CTR: Nitro-Fueled Hands-On - 7 Ups & 2 Downs
On track to be the best remaster yet.
Almost out of nowhere, 2019 has turned into a kart racing revival. Long a favourite genre of 90s gamers, across the 2000s we saw everything from Speed Freaks to Looney Tunes Racing, Lego Racing to Modnation Racers all received fairly well, only for the genre to burn itself out.
When literally every property under the sun was churning out the same mix of drifts and random power-ups, we needed something else. This left only the immaculate Team Sonic Racing games flying the flag, but in June this year, Crash is making his long-awaited debut.
Now, I was lucky enough to get hands-on with Nitro-Fueled at the UK's International Preview Event, and after the N. Sane Trilogy and Spyro's Reignited collection, this physics-perfect recreation of 1999's Crash Team Racing is playing pretty perfectly.
It goes without saying that Naughty Dog's classic helped define childhoods alongside the main Crash trilogy, and there is a LOT to live up to on Beenox's part when it comes to nailing the feel of racing from that period in gaming history.
Thankfully, having played a near-final build of the game, everything is coming together exactly as fans (and myself) had hoped.