, breathing world, rather than an actual road. The animation on characters in occasionally grainy and blocky, but the racers hold the same charm that they did in the platformers.

Music is just as silly and catchy as it was in the platformers as well. Blaring trumpets and weird drum beats make up most of the cartoony tunes, but there are also some nice cheesy atmospheric pieces as well, such as the ‘creepy’ music in cortex castle. Most impressive though is the solid, crunchy sound effects that give a real impression of actually being blown up or being frozen in icy water. The voice work is standard for a kart racer, there aren’t any particularly funny lines just the usual unmemorable taunts. The quality of the acting is as high as in the previous games though.

If you are a kart racing fan, you can’t really be without this. It is not new or innovative or even particularly clever. But it does do everything it needs to (and then a little bit more) to ensure that the whole experience is a lot of fun. It will last you way past your purchase due to the enjoyable one player adventure and the excellent multiplayer. It is a very easy game though, and not really deep in any way (The handling is especially simplistic). So if you are looking for a challenge or anything near, then this isn’t the way to go. Everyone else, however, should pick it up.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/15/02, Updated 08/15/02