Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

 
As a remake of Crash Bandicoot's first racing game that also revisited his other kart-themed outings, this was definitely a game I was interested in trying. I mean, It's a rare game that can stand up to the juggernaut Mario Kart series. Plus, the jump from PlayStation polygons to modern graphics really looks superb. Unfortunately, my entire experience with the game was plagued with the thick, muggy air of free-to-play. This normally wouldn't be a problem for me - I will gladly grind more to get stuff the hard way if I didn't pay for the game on the first place. However, this game is not free.

Setting that aside for now, my general experience with the game was a series of ups and downs. The controls took some getting used to after years of Mario Kart, and my instincts, especially when it comes to drifting, needed a lot of retraining. Though once I got the hang of it, if felt pretty intuitive! The difficulty was also a shock. As this game lacks things like "rubber-band" AI and an equivalent to the bullet bill, if you're ahead, you'll likely stay there, and if you're behind, you'll also likely stay there. I found that the first half-lap of a race was usually a good predictor of how the rest of it would go, which took away a lot of the thrill of trying to make a comeback. Luckily, there's an easy mode that let little-ol-me tackle the game's story, which is definitely a worthy draw to the title. Besides the original Crash Team Racing, I couldn't name another kart-racing game with an actual story mode, making this a bit more special.

Unfortunately, that story mode did end up highlighting this game's biggest problem. In a Mario Kart game, the unlock criteria for new racers and vehicles is exclusively in-game achievement. In Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, you can unlock a few of the characters, costumes, karts, and stickers that way, but most have to be purchased from the in-game store. That on its own just feels lazy, but it gets worse. The amount of in-game currency earned from a race tends to be rather abysmal, typically netting me around five percent of the cost of a single character. With hundreds of individual items to purchase, one may think it would take way too long to get enough to buy everything, and one would be right. To help remedy this, the developers have a range of options for players to buy the in-game currency with their real-life currency. And with that, the game officially feels like a free-to-play, dragging my opinion of it down the proverbial drain.

I wanted to like this game. Honestly, I expected to like this game. I love Crash Bandicoot and I love kart racing. I could even get over my issues with the controls and difficulty because that was just me not being good at the game. However, it was impossible for me to overlook the lazy and manipulative in-game store. If this game was free, it wouldn't feel out of place in the slightest, but that isn't the case. For those looking for a nostalgic remake of a PlayStation classic, they'll find it here. They'll just have to overlook some slight adulteration.
The game is available for Switch here (as of 1/26/21): https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/crash-team-racing-nitro-fueled-switch/
The game is available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S here (as of 1/26/21): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/crash-team-racing-nitro-fueled/BQRB60PW2SDL
The game is available for PS4 and PS5 here (as of 1/26/21): https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0002-CUSA13795_00-CRASHTEAMRACING1

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