I was supposed to do a "quick replay" of this so I could use it as a refresher before I come here and gush about it. I then proceeded to 101% the story, smash each Cup Race on Hard, and get the Master Wheels over a weekend. Oops.

My various musou reviews may have clued you into this fact already, but let me make it plain: I love genres that most people don't pay much mind to. Kart racers are one of them.

And CTR is the best, in my eyes. Nitro-Fueled just made it better.

The core difference is in the boosting. In most other kart racers, you drift to build up a 3-stage boost and then release to go flying forward.
CTR hands you more direct control: You drift, yes, but you boost manually. While this might seem like a straight boon, much like open-book exams, you need this control. Boosting becomes a game of timing; hitting the boost button as your brakes stir to speed up, doing this three times consecutively for a bigger boost.
Somewhat ironically, due to its ability to drift in a straight line, Speed types - the 'hardest' engine setup - are the easiest to use.

'Boost' as a state of being is also something that, at higher level play, must be maintained at all times. On some maps this is easy, as there are multiple boost pads that will immediately put you in maximum boost state and refresh that invisible timer. On some maps, ironically the 'easiest' maps, it becomes a test of pure skill more than anything.

Similarly, boosting is deeply tied into the map layout. Most maps with shortcuts have at least one that requires you to be going as fast as possible unless you'll miss it, which means this is an entire game of "The Best MK8 maps".
Likewise there's a decent amount of movement tech that allows for some not-quite-intended skips (that Beenox willfully kept in). Once you learn that releasing the accelerator and holding brake in mid-air increases your turn speed, you enter a whole new level of skill.

...Which does lead me to this game's only mechanical downside, even though this downside benefits me specifically:

CTR is a very unforgiving game. Not so much against the AI, for they'll crumple even against an Acceleration engine, but kart racers are best enjoyed socially and this one... isn't. Having access to emulators means I can now play most of my dumped Switch library with friends, but CTR is never an option because the gap between myself and everyone else is country-sized.
Items in particular aren't very well balanced, and this game lacks any great equalizers like Mario Kart does. If you gain the lead in CTR, it's often hard to actually lose it unless you really fuck up or you're playing with players of a similar skill level.
Don't get me wrong, equalizing items do exist, but they either provide a negligible bonus that won't get a last place player to the front, or they have bad tracking that's easily avoided by taking a shortcut.

Okay, that's the CTR portion of this review done. Let's talk about Nitro-Fueled.

The base unupdated NF package includes the entirety of CTR, as well as every course from Nitro Kart and all of that game's characters. Plus, kart customization is a thing and there's a whole bunch of alternate karts/tires/colour schemes available, cool.

But as you may have heard, Activision live-serviced the shit out of this game via free monthly battle passes/seasons.

And... it was good. No, really. I know saying the words "live service", "battle pass" and "good" might make you wince, but I mean it when I say this was the only game to benefit from live servicing.

The seasons were easy to max out and mercifully kept the shop from overflowing. Casual play could see the season maxed out and all the goodies earned within about a week or two, and sweats like me could get it even quicker. Completing seasons gave you a ton of free stuff, as well as wumpa coins to buy out the store eventually. The actually appealing parts of each season were in the battle pass to boot, which was oddly out of character for Activision.
Add in all the free tracks, that AMAZING update that allowed people to select engine types independent of character, brand new time trials, a new mode specifically for addicts like me, and other small but meaningful updates, it was a pretty good deal.

The new tracks were fantastic by the way. A fantastic blend of fanservice, seasonal concepts, callbacks and good map design made them all memorable, and near the end I was arguably more excited for the free tracks than anything else.
And speaking as a Crash megafan, a lot of the scrimblo character picks were deeply surprising but not unwelcome. I can't poke fun at people who wanted utterly no-name picks for Mario Kart 8's booster pass when I was out here excited to get Komodo Moe, Pasadena O'Possum and Yaya Panda of all characters.

...

So.

You might've noticed a lot of past tense there, maybe not.

Either way, it's not coincidental. See, like all good things, CTRNF ended, and the state Beenox left the game in actually made me miss the live service shit.

With seasons now gone, all of their rewards have returned and are available permanent... ly in the shop. The Fortnite-esque shop with a rotation.

See, during the game's lifespan, the Fortnite shop was contentious, yes, but truthfully there wasn't much in it. Rotations were player-specific, meaning anything you bought would be knocked out of the pool. Wumpa coins came in at such a good rate that, as I alluded to up above, it was fantastically easy to buy out the shop and see it empty until the next season.

But nowadays the shop is stuffed with 8 seasons worth of stuff + the basegame items + some post-season reskins that most people have agreed were designed to be shop filler. What's worse is that despite the developers adding endlessly-resetting challenges that provide Wumpa coins, earning them isn't quite as easy anymore. Both because the seasons are over, and because playing online - which confers a massive bonus - is harder thanks to the deadened playerbase.

Now, ultimately all of this is kind of meaningless to the actual experience; no tangible content is hidden behind seasons or shops, and if you just want to play the best kart racer ever made you don't even need to glance at the store. The story, the tracks, the modes, they're all available from the getgo. This is, after all, why it's a 4.5 and not a 2.5.

Fortunately there is a Switch mod that unlocks all the shop stuff, but I know not everyone has either a hacked Switch or an emulator.

In the end, despite my woes about the current state of the game, it is still the king of kart racers to me. The game it's based on turns 25 this year and to this day it's never been dethroned.