Crash Tag Team Racing
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| Crash Tag Team Racing | ||||||||||||||||||
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 Team up for double the trouble.
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Crash Tag Team Racing is a racing video game that was developed by Vancouver-based Radical Entertainment and published by Sierra Entertainment for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and PlayStation Portable, it's the last Crash game released for the Xbox and GameCube, as well as the first Crash game to be on the PSP, it's a spin-off game in the Crash series, as well as the 3rd racing game in the series.
Good Qualities
- A large open world with platforming sections and without any linearity.
- Lots of weapons and this time there's one special weapon that's different with each character.
- As the name hints, you can merge your car with opponent, where the one that clashes gets his/her car transformed into a weapon of the other player's car, you can unclash at any time from the other racer.
- The driver and gunner can swap positions at any time. The turret weapon can also be swapped depending on the clashed drivers.
- First racing game in the series that has battle arena in single player mode as well.
- Lots of fun mini-games like bowling and skeet shoot.
- It has a large amount of content for a 2005 game.
- Each of the 8 playable drivers has their own unique turret weapon with their own strengths and weaknesses:
- Crash has a Wumpa Gun which fires Wumpa Fruit at his targets; has a decent fire rate, and middling damage.
- Cortex has a Plasma Launcher that is launched like a bomb and does AoE damage; it is chargeable, but suffers from poor accuracy.
- Pasadena has a Spinning Tornado Lightning launcher that fires electrified bombs at enemies; has decent damage, and can bounce off the edges of the track.
- Crunch has the Hot Rivet Chain Gun that fires hot rivets at his targets; has high ammo capacity, fast fire rate, and decent damage, but takes a second to warm up.
- Coco uses Sticky Magnet Bombs that attach to opponents before detonating; damaging when they explode, but sharp impacts can knock them off beforehand.
- Nina's weapon is the Plasma Shotgun, which unleashes powerful energy blasts in one concentrated shot; very damaging up close, but a slow rate of fire, and diminishing accuracy at long range.
- N. Gin's weapon is simply a Missile Launcher; slow fire rate and small capacity, but extremely dangerous both at range and up close, can potentially one-shot an opponent with a direct hit!
- Von Clutch launches Radioactive Bomblets, similar to Cortex's Plasma Ball; somewhat inaccurate, but the bomblets roll down the track before exploding, a cluster of them is launched instead of just one concentrated blast, and decent explosion radius.
- The "Die-O-Rama" clips are hilarious clips where Crash dies in some insane fashion.
- Although there's less characters, you can now switch your car in the game with any car.
- Humorous character dialogue, peppered with some funny 4th wall breaking to boot.
- Introducing Stunt mode, a mode where you make stunts and moves with your car and try to make the highest score possible.
- Very fun multiplayer.
- Each character has their own unique costume that Crash can unlock for them. Crash himself has tons of outfits of his own, some of which even reference characters from Indiana Jones and Star Trek.
- Plenty of stuff to unlock, like weapon upgrades, new vehicles, costumes, etc.
- Although not as memorable as Twinsanity, the soundtrack is quite catchy. Radical Entertainment chose well when they decided to combine Spiramouth (composers of Twinsanity) and Marc Baril (composer of The Simpsons: Hit and Run and Crash of The Titans and Mind Over Mutant) together.
- System link on Xbox and PS2.
- Decent graphics that are pretty detailed and colorful, despite being sub par at times.
Bad Qualities
- Cutscenes can be really lame, especially the final ones.
- Too easy, even on Hard difficulty; you can win races in the single player mode by attaching yourself to a CPU opponent (bonus points if you chose N. Gin) and just being the gunner without hardly ever driving. The only reason to play on Hard is for the 50% bonus payouts.
- Toilet humor, which is considered low-brow comedy.
- Speaking of the humor, sometimes it relies on animal cruelty (e.g. shooting chickens and ducks at the shooting gallery minigame), which is very disturbing and not at all funny.
- The PS2 version lacks 4-player split screen for some reason.
- The PSP and PS2 versions have extra content, however you can only unlock them by linking both versions together.
- Some characters were flanderized or derailed, something that would carry over to Crash of The Titans and Crash: Mind Over Mutant:
- Crash went from a fun-loving and goofy, but brave bandicoot to a stupid sadomasochist;
- Coco went from an intelligent little girl who created some cool inventions to an annoying know-it-all;
- Crunch went from a big brother figure to Crash and Coco who fought Dr. Cortex alongside them to just a parody of Mr. T, who constantly gives random pieces of advice, parodying his appearance in PSAs;
- Dr. Cortex went from an egotistic, but efficient evil scientist to a self-defeating and idiotic comic relief;
- Dr. N. Gin went from being Cortex' crazy assistant/mechanist to a complete lunatic;
- Nina went from a smart and mischievous teenager who fought along with her dad/uncle to a spoiled brat, obsessed with her looks and winning kart races.
- The turret weapons are unbalanced; some are next to useless, like Cortex's Plasma Ball and Coco's Sticky Magnet Bombs. N. Gin's Missile Launcher on the other hand is so overpowered that one can unlock his first car and easily win EVERY race just using him.
- Platforming in the over-world is extremely basic and won't provide any significant challenge. It also makes no sense having more platforming in a game that's supposed to be about racing.
- Most of the special items not only are uncreative, but unbalanced, especially if you are fused with another vehicle because they have a great range and can destroy up to 4 cars if you use them properly.
- Poor and nonsensical plot. Crash Bandicoot games have almost never been big on story, but this is just moronic even for Crash standards for several reasons:
- First, when did Von Clutch lose his Black Power Gem? Furthermore, why isn't there more emphasis on it if it is so important?
- The other characters don't really contribute to the plot outside of cutscenes, other than just needing help to unlock their respective vehicles.
- One of the playable characters, Pasadena Opossum, is new to the series, but she is given no character development.
- In the "Follow the Wumpa Whip" cutscene, everybody blames Crash for stealing the power gems, even though he recovered the gems, and they have no proof of how he could've stolen them. Willie reveals that he stole all of the gems, but he never gives a reason why he stole it in the first place.
- It is hinted through conversations with Park Drones that Von Clutch's Motorworld has really poor working conditions, but that isn't a proper explanation as to why Willie stole the Gems, and it is the workers themselves who are subjected to said conditions.
- Even more idiotic: how could Crash have stolen the Gems before he even arrived at the Park?
- Willie not only is a pretty weak villain due to the lack of background, but is easily defeated by Cortex in a pretty anti-climatic way (this is the only main villain in the series who Crash doesn't defeat).
- The biggest plot-hole that makes the story redundant is the ending cutscene, "I Hate Chicken": Von Clutch shuts down due to losing his Black Power Gem, which acts as his heart, essentially. However, Crash accidentally coughs it up, and it bounces across the ground, back into Von Clutch's system, thus reactivating him. The problems with this is that if Von Clutch can be reactivated that easily, then what was the point of all the drama up to this point?
- This game has one of the weakest final bosses in the series, in fact it shouldn't be even considered a final battle. Once you get into Astro Land and see Willie, you don't confront him in a race, you just have to pull a lever to stop the rocket that he is using to escape.
- The Skins, while a nice addition, are limited since every character, except Crash, only gets one skin.
- There's only 4 maps in Battle Mode, and in the PS2 version, you only have 2 maps to start with, and for the other 2, you must link a PSP with a PS2, which means if you don’t have a PSP and own the PS2 version, you’ll be stuck with only 2 maps.
- The camera in the hub world is really janky and sometimes doesn’t help you during platforming sections, which could cause cheap deaths.
Trivia
- This is the first game in the series to feature skins as a concept.
- The sound the coins make when picked up is recycled from The Simpsons: Hit & Run.
- The game was also going to be like The Simpsons: Hit and Run, another game by Radical Entertainment, with a bunch of free roam levels and more activities.
- Crash Tag Team Racing was chosen as the Best 2006 Video Game in the Nickelodeon magazine, and Crash was chosen as the Best Character, winning a total of 2 Golden Thumb Awards.
- This is the first game in the Crash Bandicoot series to be rated higher than E in in the ESRB scale and higher than 3+ in the PEGI scale.
- However, Cortex still refers to the game as being rated E in one of his voice clips, likely due to the recording being made before the game was actually rated.
- In each track of the game, except in the PlayStation Portable version, the music changes after two-thirds of the race. Each track has a final lap for racing in 1st & 2nd place, racing from 3rd to 5th place and racing in 6th to 8th place.
- In Crash of the Titans, Tiny Tiger breaks the fourth wall by complaining that he wasn't invited to "the last game," referring to Tag Team Racing, though Boom Bang! was released in between Tag Team Racing and Crash of the Titans, where Tiny does feature in.
- In one cutscene, Von Clutch breaks the fourth wall by telling the Bandicoots, Cortex, N. Gin and Nina, "I have all your games!" They just look at each other, confused.
- From here on out until Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, Crash "talks" through gibberish noises, courtesy of Jess Harnell, who was also Lo-Lo in Wrath of Cortex and Spyro in Spyro: A Hero's Tail.
- Remixes of Crash Twinsanity's theme can be heard at certain times in the game.
- Around the time the music in Happily Ever Faster or Deep Sea Driving end;
- During Tomb Town;
- "Critter Clobber" mini-game;
- Ending cutscene "I Hate Chicken";
- Credits.
- The Tragic Kingdom battle arena plays the Rooftop Rampage theme from Twinsanity.
- This would be the last console Crash game to be released in Japan until the release of the N. Sane Trilogy.
- A Japanese model of Crash was made for their release. He still does the infamous Crash Dance, when standing still in adventure mode or in a race.
- Enabling the Japanese Crash cheat code will cause the original Crash to have minor glitches like: Crash's pupils float above his head and his shadow shows him in the "T" position sticking his arms out. (The "T" position is a pose that 3D character models stand in when they have not been given any movements to perform.)
When Willie gives himself away, he's standing next to Nina, but when he tries to convince everyone that he's the culprit, he's standing in front of them. In the same scene, Coco is nowhere to be found.
- Chick Gizzard Lips and Stew are parodies of Howard Cosell and George Foreman, respectively. They are sports commentators with the same kind of voices and speech patterns.
- Many of the game's vehicles were re-used in Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2. In addition, Crash's Crikey greatly resembles the jeep from Wrath of Cortex.
- Aku Aku makes a cameo appearance in one section of Tiki Turbo. When you pass through this section, the sound that plays in the first few games when an Aku Aku Mask is collected can be heard. However, he was intended to have more than just a cameo in the game, as he would have had appeared in the pause menu and at the end of a race.
- In this game, the spelling of N. Gin's name has changed to N-Gin.
- One of the things that Coco may say if damaged during a race is, "Aw, derriberries!" This is a reference to Debi Derriberry, who has done Coco's voice ever since Wrath of Cortex.
- The clashing feature bears a strong resemblance to Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, as in this game, two characters occupy the same vehicle.
- This was the first Crash game to have elements named after Wumpa Fruit, but not include them as a collectible directly.
- There are a lot of references to The Simpsons: Hit & Run, which is another game developed by Radical Entertainment. The people walking around the park say many lines from that game, and one of the game's text hints is: "Have you played Hit & Run? Man, that was a great game." Pasadena O'Possum also says the line: "Man, this video game su-uuucks!" if she loses a race, which is also said by Homer Simpson in Hit & Run.
- The Nega Crash outfit is based on Evil Crash from Twinsanity.
- There were originally supposed to be more than eight playable characters.
- There are a handful of Star Trek references in the game such as Nina's quote: "Warp factor 10" and the Star Crash outfit that resembles a Star Trek uniform.
- A few more racing and free roam levels were going to be added, but then got cancelled.
- Some of the game's music pieces are based on classical compositions and popular songs.
- The music when racing in Tiki Turbo during normal mode is based on "He's A Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean film series.
- The music when racing in Once Upon a Tire during 6th to 8th place is based on "Carnival of the Animals - VII. Aquarium" by Camille Saint-Saëns.
- The music when racing in Evilocity during 3rd to 5th place is a spooky rendition of "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky.
- The music when racing in Labrea Car Pits is based on "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky.
- The music when racing in Tire & Ice is based on some Russian folk songs such as "Kalinka" when normal mode, and "Korobeiniki" (better known as "Type-A" from Tetris) when final lap at 1st and 2nd place,
- Additionally when normal mode, "Hungarian Dance No. 5" by Johannes Brahms and "Trepak" from the famous ballet The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky also included.
- Finally, the music when at the end of Grand Prix, it is an a capella cover of "Pomp and Circumstance Marches" by Edward Elgar.
- In the cutscene where Willie Wumpa Cheeks confesses his crime of stealing the Power Gems from the park and Von Clutch's Black Heart Power Gem, He says "And I would've succeeded too if it weren't for you meddling Bandicoots!", which is a reference to "And I would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!", which is a famous line heard in the famous Hanna-Barbera & Warner Bros. Animation cartoon, Scooby-Doo.
- With the exception of Willie, all characters who debuted in this game wouldn't appear again until Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled.
- This was the final game in the Crash Bandicoot series for the Nintendo GameCube, and the Xbox.
- This is also the first Crash Bandicoot game on the PlayStation Portable.
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