Crash Nitro Kart

Although it's hard to deny games are developing further into an interesting narrative medium in their own right, that doesn't give Vicarious Visions the right to subject humanity to 15-minute rendered cut-scenes of backstory in Crash Nitro Kart. Its excesses in this regard do, however, give you the chance to play "Where else could the cinema budget have gone?" during the kart-racing sequences. This mental exercise may, in fact, be more fun than the actual kart racing.

To get you started, a few things to consider: Visions could have been more imaginative with the weapons, which though numerous in appearance, offer almost zero variation among missiles, mines, and force fields. It also could have improved the graphics, which exemplify the worst aspects of multiplatform blandness.

Or it could have improved the A.I., which seems to give up halfway through the last lap. For the first couple of races this feels great, as if you'd just barely snatched victory from the gaping maw of defeat -- on your first time playing the game, too. But the fourth or fifth time you beat these "impossible odds" to win the trophy, you may be tempted to stop dead before the finish line and see how far the CPU drivers' courtesy extends. The one bright spot here would be the handling: If the powersliding control is something you fight more than something you use, well, it was kind of the developers to provide at least some form of opponent.

Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in XBox Nation.