Crash Team Racing

Original Release Date: September 30th, 1999

Release Date on PSN: AUg 10th, 2010

Price: 5.99

Story

This is a Kart Racer, but oddly enough there’s a little bit of a story mode in here, it’s nothing to write home about, but it’s better than just going through tournaments over and over. You can pick from a number of racers to complete this adventure, but your ultimate goal is to save the world from an Alien threat by… beating them at Kart Racing… Ok so it doesn’t make any sense, but it was actually quite enjoyable. There is an overworld to drive between tracks, and even bosses to compete against after you win trophies in enough races. Most of the time the regular tracks are the most fun though.

After you defeat all the bosses with your excellent Kart Racing skills you can go around and pick up Time medallions to get another shot at the big bad guy to prove “once and for all that you’re the fastest”. It sounds like just busy work to pad out the game’s length, but the collection stages are actually pretty fun, hard enough that you can’t beat them the first time, and they get harder and harder as you go along, testing your accuracy by putting explosive boxes in close proximity to the collectables, all in unique levels not just re-tooled tracks.  Pleasently surprised with this one.

Gameplay

As you can guess, if you’ve played another popular Karting game (which will go unnamed), you know what this game plays like. With a few little additions. The drifting that gives you your boost you have to pay closer attention to as you have to watch for dark smoke to turn on your boost, and you can jump, which becomes important when you find out if you get enough air, you get a boost when you land, some tracks even rely heavily on that skill. Other than that though the gameplay is identical to… the leader in Kart racing games… except shells become missles, banana peels become potions, etc. It would really be difficult to improve on the standard gameplay that other Kart games adhere to. But the few additions add a bit more depth to the gameplay.

The tracks in the game are really well varied if a little derivative. But more than once I was caught offguard (in a good way) by interesting  short cuts, and boost ramps that you have to hit just right to get ahead, and if you don’t come first in every race you have to try again to continue the “story”  it kept the game interesting and challenging, and was just fun.

Graphics

Crash Team Racing is a good looking game, it’s colourful, runs fast, and it’s easy to see where you’re supposed to go and when. The animations are great on all the characters, and the sound is great. There’s not much to complain about with this game, I loved the presentation through and through. Not much else to say really, you can expect technical marvels from the developer, Naughty Dog who is responsible for the best looking game I’ve ever seen (Uncharted 2).  It’s one of the best looking PSone games I’ve seen and on the PSP it really pops. It’s easy on the eyes for sure.

How it Holds up today

ALRIGHT FINE! If you’ve played MarioKart in your life and enjoyed it you’ll really enjoy this title. It runs great, looks great, and has lots of replayability, there’s a reason why so many people I know love this game, and now I know why. It’s the best competition to MarioKart I’ve ever seen. It would win out if it did a bit more original but it’s still great fun and worth your time.

9/10