Whilst offering nothing new, Crash Nitro Kart is by no means a bad kart racing game.
Around the same time the Gamecube installment of Mario Kart, Double Dash, was released, another relatively prestigious kart racing game saw the light: Crash Nitro Kart was the direct successor of the aforementioned PSone exclusive Crash Team Racing, which was often seen as THE alternative for gamers who didn't own a Nintendo 64 to play Mario Kart on.
Crash Nitro Kart is exactly what you'd expect from a sequel, with the game safely sticking to the concept of its predecessor, only making the graphics and controls up-to-date. The result is a very decent kart racing game with surprisingly slick controls, and interesting courses toiled in pretty smooth graphics. It fails, however, to do away with the general feeling of 'been there, done that'.
Even if the game is nothing more than Crash Team Racing_v2 in a way, Crash Nitro Kart certainly pushes the franchise's standards in some areas. The track design is more daring and more original than in CTR, and the improved controls certainly make for a more solid racing experience. Like in its predecessor, the drifting system involves holding one shoulder button while pushing the other at set moments for a boost. This results in the player being able to boost non-stop through the whole track with enough skill, making the game quite fast-paced for a kart racer. This fluid gameplay is at the core of the game, largely compensating unoriginality with playability, making this one of the best kart racing games of its day.
One thing Crash Team Racing immediately understood which Mario Kart 64 and, to an extent, Diddy Kong Racing didn't, is that a large portion of unlockables make for a more challenging and lasting gaming experience. Crash Nitro Kart is no different, and lets you, just like in its predecessor, unlock a good number of characters and cutscenes by playing the adventure mode, which is made interesting by the fact that the voice acting and animation in this game are very well done.
In the adventure mode (which, as a lot of people do not know this, was directly taken from Diddy Kong Racing by CTR), you have to win a certain amount of races (some of which under special circumstances) to be able to face and beat the world's boss and progress to the next set of races. These sets mostly have your typical themes, such as ice, jungle, futuristic, etc. Although their layouts mightn't be the summum of originality either (most of these themes already appeared in CTR before), the track design compensates a lot, and reveals to us that the developers were actually aware of what they were doing instead of bestowing a bundle of mediocrity upon the gaming audience just to make a quick buck. Progress has certainly been made in this area as compared to CTR, and a lot of the tracks even succeed in living up to the standard set by Double Dash (although the track design in the latter game is still better overall).
The combination of a relatively lengthy yet enjoyable adventure mode and a great collection of tracks and unlockables make for a very decent and solid single player game, but how well does this game fare with multiple players? Crash Nitro Kart features the usual multiplayer modes: Versus and Battle. Just racing against eachother in a cup can be pretty fun, seeing as Crash Nitro Kart is a game one can get the hang of rather quickly (much more so than with Mario Kart at least), and the weapon system, while not very influential, is balanced and offers inexperienced players loads of opportunities to cope themselves among the more experienced lot. The graphics do suffer a bit in the split screen, but not to such an extent that it will actually start getting in your way.
The battle mode, however, is a bit on the poor side as its track design is mostly unexciting, and the items offer too little to spice things up a little. One fun little feature is that you can 'customize' battle tracks, in that you can choose where to place the item boxes. A nice little touch if any, but not something that will drastically improve or worsen this mode. It isn't a bad addition to the game, and it can even be enjoyable for short periods or time, but when compared to the more varied and fun battle mode of Mario Kart: Double Dash, it fails to impress in any way.
Overall, the multiplayer mode doesn't offer those endless sessions of fun, exciting and competitive clashes with your friends that you'd normally expect from a decent kart racing game. I'd even go as far as saying this game is more enjoyable on your own than with friends, which has more to do with the multiplayer mode's shortcomings than the single player's qualities.
All in all, however, Crash Nitro Kart is a very solid kart racing title and offers enough content and quality to keep you occupied for quite some time. Its great controls and track design even make this game a great alternative for those who don't own a Gamecube, or a great addition for kart racing fans who've lost interest in Mario Kart: Double Dash. Its high quality is certainly a fresh breath of air among all the mediocrity that hit the kart racing subgenre over the years. Despite this quality, however, Crash Nitro Kart is still a Mario Kart clone at the end of the day, and does very little to distinguish itself from both its PSone predecessor, and the Mario Kart series it's based upon.
Report Card:
+ great controls
+ innovative track design
+ relatively lengthy and enjoyable single player mode
+ good sound
- still lacks originality
- multiplayer is so-so
Score:
87%