crash team racing (CTR) is a game for the longest time i've wondered if undervalue. as far as kart racers go, MK64 was obviously the big trendsetter, but i do think CTR succeeds in a lot of ways MK64 falls short. the movement feels so much better and less stiff, and it feels like you're given a lot more room to do interesting things, whether it be short cuts or miniturbos in short turns. i think if we were just judging the kart racers of the 90s on how they feel, CTR would easily take the gold medal.
where i get lost with CTR is in the surrounding crust of it. adventure mode is fine for what it is, but relic races are agonizingly tedious if you're trying to go for platinums (what, you play crash bandicoot games and don't go for the platinum relics?). and boss races largely feel useless; anyone who has a basic competency with CTR's systems will be able to pass a boss character by the first lap and leave them in the dust until the end. lastly, i just don't really feel very passionate about a lot of CTR's tracks. they're extremely hit or miss for me, and while the good ones (hot air skyway, polar pass, oxide station) are usually ones i look forward to racing on, the bad ones (n. gin labs, tiger temple, coco park) are either dull or genuinely unfun to race on.
hell, even some of the tracks i like, such as papu's pyramid, sewer speedway, or polar pass, become nightmares to try and optimize for either relic races or time trials. the tracks in CTR have a love for cycle-based obstacles that make optimizing them have this annoying element of RNG that ruins the experience for me. i also have broader nitpicks with the game, like how the whole "you have to do a minimum of three time trials per stage if you want to complete everything" aspect is really tedious and annoying, especially when your first time trial beats either of the ghosts (which it often will). and i expect that this point will be contentious with fans, but i've never really given a shit about the soundtrack and found it to be fairly unmemorable, especially when you compare it to contemporaries like diddy kong racing. that's pretty bad for a crash bandicoot game, but it's also the kiss of death for a kart racer, regardless of when it comes out.
i'm dogging on this game a lot in this review because it feels like the positives are obvious to state. the game looks great for PS1 (and still holds up in most respects, imo), it controls well, the items are fairly balanced and it never feels like you lose a race because your opponent got lucky, etc. i have never outright disliked CTR, let's be clear on that. when i was younger, i was obsessed with it, if anything. i just also see that it has a lot of things that hold it back from being that special type of game to me. i appreciate what it did for the genre, though, because i suspect it was what really sold the idea of the kart racer as a viable spinoff for later series to try. and how can i dislike anything that might've helped lead us to the eventual apex of kart racers known as sonic & all stars racing transformed?
where i get lost with CTR is in the surrounding crust of it. adventure mode is fine for what it is, but relic races are agonizingly tedious if you're trying to go for platinums (what, you play crash bandicoot games and don't go for the platinum relics?). and boss races largely feel useless; anyone who has a basic competency with CTR's systems will be able to pass a boss character by the first lap and leave them in the dust until the end. lastly, i just don't really feel very passionate about a lot of CTR's tracks. they're extremely hit or miss for me, and while the good ones (hot air skyway, polar pass, oxide station) are usually ones i look forward to racing on, the bad ones (n. gin labs, tiger temple, coco park) are either dull or genuinely unfun to race on.
hell, even some of the tracks i like, such as papu's pyramid, sewer speedway, or polar pass, become nightmares to try and optimize for either relic races or time trials. the tracks in CTR have a love for cycle-based obstacles that make optimizing them have this annoying element of RNG that ruins the experience for me. i also have broader nitpicks with the game, like how the whole "you have to do a minimum of three time trials per stage if you want to complete everything" aspect is really tedious and annoying, especially when your first time trial beats either of the ghosts (which it often will). and i expect that this point will be contentious with fans, but i've never really given a shit about the soundtrack and found it to be fairly unmemorable, especially when you compare it to contemporaries like diddy kong racing. that's pretty bad for a crash bandicoot game, but it's also the kiss of death for a kart racer, regardless of when it comes out.
i'm dogging on this game a lot in this review because it feels like the positives are obvious to state. the game looks great for PS1 (and still holds up in most respects, imo), it controls well, the items are fairly balanced and it never feels like you lose a race because your opponent got lucky, etc. i have never outright disliked CTR, let's be clear on that. when i was younger, i was obsessed with it, if anything. i just also see that it has a lot of things that hold it back from being that special type of game to me. i appreciate what it did for the genre, though, because i suspect it was what really sold the idea of the kart racer as a viable spinoff for later series to try. and how can i dislike anything that might've helped lead us to the eventual apex of kart racers known as sonic & all stars racing transformed?