At this point, you’ve no doubt heard about how great Beenox’s remake of Crash Team Racing is. The remake, which includes content from Crash Nitro Kart and is entitled Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, is a nearly perfect example of how old games should be made new again while adding a plethora of extra features to the base game.

However, we’re not here to give you a review of CTR. (For the record, if we did, it would probably be a 9/10.) Instead, we’re going to heap praise upon the addition of the Grand Prix and its release timing.

For the uninitiated, CTR’s Grand Prix is a series of limited-time modes which encourage players to complete different sets of challenges in order to earn rewards throughout the season. For lack of a better term, this is CTR’s version of a Battle Pass.

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It’s not too often you hear the content of a Battle Pass being lauded. The rewards which can be earned in the Battle Pass of many games are often underwhelming – at least according to those who purchase them – and the progression systems are sometimes broken and unachievable. This makes it essential that your game’s Battle Pass is either stellar, or really cheap.

Fortunately for Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fuled, their version of the Battle Pass is both. In fact, it’s phenomenal AND free.

For starters, CTR’s Grand Prix begins with a forced cinematic with two over-the-top chickens, a fitting character choice considering nearly all of the game’s characters are animalistic, named Chick and Stew acting as announcers for the new season. They’ll walk you through what the Grand Prix is all about and may even make you chuckle a bit – even if your chuckling is filled with the disdainful groans over all the puns.

A new, never-before-seen track is also provided, for free, with each new season of the Grand Prix.

Next, players will see a screen with a variety of challenges to complete. There are Quick Challenges, which reset quite often, as well as Daily, Weekly, Themed, and Pro Challenges. These challenges can range from something as simple as playing a match with a certain character, to collecting so many of a certain item. They range from effortless to absurdly difficult. In return for these challenges players will receive differing levels of Nitro Points that fill up the Nitro Gauge and unlock special items.

The aforementioned items include a variety of skins, decorations, new karts, and even unlock characters with varying statistics in the game. Multiple tiers can be unlocked to make sure that players are receiving big rewards fairly often, with many different smaller rewards in between.

CTR’s Grand Prix is a phenomenal addition and a great free offering for lovers of our orange buddy’s kart racing success. However, what makes this mode so excellent is its release timing.

When we received the game from Activision, we immediately hopped in and completed the game’s story mode in a ridiculously quick amount of time. Though we may never QUITE reach that coveted (and “Very Rare”) Platinum Trophy on PlayStation’s ecosystem, we also had a tremendous amount of fun playing the different Battle Modes, Time Trials, and Online Matchmaking. In fact, we had so much fun that we couldn’t put the game down or play anything else for a solid week after its release. It was inevitable that CTR would remain on our hard drives for the near future and get booted up for the occasional Cup attempt, online race, or even a split screen match among friends and family. But other than that, we were basically done with it for a while.

And then, a mere ten days after release, came the Grand Prix.

Crash’s Grand Prix immediately put us back into the action with a whole new set of goals to accomplish. Before, we kart raced our heads off attempting to set new course records and beat all those filthy bastards online until our fingers were blistered.

Now, everything was in a whole new light. Each course was new and challenging. We fought for crates we never even knew were there in an attempt to get today’s daily challenge. And we definitely all proudly displayed the coveted Tawna character the second she was unlocked.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled’s Grand Prix (let’s just officially call it a Battle Pass, okay?) could not have come at a better time, with better features, or at a better price in order to make us fully revel in orange, fuzzy, kart racing glory. We think there might even be other games that should take some notes.

A retail code for Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled was provided by Activision, but this made no impact on the writer’s opinion.

