Oh look what I got to play this weekend at London MCM. (This pic was taken at the end of the day when they were packing up if you were curious).
This was one of the older builds, the one when Electron Avenue and Clockwork Wumpa were first shown, which I think was the second public build? You could chose from those courses, along with Papu Pyramid and Sewer Speedway. They also had a newer build on the big stage (It had Customisation in it) and were running Crash Cove and Tiger Temple time trials.
The basic idea was the split the queue into 2 groups of 8, the winner of those 2 races then go onto the main stage for a head-to-head lap time trial (In arcade mode, no time trial in the build they had), with the winner getting a Playstation Hat.
...Let's just say if anyone else was at MCM and saw a guy in a Spyro the Dragon kigurumi that was basically dominating the races as Pura... yeah, that was me. I think I did 20-30 sessions over the whole weekend, I practised the original on the vita in the queue, I came first in every race I was in and I set both the convention time trial records on both Crash Cove and Tiger Temple for the whole weekend (A 27:49 on Crash Cove and a 32:85 on Tiger Temple, I will say. When you make your time trial competition the fastest lap? You can bet I'm going to exploit all the game mechanics, including throwing the first lap entirely to let the AI get far ahead so I don't have to worry about their missiles and bombs, and I can basically chain Aku Masks for the fastest possible speed.)
But suffice to say, very satisfied with this. I had my PS Vita with CTR installed that I played in the queue to see how it compared, it's pretty close. Any differences I feel might have just been because of set-up differences with slight delay on the controller to the TV Screen. Eventually I adjusted and I was basically going about as fast as I could on the PS Vita as I could in Nitro Fueled (I was able to set a 26:79 on PS Vita Crash Cove as a best in comparison, so add to slight stage nerves the games basically line up.) All the main shortcuts seem to be there (The sewer jump obviously, Papu Papu's key ones including the giant cut around the final corner that the Oxide ghost does, that's back.
And the Crash Nitro Kart courses, which I wasn't as familiar with due to playing less Nitro Kart, also played like a charm as well. Electron Avenue in particular is a great showcase of how nuts you can go with the Reserves System. There's a lot of boost panels there that gives the white flames (You can see it well in that Coco video of Polar Pass that was uploaded a few days earlier.) Electron Avenue also has a lot of Super Boost Panel jumps to get it going, and with good usage of maximising your Drift Turbos to keep that boost going... well, you know how we had all those videos of press people completing Electron Avenue in 5 minutes Plus?
If you know the mechanics, you can go so much faster than that, my personal best with the weekend was a 4:04, a Sub-4 minutes run of Electron Avenue is certainly possible, that run probably would have done it if it wasn't for a N.Trophy Clock.
Other weird things of note that I guess won't be in the final version.
- There was the one time I got an Aku Aku Mask in first place.
- There was also that time I got a Warp Orb in first place (Yeah, I'll commit kamikaze, thanks)
- The only real bugs were some weird jump collision physics with certain slopes (Sewer Speedway had a bit, espicially in an answer I feel the Sewer Jump shortcut, hitting the wall and landing in a weird way pointing to the right, and sometime you lost all momentum landing in the weird bumps between Tiger Temple, these probably have already been fixed in later builds.)
- If you are really far ahead, the Warp Orbs actually give up chasing you eventually (This probably will be fixed, but in all honesty? I sorta wish it wasn't, if you are that far enough ahead already the Warp Orbs give up, it's not going to be actually change any positions at that point, so you should enjoy the clean race just for being that good).
- There was one weird T-Posing Polar in the lobby screen once. That was amusing. Most certainly will be fixed. Only saw it once all weekend.
And now to wait until the game comes out to play more... and it's actually a bit further beyond that for me because I'll be on holiday when the game releases and won't be back until July, ah, c'est la vie.
