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Crash Nitro Kart Review
Written by Modojo Staff on Monday, January 31, 2005
Plenty of modes...
...but nothing to really make you want to delive into them.
...Continued From Page 1 Sound is equally unimpressive, thanks to muted music and sound effects that are as generic as they come. For a cart-racing game, this is a big mistake, because part of the fun of a game of this stature is listening to characters taunt each other and listening to the zippy Saturday morning sound effects involved. None of that is included here. Oh well, it's not like the cast of characters is riding high on appeal anyway. It's just Crash, Coco, and a handful of villains from the previous games, all running on courses while being controlled by Emperor Velo on an intergalactic racing planet.
That's part of the game's Adventure mode, the least appealing mode in the game. Of course, if that's not your bag, you can just do some straight up single player racing, even timing yourself against ghost racers. But the real appeal here, what little there is, lies in the game's Battle Mode, where you can challenge three friends via Bluetooth and see who's number one. Of course, the real challenge will be trying to find three friends who want to engage in this game with you and put up with its lack of speed.
The game's graphics aren't that faulted. In fact, for the N-Gage, they look pretty good, emulating a decent amount of 3D courses with plenty of trackside detail. But, again, the in-game camera ruins the party. If only some kind of adjustments were made where we could see what was ahead of us instead of having to guess from a previous lap or follow the lead of an enemy you're so desperately trying to pass. Too bad his AI can be basic and then downright vicious.
Boy, I knew Crash Nitro Kart wouldn't be the party that Crash Team Racing was when I played it so many months ago, but I had no idea it would be released like this, being a minus in so many areas it should have been a plus. All of this from Vicarious Visions, no less... one of my favorite developers. Ah well, they'll be back. They'll find themselves another handheld project that will allow them to shine again, be it the Nintendo DS, the PSP, the N-Gage or wherever they're headed. They have a future, and I'm pretty sure that this poor edition of Crash Nitro Kart will be left in the dust.
