Generally, video game mods are the epitome of passion projects and labors of love. CTGP Revolution is the antithesis to that.
On paper, CTGP should've been a masterstroke. And in some ways, it is. Adding over 200 new fan-made tracks and reviving the online server has completely revitalized Mario Kart Wii and kept its legacy alive. And for what it's worth, I've sunk hundreds of very enjoyable hours into it as a result. However, despite its innovative and impressive concept, CTGP is shockingly less than the sum of its parts, and is an overhanging cloud of negativity in the MKWii modding community. Years of playing CTGP have caused its cracks to show, making it impossible for me to appreciate this mod to the extent that I once did. Here I'll express just a handful of my many problems with CTGP. This will be a longer review than the others I've made because this is a topic that I feel passionate about.
I'll start with a smaller problem before getting to my two big issues. While many of the new features such as 200cc are appreciated, the Countdown mode is incredibly underbaked, and does not serve as a worthwhile replacement for battle mode, which should've never been replaced in the first place. The fact that this mode affects your VR instead of your BR is just baffling. All the more reason to not play it.
Now for my biggest complaints. For starters, the selection of custom tracks is abysmal. While most of the custom tracks here are great and extremely creative (In particular, Sniki's absolutely astonishing New Moon Manor is better than any track Nintendo has created for a Mario Kart game), CTGP is also littered with unpolished, decade-old custom tracks, that bring down the overall quality of the pack, alienating newcomers and frustrating everyone else. It's utterly hilarious that they have the audacity to frequently remove tracks from the pack to make room for new ones, but keep these broken messes in on the basis of how frequently they're picked online (a statistic the CTGP team perplexingly calls "popularity"), even though that metric has absolutely nothing to do with quality. This problem is exacerbated further by the fact that many of the worst offenders, particularly Mushroom Peaks, were made by the creator of CTGP himself, MrBean35000vr, who not only refuses to remove his tracks, but refuses to even update them to acceptable standards. It makes the situation feel all the more tone deaf, as if this entire thing is nothing more than a vanity project. With these issues with the track selection, among other things, the CTGP team has made it abundantly clear that they only care about catering towards the desires of the OG members of the community who have been around since the beginning (a group that I would describe as nostalgia-blind, who will defend crappy design just because they're used to it) and absolutely no one else. A project like CTGP needs to accommodate various different types of players for it to work, and it fails massively in that regard.
Addendum to above paragraph: While CTGP has been making strides in the last couple of years to clean up its custom track lineup and remove outdated tracks, as long as it continues using this nonsensical """popularity""" system to determine removals instead of... y'know... just using an opinion poll, it will never reach its full potential. With the current system, the only tracks that get removed are the ones that the least people care about, undoubtedly in an attempt to upset the least amount of people possible. But when so many people are upset by the tracks that are actually in the pack to the point of being turned away entirely, what's the point in trying to cater to a vocal minority who really likes to pick these crappy tracks online just to farm VR? But even if a better system was implemented, it still wouldn't fix the CTGP team's nostalgia-pandering and self-pleasing ideology. Some tracks currently in CTGP, like 3DS Rainbow Road and Haunted Gardens, were recently even "updated" to be reverted back to how they were as custom tracks a decade ago, for no reason other than nostalgia. How progressive.
And the worst problem, that completely tanks the integrity of CTGP, is the lack of respect paid towards the creators of the 200+ custom tracks CTGP prides itself for. Actually, "lack of respect" is putting it lightly. I mean straight up not valuing their efforts whatsoever. Track creators aren't credited for their work. There are literally no credits in CTGP. This is absolutely mind boggling. It is madly disrespectful to both the community as a whole and the modders who generously pitched in their talents to make CTGP possible in the first place, undervaluing their hard work as if it doesn't matter. Hell, I occasionally see people who literally believe that MrBean created every single track in CTGP. It's just... depressing. Additionally, from what I've learned, there is a system in place when it comes to submitting a track to CTGP, a process that can be best described as long and arduous. The CTGP team demands that creators polish their tracks to near-perfection to have any chance of it being added to the pack at all (which is rich coming from the people who continue to make excuses to justify keeping Mushroom Peaks in the pack), without any guarantee of the track actually being added. I've seen instances where creators continuously update their tracks, bringing it through the entire lengthy testing process, just for it to be rejected at the last minute. Considering all of that, in addition to the lack of any form of credits, you may ask what's even the point? Why do creators even try to get their tracks into CTGP at all when it's a completely thankless job, especially in relation to how much work it requires? Simply put, at this point in time, being added to CTGP is the only way for specific custom tracks to gain attention from a wider audience. It is also the only way to gain a level of prestige that CTGP has built up for itself and its tracks. As such, tracks that aren't in the pack will most likely never be noticed. Because of this, several track creators feel stressed or pressured to get their tracks into the pack, regardless of the fact that they won't get anything for their work. So it's kind of an endless cycle. However, a few track creators have broken this cycle by leaving the community entirely, because they don't enjoy making custom tracks anymore. Great job, CTGP!
While CTGP was an incredible feat when it came out, it is now vastly outdated, mostly because the CTGP team (aka MrBean and his yes-men) are wildly out of touch with their audience, devaluing both players and modders. It has lost sight of its original purpose as a definitive update to Mario Kart Wii and a celebration of the game's modding scene as a result of its sheer self-indulgence and a desire to please its own echo chamber. Despite this, it remains the center of the custom track community, and it continues to be a source of stress and elitism in said community. I can only hope that a new custom track pack with a more respectful and positive outlook towards the community and a clear passion for modding (such as Mario Kart Midnight) eclipses this in popularity in the future... as many years as that may take.
On paper, CTGP should've been a masterstroke. And in some ways, it is. Adding over 200 new fan-made tracks and reviving the online server has completely revitalized Mario Kart Wii and kept its legacy alive. And for what it's worth, I've sunk hundreds of very enjoyable hours into it as a result. However, despite its innovative and impressive concept, CTGP is shockingly less than the sum of its parts, and is an overhanging cloud of negativity in the MKWii modding community. Years of playing CTGP have caused its cracks to show, making it impossible for me to appreciate this mod to the extent that I once did. Here I'll express just a handful of my many problems with CTGP. This will be a longer review than the others I've made because this is a topic that I feel passionate about.
I'll start with a smaller problem before getting to my two big issues. While many of the new features such as 200cc are appreciated, the Countdown mode is incredibly underbaked, and does not serve as a worthwhile replacement for battle mode, which should've never been replaced in the first place. The fact that this mode affects your VR instead of your BR is just baffling. All the more reason to not play it.
Now for my biggest complaints. For starters, the selection of custom tracks is abysmal. While most of the custom tracks here are great and extremely creative (In particular, Sniki's absolutely astonishing New Moon Manor is better than any track Nintendo has created for a Mario Kart game), CTGP is also littered with unpolished, decade-old custom tracks, that bring down the overall quality of the pack, alienating newcomers and frustrating everyone else. It's utterly hilarious that they have the audacity to frequently remove tracks from the pack to make room for new ones, but keep these broken messes in on the basis of how frequently they're picked online (a statistic the CTGP team perplexingly calls "popularity"), even though that metric has absolutely nothing to do with quality. This problem is exacerbated further by the fact that many of the worst offenders, particularly Mushroom Peaks, were made by the creator of CTGP himself, MrBean35000vr, who not only refuses to remove his tracks, but refuses to even update them to acceptable standards. It makes the situation feel all the more tone deaf, as if this entire thing is nothing more than a vanity project. With these issues with the track selection, among other things, the CTGP team has made it abundantly clear that they only care about catering towards the desires of the OG members of the community who have been around since the beginning (a group that I would describe as nostalgia-blind, who will defend crappy design just because they're used to it) and absolutely no one else. A project like CTGP needs to accommodate various different types of players for it to work, and it fails massively in that regard.
Addendum to above paragraph: While CTGP has been making strides in the last couple of years to clean up its custom track lineup and remove outdated tracks, as long as it continues using this nonsensical """popularity""" system to determine removals instead of... y'know... just using an opinion poll, it will never reach its full potential. With the current system, the only tracks that get removed are the ones that the least people care about, undoubtedly in an attempt to upset the least amount of people possible. But when so many people are upset by the tracks that are actually in the pack to the point of being turned away entirely, what's the point in trying to cater to a vocal minority who really likes to pick these crappy tracks online just to farm VR? But even if a better system was implemented, it still wouldn't fix the CTGP team's nostalgia-pandering and self-pleasing ideology. Some tracks currently in CTGP, like 3DS Rainbow Road and Haunted Gardens, were recently even "updated" to be reverted back to how they were as custom tracks a decade ago, for no reason other than nostalgia. How progressive.
And the worst problem, that completely tanks the integrity of CTGP, is the lack of respect paid towards the creators of the 200+ custom tracks CTGP prides itself for. Actually, "lack of respect" is putting it lightly. I mean straight up not valuing their efforts whatsoever. Track creators aren't credited for their work. There are literally no credits in CTGP. This is absolutely mind boggling. It is madly disrespectful to both the community as a whole and the modders who generously pitched in their talents to make CTGP possible in the first place, undervaluing their hard work as if it doesn't matter. Hell, I occasionally see people who literally believe that MrBean created every single track in CTGP. It's just... depressing. Additionally, from what I've learned, there is a system in place when it comes to submitting a track to CTGP, a process that can be best described as long and arduous. The CTGP team demands that creators polish their tracks to near-perfection to have any chance of it being added to the pack at all (which is rich coming from the people who continue to make excuses to justify keeping Mushroom Peaks in the pack), without any guarantee of the track actually being added. I've seen instances where creators continuously update their tracks, bringing it through the entire lengthy testing process, just for it to be rejected at the last minute. Considering all of that, in addition to the lack of any form of credits, you may ask what's even the point? Why do creators even try to get their tracks into CTGP at all when it's a completely thankless job, especially in relation to how much work it requires? Simply put, at this point in time, being added to CTGP is the only way for specific custom tracks to gain attention from a wider audience. It is also the only way to gain a level of prestige that CTGP has built up for itself and its tracks. As such, tracks that aren't in the pack will most likely never be noticed. Because of this, several track creators feel stressed or pressured to get their tracks into the pack, regardless of the fact that they won't get anything for their work. So it's kind of an endless cycle. However, a few track creators have broken this cycle by leaving the community entirely, because they don't enjoy making custom tracks anymore. Great job, CTGP!
While CTGP was an incredible feat when it came out, it is now vastly outdated, mostly because the CTGP team (aka MrBean and his yes-men) are wildly out of touch with their audience, devaluing both players and modders. It has lost sight of its original purpose as a definitive update to Mario Kart Wii and a celebration of the game's modding scene as a result of its sheer self-indulgence and a desire to please its own echo chamber. Despite this, it remains the center of the custom track community, and it continues to be a source of stress and elitism in said community. I can only hope that a new custom track pack with a more respectful and positive outlook towards the community and a clear passion for modding (such as Mario Kart Midnight) eclipses this in popularity in the future... as many years as that may take.