Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled: PS4 Review

Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled: PS4 Review

Released by Activision
Platform: PS4

The thirst for nostalgia continues with Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, another remaster of the Bandicoot's trademark bran of cartoon insanity.

The original kart games were where Crash Bandicoot started to lose me, preferring as I did the narrative driven platform-based shenanigans which tested my button pressing, rather than my ability to read a race track.

That's not to say that Crash Bash and Crash Team Racing weren't iconic Naughty Dog properties, merely tastes lay elsewhere.

However, Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled is a karting fanboy's dream.

The remastered game fires on all cylinders as it dons a new coat of paint, and offers a slick, glitch-free blast around the tracks.

The one downside is the inordinate amount of time the game's loading screens take, compared to the amount of time you play on the track. It's almost as if the celebrations you're expected to have between each race will be enough to occupy gaming minds - well, that's not the case.

Much like the Crash Bandicoot remake last year, the game's difficulty settings will prove controversial too, with Medium being a chasm away from Easy in terms of being able to win. Easy is a breeze round the tracks; Medium, much less so.

The game's MO is the same as it always was - hurtle around the track, grab power ups, knock your opponents out of the way, and surge to victory.

From adventure mode where you're the sole player to online multiplayer, there's more fun to be had in the social elements of Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, as the racing is better when you feel like there are actual stakes.

Yet, at the end of the day, it has to be said, very occasionally, this does just feel like a "Pick up, play, put it down, forget it" kind of game - underneath the slick look and the stellar graphics, the nostalgia's only going to get you so far.

But when the quality is this good, maybe you can forgive the fact that most gamers will be playing the same game they played in their youth, and recapturing the euphoric highs you had at the time.