Jump to content

What I think it could be Better...


Recommended Posts

 

It's been over a year since I last played CTR: NF and last week I decided to pick it up again to grab the latest update content I didn't unlock - the recolor skins. While playing, I felt some kind of sadness at some points and that's why I wanted to share my opinion about how this journey unfold, even knowing there's a big amount of people supporting Beenox. Even though I'll be talking about the negative parts, those that personally made me fell sad or disappointed, it doesn't invalidate that they brought CTR back to life, they did a great job recreating the original and gave us free content to keep coming back. I just think they could have done better - not more, just a little better.

 

 

If you want to know my personal opinion in each of these sections, click the "spoiler" tab.

If you agree or disagree, if you're a newcomer or an oldschool CTR player, I really would like to know what you think, what did you expect, if there was something that made quit the game or comeback, etc...

 

Content

Spoiler

 

Allow me to be straight with this one: I rather pay extra money for better extra content then monthly Grand Prix extras. After months grinding Nitro Points, it turns out all content could be later purchased with Wumpa Coins, including the "Champion" kart. I didn't need to grind all those hours under a stricted time limit to get those items afterall.

The most disappointing thing was the quality of the content. All initial characters, including bosses and Nitro Kart characters have their own track. We got 3-5 new characters each month, around 20 paint colors and wheels and only 1 track. I remember, for 2 consecutive months, being excited to play a new track and it ended up being a simple track (like the Carnival, which is an oval track) and a "remixed" version of Cortex Castle. More tracks means more replayability. Each month we played the same GP main track over and over again, but people were happy with new characters, characters that don't differ anything from the others... It's just another character in the select screen. Sure, some of them were really interesting to see (like Kong, Nina, N.Brio), but even though I was excited to play with these one, it didn't make any difference.

Personally, I rather see more investment on new tracks and older characters. Why did they launched 5 new characters with the final update with 0 extra skins and poor Geary, since launch, only got 1 extra skin - a lazy skin with a Beenox logo... Geary could have a "I Want to Break Free" or a "Teletubbies vaccon" look-a-like skin... I know it's stupid, but it would something better than a simple recoloring with a Beenox logo :/ And poor Rilla Roo... They literally created a new character slot called "FIXED Rilla Roo" when they could marge with the older version :(

The last thing about this topic is about the amount of colors. If you unlocked everything from the Pit Stop, you know you have more than 200 different colors. My only complain about this is that these colors are organized by release date, not "color". If you want to choose a different Red color, you have to watch over all 200 different colors... until you ended up enjoying the green one more and you have to rewatch all 200 colors to see what other possible "greens" suits you better. Since it doesn't have the option to "save" your favorite karts, I spend a lot of time to get my "favorite" kart for 5 races and switch it all over again when I get bored.

 

 

 

Blue Sacred Fire

Spoiler

 

Now, this is the big one. Almost every single player I talked about this, they really enjoyed the insane speed you can get while racing... but it's also one the main reason people don't enjoy the online multiplayer races, therefore, there were a lot of people asking to fix the powerups (specially Warp Orbs) and/or adding a new game mode without PowerUps.

For those who don't know what BSF is, let me put this way: remember Tiny Temply Time Trial when you are playing "casually" per-say and somehow N.Tropy and Oxide ghost overtake you at high speed and can even finish the track while you barely finished the second lap? That's the effect of the BSF. Either the player makes a single mistake or he get hit by a Clock/Warp Orb, there's no way you can catch up.

Sacred Fire was also used in very FEW original CTR tracks (like N.Gin Labs - if there are more). Naughty Dog added a different boost pad called "Super Turbo Pad" that allowed the player to make a bigger jump easily and continue the race, even if they lose speed. On the other hand, it would "glitch" your kart if your jump was sucessful (and other stuff including reserves, but its irrelevant now), racing way above your top speed. Convince me wrong, but this a "glitch" imo, in the Original CTR: all other racers could drift and gain reserves, but they instantly lose their speed after using the Super Turbo Pad, they didn't go made across all the track, even on Super Hard difficuklty (unlocked via cheat code). And if you think about it, when you play CTR:NF on Hard Mode, a lot of people say that Crash Cove and Dragon's Mines are some of the hardest tracks in the game. That's because none of these tracks have a Super Turbo Pad to "glitch" the game (and the shortcuts aren't a "big deal"), while the more complex tracks are much easier because the AI can't catch up with BSF like the player can.

Beenox decided to add this Sacred Fire and accept it as a "feature", but it also encouraged the use of this. Almost all tracks have an unnecessary Super Turbo Pad. While the OG used in a specific case to "make the jump" in a big gap, Beenox added for no reason. Twilight has a STP without any gap on the track, Prehistoric has at least 2, none of them has a bottomless pit in front of it... If there's a simple jump, why that Turbo Pad is different from the others?

 

I understand a lot of people really enjoy BSF and makes the game more exciting... but there is no challenge at all against the AI when they can't use it. If the Super Turbo Pad was active only for a few seconds and couldn't make a BSF, just like it happens to the AI, the game would be more balanced and challenging. Same goes if you want to play split screen with friends, but they can't maintain the BSF :/

And this is the last part and the one I touch the online experience thanks to this "glitch". My honest opinion is that the game is not designed for BSF. Unless it happens what I mentioned above, there is no way you can catch up with the 1st or 2nd. This would be acceptible if this was the typical racing game, but it's a kart game, where powerups are involved. Usually, both missiles or bombs are useless - most likely they will hit a wall or a ramp. Warp Orbs rarely spawn now and they only spawn to the 6-8 players, which is a little useless if these are really far behind. So the 2nd place player must pray for a Clock or Warp Orb to appear to other players and have the luck that the first place player doesn't have a shield to protect him... And I'm not going to talk about the chaos of 3-Bomb/Missile Powerup mash up at the beginning of each race that most likely determines who will win the race.

 

 

 

Thank you :)

Stay Safe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting post after reading through it I would like to address some of the comments you made about the game. First and foremost the champion kart cannot be unlocked by spending wumpa coins the only way to unlock the champion kart is to defeat Nitrous Oxides times on all tracks including all bonus tracks. You mention that Dragon Mines and Crash Cove are hard to beat the AI computer on, you must have really fast times for these tracks if you think the shortcut in Dragon Mines is not difficult. Would you mind sharing what your time is?

 

Some of your other comments are very minor nit-picks, free content is unprecedented as most developers will charge for additional content. As for USF I don't understand your reasoning because keeping USF on the hardest tracks in the game is no small feat. Yes item-less lobbies were very highly requested within the community unfortunately they never added it to the game.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

I was literally going to create a thread on how I was feeling about beenox messing up this game for me so I'll just post here instead, here's why I'm pissed 

 

1) Them adding sacred fire to practically all tracks, since they already added to super turbo power-up they should remove sacred fire from turbo pads to make it consistent.

2) They should have made more tracks based off designs from the original trilogy instead of random ideas, people have done mock ups of how some would look like toad village but they ignored that.

3) They didn't add any new online modes like cups or races without weapons despite fans wanting them, single races are dull.

4) They messed up the weapon distribution during online races and it needs fixing, 1st should be getting a mixure of potions, crates & speed boosts,2nd,3rd,4th & 5th should be getting a mixture of  rockets, bombs, speed boosts and 6th,7th & 8th should be getting a mixture off rockets, bombs, n trophy clocks, warp orbs and masks.

5) People placing 1st even though they were behind you when crossing the finish line. 

6) There is no leaderboards or stats (I know there's is for time trials) telling us how good we are so there's no reason to come back to the game, I would like to know how many time I've come first and how many times I've used a certain weapon ETC.

7) They haven't added all character's from the crash universe to the roster yet a crate gets added.

8) They added a crate as a playable character this really angered me as it proves to me that beenox don't give a sh*t about the original game.

9) Some reason they changed the layout of tiny arena (map looks very different from the original) this also pissed me off, it's supposed to be a REMASTER not a REMAKE. 

10) Despite fans making suggestions of what they would like beenox haven't implemented any of them proving they are lazy and don't give a sh*t about us or this game.

11) Online lobbies need to redesigned, if the host leaves it should switch hosting duties to another person and not just boot everyone out.

 

It's because of these reasons why I haven't played this game for well over a year (also due to the constant repetitive grand prix's over a 8 month period) because I can't bare the thought how much better it could have been if beenox got their sh*t together and actually fixed these issues and listened to the fans.

 

Positives = allowing us to change our driving styles for characters, the graphics overhaul was amazing and adding a pitstop for extra content.  

Edited by Jinxcendant-XIII
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10-6-2021 at 0:22 PM, Jinxcendant-XIII said:

1) Them adding sacred fire to practically all tracks, since they already added to super turbo power-up they should remove sacred fire from turbo pads to make it consistent.

This is a bad idea. Having access to sacred fire with power ups ONLY will give an unfair advantage to players. Since every turbo pad gives at least sacred fire, it's fair and balanced. 

 

On 10-6-2021 at 0:22 PM, Jinxcendant-XIII said:

3) They didn't add any new online modes like cups or races without weapons despite fans wanting them, single races are dull.

6) There is no leaderboards or stats (I know there's is for time trials) telling us how good we are so there's no reason to come back to the game, I would like to know how many time I've come first and how many times I've used a certain weapon ETC.

11) Online lobbies need to redesigned, if the host leaves it should switch hosting duties to another person and not just boot everyone out.

These are good points. Agreed. I've wanted a ranking system and itemless races since the start.

 

On 10-6-2021 at 0:22 PM, Jinxcendant-XIII said:

7) They haven't added all character's from the crash universe to the roster yet a crate gets added.

8) They added a crate as a playable character this really angered me as it proves to me that beenox don't give a sh*t about the original game.

10) Despite fans making suggestions of what they would like beenox haven't implemented any of them proving they are lazy and don't give a sh*t about us or this game.

You're exaggarating. Beenox literally went above and beyond adding SO many new characters and tracks (for free). They gave us all of the original CTR and CNK content and on top of that, so much more as pure fan service. Who cares if they add a crate too, it was meant to be a joke and give players an incentive to search for hidden collectibles in tracks to unlock it. It's optional. Why can't you be happy with what they've already done for the game?

 

Here's what I think about the remake: It's great, not perfect but one of the best out there in terms of content. It wasn't full price, it was decently priced as well. Yes, the online has flaws and isn't as polished as it could be however overall, CTR:NF was made with love and you're oblivious if you can't see that. You are free to dislike the game but some of these points simply aren't valid and give off the wrong impression.

 

My personal gripe with the game is that it's 30FPS. Here's hoping a superior version will eventually show up for PS5. 

Edited by PeachXHime
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...