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Generalities

Three Crate-busting platformers later, the Crash team decides to duke it out in insane kart races. But these aren't your average Sunday races from your local kart tracks. No, these racers will resort to anything to achieve victory, so if that means blowing up your own sister with a homing missile, so be it.

Crash on Wheels

Even though there's a different genre going on, everything feels as Crash-y as before. The tracks and the music are heavily inspired by the levels from the original trilogy, and the usual Crash humour is still there, with characters blowing themselves up with TNTs and teasing each others like idiots. The tracks are usually wacky, with the same surreal elements you'd expect from a Crash game - you have tracks suspended in mid-air, carnivorous plants on the sides of the road, inertia-defying boulders, the works.

The gameplay is simple and intuitive, and the more you play the game, the more you realize how deep it really is. Essentially, you can accelerate, break, reverse, jump, powerslide and fire weapons. Jumping off ramps gives you a speed boost when you land, but you can also jump and turn suddenly to perform a powerslide. Powersliding is the game's term for drifting, which is useful for getting around sharp corners. With enough skill, you can powerslide along a track in almost its entirety. When doing this move, the exaust pipes from your kart will send out black smoke, and if you press the trigger button when that happens, your kart will boost. Up to 3 consecutives boosts can be earned from a single powerslide.

If you want to get anywhere fast, find hidden shortcuts and powerslide your way to the finish line. Don't forget to pick up items and weapons too. These are found in Crates scattered along the tracks. You can also power them up by picking up 10 Wumpa fruits, which come on special Crates of their own. Your arsenal is composed of missiles, bowling bombs, explosive Crates, time-slowing clocks and more. Being hit by someone or falling off-course doesn't end your race, but you will lose some time and Wumpa fruits.

Modes, modes

Adventure Mode is where you unlock most stuff and play through the story. You'll encounter normal races and other challenges, such as boss races, finding letters, gathering Crystals in closed arenas, and Relic Races (these are the equivalent of Crash 3's Time Trials, right down to the time-freezing Crates).

In Time Trial, you race alone for the best time in a track. After you're done with a track, you can save your ghost so that you can challenge yourself later, by trying to improve on what you previously did wrong. If you pull out all the stops in this mode, you might just win a chance to race against N. Tropy's ghost, and if you can beat that, prepare yourself for Oxide's ghost, which is tough as nails to beat.

Arcade mode is composed of single races or cups. This is what you'll want if you're up for a small championship or just a quick race. There are three difficulty settings, but you have to unlock the latter two. New tracks can be played here by unlocking them in Adventure mode. By winning a cup, you'll win a new arena for the tremendously fun Battle mode, which will be explained later.

When AI just doesn't cut it

CTR may be an excellent game when you're playing it alone, but when you have someone by your side... Well, let's just say it gives a whole new meaning to the word 'fun'. This game can be played by up to 4 players at the same time (via split-screen) without slowdowns. This is where CTR really shines, because you'll try to do everything to hinder your friends and prevent them from winning, and you're guaranteed to laugh out loud as you do it. You and your friends can race against each others alone in VS mode, but you can throw in CPU-controlled characters by picking Arcade mode.

You can also challenge your friends in Battle arenas, which can actually surpass the greatness of the race tracks. In this mode, you'll be placed inside an arena, where you'll be picking up weapons, searching for your opponents and hiding paranoically. It's a lot of fun blowing up your friends and setting up traps (just be careful not to be your own victim). As long as you have friends with you, there is excellent replay value to be found in CTR. This alone makes it a timeless classic.

The final word

CTR is a superb game with amazingly deep mechanics. The single-player mode is an absorbing experience, but once you start playing it with friends, you can kiss your social life goodbye. It's as fun as local multiplayer games get, and if you're not a big fan of racing games, this game might just be the one to change your mind.

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