Gameplay
Crash Tag Team Racing is a bizarre blend of platformer and race. The leading role is still played by a bandit named Kresh. The centerpiece of the action is a giant amusement park divided into five sections. It is from here that Kresh will get to the levels and mini-games. The park is a large open area for research. Each section of the park contains three mandatory racing levels and one combat level. Once all levels have been successfully completed, you will have access to the next section of the park. The goal of the protagonist is to find all the energy crystals and find out who is responsible for their abduction. Clearly, the terrible truth will only open towards the end of the game. The usual vampa fruits, chaotic and in large quantities have been replaced by coins, for which the bandit can buy clothes. Which, however, does not affect the gameplay. The good news is that we left wooden boxes. That's just the functionality of their now reduced to a minimum. Forget about the springs, TNT and Nitro - nothing like that will happen here. Just coin boxes. Boring.
They didn't want to give the bandit a treat at all. Instead of his favorite fruit, you can find a vampire juice in the park. At the same time, when Kresh makes a couple of sips out of a glass, his pupils dilate and his speed doubles. For some reason, I think that this drink is not just about juice!
In addition to racing and combat levels, there are several minigames here. They are not very interesting, and do not shine with diversity. The only thing I remember is bowling and shooting at plates. Another curious detail. From the very first games the series was famous for self-irony. Cresh had so many contextual death animations that any other game would be jealous. In Crash Tag Team Racing developers went further and began to reward players for unusual deaths of the protagonist. Every time Crash dies in a ridiculous way, opens a small funny video, showing his death in all its glory. Unfortunately, the humor here is purely American and hardly make the Russian player smile. That can't be said about the rest of the game. Plot videos are quite funny and thanks to them you want to close your eyes to many blunders. But back to the gameplay. If you manage to kill the poor bandit in every possible way, you will get a great prize costume.
There are a lot of people wandering around in the park. Among them you can meet your acquaintances. Some of them will have a special icon hanging over them, which means that you can talk to the character. Next, you can either take part in a minigame, or buy or improve a car. The game disposes to sociability!
But still Crash Tag Team Racing is more of a race than a platformer. There are a dozen and a half racing tracks here, and all the goal is to take the lead by all means. As I mentioned above, the main distinguishing feature of the race is the ability to connect your vehicle with the next driver. After a fantastic transformation, you can either drive or drive with a gun. With the help of a weapon you can shoot back from other participants or hold them back. Your partner drives the car at this time. I don't think you need to explain that Crash Tag Team Racing starts to shine with new colors when playing together. In a single-player campaign, the interest is quickly lost because of the low level of difficulty. Automatic store is almost endless, the dynamics is weak. Even acceleration doesn't bring any tangible effect. The design of cars and routes looks boring. The first track almost the whole consists of straight lines. There are no sharp turns there. The locations themselves do not look bad, but do not make revelations. On the background of constantly happening some life: cardboard fish swim, Kresh deftly flies through the closing shark's mouth, giant frogs croak in the pond, and so on. The game tries to avoid realism as much as possible. Clouds here are depicted intentionally caricaturically, as if they were drawn by an artist of children's books. There is nothing wrong with it, but just somehow... Unusual.
In addition to the main mode, where you just need to come first to the finish line, there are several side missions. One of them is shooting at targets on the road. While your partner is driving the car, you should not miss any targets. Let me be honest - so much fun.
Special attention is paid to combat levels. In them, you and your opponents are launched into a large closed arena and forced to fight to the death. In general, the mode is not much different from that of Crash Team Racing, the only difference being that Naughty Dog has got it much more exciting.
What else can I say? Graphically, the game looks worthy of the sixth generation of consoles. Animation doesn't misfire either. Platform levels allow you to take a break from racing, and racing from platform levels. Locations are very peculiar. There is a prehistoric section of the park, there is a fabulous, and there is also a space section called "Astro Land". There is nothing extraordinary in it, but for some reason I was unpleasant and even afraid to be there. And it's not in the sense that you're afraid of a good horror movie, but it's disgusting.
Music and sound
The music for the game was written by the band Spiralmouth, known from the soundtrack to Crash Twinsanity and Mark Baryl. Anyone who grew up on the classic parts, throws local tracks with faeces, they say, not that. And the thing is that the developers exchanged traditionally cheerful African motifs for reckless a cappella. All the music is performed by several people's mouths. Every instrument is someone's voice. Someone sings only bass parts, someone sings a beat, and someone else sings the leading melody. It turns out quite strange, but this madness fits well into the overall picture. On the other hand, there are not many memorable themes here that aren't enough. From all the soundtrack I can remember on a skip except for the theme from the "fairy-tale" section of the park. Everything else is not rubbish, but very secondary in itself. Listening to such music separately from the game will only become a mentally ill person. Now about the sound. Actors work out their lines perfectly. N. Jean, Cortex, Crunch - all of them sound convincing and give the heroes a unique flavor. Crunch parodies the well-known Mr. T in every possible way. It's a little annoying to hear Vaughn Klatch's voice, but it's worth considering that the character himself isn't very pleasant. Unfortunately, the picture is spoiled by weak noise design. Most of the noises sound unconvincing and are a powerful obstacle to enjoyment.
Afterword
Crash Tag Team Racing is a bright and really crazy game. I'm sure it can cause the most polarized opinions - someone will think it's a breath of fresh air in the gaming industry and will find a treasure trove of tearful humor in it, and someone else will think it's the other way around for the brutal abuse of a fluffy childhood hero. There is something to look at - a pleasant "cartoon" graphics, hilarious animation and the work of the actors of sounding, the inventive backgrounds at the levels. On the other hand, the game clearly suffers from an excessively low level of complexity, from an oddish soundtrack, sometimes too straightforward design of the tracks and from unstable physics. There is a snowball of curious references to modern culture and a tutu to the past games of the series. But you can't get off with just references with graphics. Racing cars, though they express individuality of the racer, look like cars very remotely. It is possible to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the brainchild of Radical Entertainment. One thing is clear. Crash Tag Team Racing is not the Crash we are used to.