Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D is one of the handful of major studio games now available for the iPhone (or iPod Touch) through the newly released App Store. It's a decent time waster, sure, which is what you'd expect from a cell phone game, but given the power of the iPhone and the hefty $9.99 price tag, this game is a waste of time and opportunity. I would wait a bit longer for more impressive, and better controlling games to come around.

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A pocket review for a pocket game:

Nitro Kart 3D is a rather quick port of "Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart" for the Xbox, PS2, GameCube, and N-Gage. Like the other kart game on the iPhone (Cro-Mag Rally), controlls are stripped down to the bare essentials. Acceleration is automatic, or rather, perpetual, and all the player must do is steer by tilting the phone side to side.

The control can be frustrating and take quite a while to get used to. Not being in control of acceleration feels a bit strange as well, like being the passenger in a car and leaning over to take over the wheel. I don't think developers have gotten a handle on the iPhone's accelerometer yet, and so using it will feel a bit flimsy until the programmers have it hammered down.

Controlling the karts always felt sloppy to me, but it can be managed by adjusting the sensitivity. Game modes available include standard "Cup" mode, a pretty simple Story mode, and Time Trials. There is no multiplayer.

This is one of the very first 3D games for the iPhone, so it's hard to gauge the graphics, but from what I've seen of other games they're already a tad sub-par. Textures in the distance appear to manifest before your eyes, and there is a very annoying attempt at a lens flare effect that has watered down to nothing but an indistinct series of blobs that do nothing but block your view.

Again, for the money, you should expect more. This may be one of the best 3D iPhone games, but that's not saying much. Treat this game like a launch title and keep your distance until the real games show up.

The game will feature 40 different action-oriented games in which Crash and his friends are striving to take the multi-million dollar prize. Along the way players find out the race's sponsor, Viscount Devil has an intention to use the race to find an ancient lost city to land one wish. Dr. Neo Cortex makes an appearance in the game too and of course is back to his ways of trying to rule the world.

Crash Boom Bang is expected to release October 2006 for the Nintendo DS.

Atari has released a new set of screenshots this morning of Crashday. Take a look below.

]]> Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:54:00 -0600 Tim Grube http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_crash_tag_team_racing_xbox1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_crash_tag_team_racing_xbox1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_crash_tag_team_racing_xbox1# This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

Vivendi Universal had several titles on the E3 show floor and one of them was the newly announced Crash Tag Team Racing for Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Nintendo DS. We had a chance to go hands-on with the Xbox version and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t all that impressive.

To start things off, the game is being developed by Radical Entertainment who also developed Simpson’s Hit & Run. The game has a cool concept by allowing the player to switch off between being the gunner or the driver, but it had several problems that totally confused me.

When you first start the race, you take control of the vehicle. Half the time I wanted to just drive the futuristic vehicle because it was much easier to do that than being the gunner. The technology they built is called, “Clashing”. You press a button and you can switch between the driver and the gunner that is positioned on top of the vehicle. Driving is self explanatory that resembles many games on the market. Being a gunner puts you in control of blowing your opponents into pieces. You have an arsenal of weapons to choose from, but targeting the opponents is rather difficult and tedious. You have a zoom function, but when you have the AI take control of the driving, he acts like he is drunk. Hence, why I like to drive instead of the being the gunner.

There were many slowdowns in the build, but I’m sure it will be fixed in the final product. At least, I hope. Graphics were ok, but not the best compared to other titles. You’ll be able to play multiplayer with up to eight players VIA system link. No word for online play.

I wasn’t too thrilled. I expected Crash to come out with a bang. Hopefully Vivendi Universal will tweak some of its problems and we’ll have a solid product in the end. It is due out this fall. ]]> Wed, 18 May 2005 18:29:28 -0500