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Crash
Nitro Kart without a doubt doesn’t live up to the Mario Kart series.
That doesn’t necessarily mean CNK is a bad game. It may be a clone of
the Mario Kart games but CNK can be a bit more unique then Mario Kart in
one way or another.

CNK
is very similar to Crash Team Racing for the PSX, but CNK
feels more polished of a game then CTR was. For the most part CNK
is a solid racing game, it has everything you would expect from a kart
game like your power-ups consisting of missiles, time freeze, tornadoes,
and more. One aspect that makes CNK’s power-ups unique is the team
power-ups. If you stay close enough to a team member you can unleash
some pretty cool moves. At
times there can be some slight problems trying to pull team moves off,
but its still a nice welcome feature to the kart racing genre.
The
most unique feature of CNK over Mario Kart is its’ adventure mode.
There are 5 different worlds which contain a total of 17 tracks. You
will race against 7 competitors or sometimes you may go up against a
boss character.
Like
other racing games such as F-Zero GX you will have to memorize tracks
like the back of your hand. You will also have to be very strategic at
times which will require some thinking. Some gamers may be annoyed by
this while other gamers might welcome the challenge.
The
biggest problem with CNK is its overall sense of feeling…well, slow. Perhaps I might be overreacting but speed is very
important to a gamer like me when it comes to a racing game. Some people
might feel very disappointed with the pacing of the game while others
might take it as an opportunity to apply their strategic skills since
some tracks do require thinking.

One
thing I really have to give credit to CNK is its track designs. Some
tracks are really nicely done and have a good layout. Graphics overall
were nothing special but has a nice cartoony touch to it on both
character models and track designs.
I noticed when playing multiplayer the graphics seemed to be
reduced and are a bit choppy compared to single player which is
unfortunate. I didn’t find multiplayer mode to be as fun as single
player but if you have some friends over, multiplayer mode is still
decent, even with its faults.
The
sound in the game is nicely done. The music is very similar to something
you would hear in a cartoon which is a nice feature that fits in very
well into the game, but the character phrases do get very annoying after
a short period of time.
Crash
Nitro Kart definitely isn’t as good as Mario Kart, but bring some
friends over and you can still have one hell of a fun gaming experience.
-
Jay
Tonello
(February
14, 2004)
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