Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

[Mr EliteL]

Trailer looking sweet. I really hope there's a further last announcement at E3 too, especially on any possible missing characters. Need them, and hope for Spyro too. Will settle for DLC.

[Moonface]

I'd be surprised to not see those characters in the game at launch. Brio, Kong, Tawna, Nina, and Spyro have been among the most requested characters since day one and they all make sense.

[Karo]

I guess my only question as a person who never played it how would you say it compares to something like Diddy Kong Racing? That one infact did also have an adventure mode.

[Moonface]

I guess my only question as a person who never played it how would you say it compares to something like Diddy Kong Racing? That one infact did also have an adventure mode.

I haven't played a lot of DKR, but they share a few similarities in their adventure modes. Both feature a hub world where you drive around to the different track entrances, and you unlock more areas/tracks as you win races in the unlocked tracks. In CTR, each of the five areas in the hub world have a boss you need to defeat to open the next area (except the fifth who is Oxide and you beat him to beat the game). Like DKR, CTR also has a mode where you have to collect items on the track and come in first place, and it also has relic races.

If you enjoyed DKR, I'd say you would definitely enjoy CTR. There's a reason why the mechanics of that game have needed very little updating when remaking it almost twenty years later.

[Moonface]

E3 2019: New Characters and Tracks Revealed
A new trailer released today has officially confirmed that new characters and tracks are coming to the game post-launch for free!

The trailer doesn't reveal much, but this image of the upcoming Grand Prix seasons details what you can expect from the ones confirmed so far:

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THE FUCKING HYPE IS REAL!
Considering that Brio and Kong haven't been shown or mentioned in the above seasons makes me think there will be more after Spyro, unless they come in his pack. Baby Crash and Baby Coco are interesting to me, since they've never been a thing. I'd have expected Baby Cortex and Baby N. Tropy, due to the ending of Warped.

Also, the fact this stuff is free is insane to me. $40 for the amount of work Beenox has done for this remake is a crime, they deserve easily double that for what they've done!

[Mr EliteL]

I was at first disheartened by them being post-launch as it would probably mean paid DLC, but holy moly, the seasons are free?! OK, I also probably wouldn't have minded for paying more but I wasn't expecting this much either, and who knows what'll be included with Spyro's season and after that, as "More Seasons To Be Announced" sounds like more than the three shown, and one isn't fully revealed. They've gone Mario Kart with the baby Crash & Coco (OK, Baby Mario & Luigi were established for Kart games but still) .

The amount of content going into this is amazing. Then again, I don't pay attention much to other games out there and what they're doing anymore.

[Moonface]

Baby Crash and Baby Coco makes little sense to me. Baby Cortex and Baby Tropy would've been better because those are canon characters in Crash and fit into the time travelling theme that Baby T's prix has.

Also, these are free but if you don't unlock all the content during that grand prix season then all of its content will be in the Pit Stop to buy with Wumpa Coins. Those coins are the only thing I'm curious about whether they have an option to buy them, and if so, are they earnable at a good rate to not feel forced to pay for them? I'd like to assume not because this remake has yet to do anything gravely wrong, but unfortunately Activision have the reputation behind them to spoil a perfect thing.

The amount of content going into this is amazing. Then again, I don't pay attention much to other games out there and what they're doing anymore.

Compared to a current game like say, Mario Kart 8, then the content amount isn't mind blowing for a 2019 title, but it is a damn lot more than anyone would have expected from a CTR remake. Everyone was expecting CTR with maybe a few extra characters from the ND era that didn't make it in the original, and an online mode. Instead, it has all the CTR content, CNK content, CTTR content, and original content, and I wouldn't be surprised to see content from other Crash games making it in.

[ShiraNoMai]

Has anyone else got this yet? Hoping they iron out all the problems with online at some point in the near future, but the single player content is enough to satisfy for a good while.

[Moonface]

I wouldn't say online has any glaring issues outside of character models going crazy. The biggest issue is the discrepancy between Wumpa Coin rates online versus offline. I understand making the rates higher online incentivises people to play online and keep a healthy player base going, but it shouldn't be in a way where playing offline means it becomes virtually impossible to buy anything in the Pit Stop. 7500 coins for the summer pack takes a good amount of time to earn with the online rates, but when the max for offline is 80 coins (and there's only two tracks with that rate) it would take almost 100 races to get enough coins for that one pack. Someone on the Crash subreddit calculated that you could get a maximum of 240 coins in roughly 10 minutes based on what tracks have the best race completion to coin payout ratio. So even the most efficient method would still take roughly 31 hours of playtime, just to get enough for that one pack.

If I knew how many items the Pit Stop had and the cost of everything, I'd work out how many hours you would need to spend offline to get everything. Online is harder to calculate because there's a period of time per day where your coin rate is multiplied by 10, although it appears the rates have been lowered as of today. Whether that's a weekend thing or Activision decided coins were being earned too fast will remain to be seen until next weekend I guess.

Other than that, Hard difficulty could do with toning down a tiny bit. Unless you're seasoned at CTR and its mechanics, you will never stand a chance against the Hard AI. They should just be better at using drift boosts and stuff on corners and areas where it makes sense, rather than having super speed to overtake you on a straight. I'm not playing better than the AI, I'm simply just managing to get enough speed in areas where I can jump and drift boost to get enough distance to not get bum rushed on flat straights. They should be overtaking me because they're using strategies a player could use that I'm failing to use, instead of just having super speed all the time. At least then if they get hit by an item they'll be punished the same as a player would be, whereas right now they just go back to instant super speed. Blizzard Bluff was so bad that I barely managed to win even using every shortcut and boosting just about wherever I could pull it off because the AI was just trail blazing ahead. I'm still shocked I beat Oxide on my first attempt considering he gets a head start on you. With how hard AI works in this game I expected him to have fucked off halfway around the track by the time the green light buzzed.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah, glad I'm not playing online at the moment. Perhaps the new patch tomorrow includes fixing it, as well as adding the Nitro Tour Grand Prix. 

Speaking of, here's what that entails:



Starting tomorrow? Didn't think this was coming so quickly, but cool. Hope I can unlock those items by the 28th, which is weird date to end on. Would've thought a full month or at the very end of July.

Also agreed on coins taking a long while to build up. Haven't tried Hard yet and I thought that's what Hard would be, simply them being better at the course with drifting and such, not an overall speed buff.

[Moonface]

Yeah, glad I'm not playing online at the moment. Perhaps the new patch tomorrow includes fixing it, as well as adding the Nitro Tour Grand Prix. 

Also agreed on coins taking a long while to build up. Haven't tried Hard yet and I thought that's what Hard would be, simply them being better at the course with drifting and such, not an overall speed buff.

Why not? Online hasn't got any problems that affect actual gameplay; the models just bug out and I honestly would love to not see it fixed because of how funny it is.

Hard in the OG CTR was as you describe, but for NF I'd say that seems to be more what Medium feels like. Online is still the best way to get coins though, because you get 1 hour every day to receive 5x coins per race (this hour starts when you do your first online match of the day, and refreshes when the Pit Stop changes over each day) during the week, and Friday > Sunday is 10x bonus for an hour.

So far I have no clue how to get decent amounts of Nitro for the GP outside of doing challenges. A race online is only giving me 12 Nitro, and yet somehow people in the leaderboards are sitting at 24,000. Either I'm missing something, people are spending literally every hour of the day playing, or there's some cheating going on.

[Mr EliteL]

Oh, it doesn't affect gameplay? For some reason I thought there was something that did (I don't know what). Cool, OK I will try online when I get PSN Plus again, which should be soon. Then I can get more coins.

Yeah, Challenges seem to be the best way for Nitro Points. Spent numerous times just now attempting Reverse Speeding on Roo's Tubes (after seeing a video demonstrating how), but I can't get ahead for enough time to do the last lap. Then tried Zero to First in Twilight Tour, and didn't want to resort to doing Easy, but kept failing on Medium so had to. Finally got Tawna now, so I can try more challenges now, especially the ones using her gets a good amount of Nitro Points. The top player on the leaderboard has 41,000 now, damn.

Oh, I don't get how to score a point in Capture the Flag. I assumed taking the opponent's back to where your team's flag is kept, but doesn't seem to work. Did score one point, but no idea how I did it.

[Moonface]

The win in reverse challenge is best done with Easy AI on Crash Cove or Coco Park with 7 laps. Overtake the AI at least twice and you should be able to do the last lap in reverse and still win. The AI will overtake you at least once so that's why you need to lap them twice.

Also EL when you do get PS+ do you want to get the friend challenges done? I extend that offer to anyone else interested too.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah, that's what I was going for, trying to lap them twice in Roo's Tubes. Since I know that stage the best, that's why I was trying that one. Crash Cover or Coco Park will be what I'll try next though. Twilight Tour is one of my best tracks too now, but that's way too long and I wasn't considering that for the challenge at all, just stating it really.

Also, know now how to properly score in Capture the Flag. Need your flag still standing at your goal area, and not taken or sitting on the arena floor if anyone didn't know. Can't imagine what it's like doing 2-on-2 for that, need more AI partners to take out anyone carrying our flag. (I do too of course, but annoying when I've got chase after them too whilst carrying their flag)

Yeah, sure! So many challenges I can't do that need to be done online.

[Moonface]

You could just cheese a lot of the battle challenges by using a second controller, since it does count. I just shoved the AI on Easy though and it worked out well enough.

Let me know when you want to tackle any of the friend challenges and I'll go online so long as nothing else is going on. I'm free all day tomorrow and after 9PM your time on Sunday/Monday, and 6PM Tuesday/Wednesday, and off Thursday.