N-Philes

Crash Tag Team Racing

Posted January 13th 2006 by Dan Biersdorf.

Ever since the notorious developer Naughty Dog waved bye-bye to the Crash Bandicoot series, it's been a rough ride for the little guy. Once known for being the founding father of the original PlayStation's success, and a 32-bit foil to the greatness of Super Mario 64, it's difficult to see the series thrown to which ever developer that wants it. In 2003 Vicarious Visions took a stab at the racing genre with Crash Nitro Kart, which while in no means was a bad game, had a lot to live up to considering Crash Team Racing for the PlayStation (developed by Naughty Dog) is hailed as one of the better kart racers of all time, and is certainly up there with the league brutes like Mario's clan.

So now Radical Entertainment is stepping up to the plate with Crash Tag Team Racing, in hopes to return to the PlayStation's glory it shares a similar name, although this time it's infused with "Tag Team" goodness. Yes, Tag Team Racing's main attraction and spin on the genre is adding another character to the kart. Odd, I could have sworn we've seen something like this before... oh wait, we did, in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! which holds the exact same concept. It's quite obvious Crash Tag Team Racing is a blatant rip off of the Double Dash!! formula, and while it adds a few new bells and whistles, is it enough to hold your attention?

Any time a franchise becomes popular companies feel, for some odd reason, the need to milk the series into the racing genre: Banjo-Kazooie, Kirby, The Simpsons, Donkey Kong, and soon to be Pac-Man and Sonic have all fallen ill of this similar fate. While it's not necessarily always a horrible transition, none of really pulled off the success of the notorious Mario Kart series. However for whatever reason it may be, Crash and company are now heading into the third lap and are hoping to pass the competition for the 1st place trophy this time around.

What Tag Team Racing really tries to emphasis on is action-style kart racing. While throwing banana peels and using rockets are good and fun, Crash comes equipped with some weapons more prone to dealing out mass destruction. Typically your weapon of choice will be a gun of some kind, but not to worry parents; there won't be any blood shed or body parts flying all over, but rather guns that can cause major explosions and mayhem in a Burnout or Vigilante 8 style. Rather than in other racers where you try to slow down or stall other players, you are trying to completely wipe your competition off the road, which can be pulled off with a few good shots.

With the two player theme, you'll have two characters per kart: one in the front, steering, and the other in the back who will be in charge of dishing out the damage. The difference between this and Double Dash!! is that when playing single player you can only control one of the characters, and the computer will then control the other. The major problem with this is that the computer isn't very good, and it can become frustrating to deal with the mistakes they make. As such, I preferred to be manning the weapons, because when the computer is in the driver position they will act on a form of "rails" where every turn looks perfect and fake. On one hand this is useful because they rarely hit walls, but they also don't take advantage of short cuts and other beneficial routes. When they take the back seat they'll attack slowly (but mostly accurately than most humans) or not attack at all for whatever reason. If you can master the system, however, you can switch between roles and work your magic on both positions, but that requires a bit of expertise.

What I found really odd is that it's quite obvious the team put a good amount of effort in putting together a full-fledged single player Story Mode, yet they failed miserably while somehow managing a bulls-eye in other parts of the game. Radical Entertainment took a wrong turn when designing the single player, mixing the traditional Crash platforming genre into the racing genre. While it tries to strike a note on both fronts it only comes out a so-so experience on each. You'll wander around large over worlds with all sorts of people in need of your help, because God knows they can't do a damn thing for themselves; I should probably mention that all these characters are colorless and lame. It's in this venture of altruism that you unlock new tracks, earn money for new gear, and unlock some fresh new faces in the character selection screen. It's all very simple and pretty shallow: you'll go from point A to point B, help someone, open a new course, complete the race - repeat.

While the single player mode doesn't even scratch the surface of memorable, the multiplayer is where all the focus should have gone, and it's full of options and customization. There's the expected "race to the finish" and even a death match mode, which should be self explanatory. The mode that really hooked me, though, was the stunt courses, where you can get four people going in an arena at a time pulling off flips and spins, all trying for the highest stunt score. This had my friends and I hooked for hours, because for whatever reason it's loads of fun. All of you who got into Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA on the Nintendo 64 will experience some deja vu in terms of the stunt modes, and nothing has even come close to that since then.

This game gets an N-Philes score of B-.

What can I say? It's another kart racer with an old face pinned on. While Crash Tag Team Racing has a pathetic single player mode you'll find lots to uncover in the multiplayer aspect. The game looks pretty and you have frantic action consistently through each race. But with a mentally-impaired computer AI and some what weak level design there's plenty to shoot for in the next alteration. If you can't sit down with three other friends, don't bother, but I'll tell you right now this kicks the pants out of Mario Kart: Double Dash!! - yes, you heard me.

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