Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (2019 Remake) Review

The original Crash Team Racing had one idea its competitors did not, which is that a drift boost could be chained indefinitely by a player with good timing, turning every corner into a rhythm test with a rising ceiling. Beenox understood that this was the whole game and rebuilt it without sanding a single edge off. Sacred Fire and the reserve system are still there, the sacred cows of Adventure Mode are untouched, and the tracks from the two sequels are folded in so the roster of courses is enormous.

It looks superb, the kart customisation is deep, and online racing was competent at launch, which for a licensed kart game is not nothing. Two marks against it. The difficulty is genuinely steep for anyone arriving from friendlier kart series, with the Adventure Mode boss races filtering casual players out early. And a currency economy with paid options arrived after the reviews were written, on a full price product, which is the kind of move that sours goodwill a studio spent two years earning.