It would be wise to save your wumpa coins for now, I have 15k so I can buy the new stuff in the pit shop, some things will have a nitro effect, if you use the part/character that has the nitro effect your nitro bar in the grand prix will faster fill up and unlock more stuff :).

On the third of July the grand prix start so in less than two days :).  Someone also found out that we atleast get grand prix till end of december and it will change each month so spyro will be in september :).

I was very desperate for a kart racing game on the PS4 platform, Team Sonic Racing seemed to offer less than the previous Sonic racing game, so I passed on that and decided to get CTR Nitro Fueled. Will still most likely get Team Sonic Racing later when it is heavily discounted.

Having never played the original CTR, resulted in me starting off the game in hard mode and getting absolutely wrecked.  After losing a bunch of times on the first race, I gave up on hard mode for the time being. There was just no way for me to progress. For the Adventure/Story mode and for character skin unlocks, you need to come in first place in a race in order to unlock the next race and progress. I was very surprised by the difficulty because for most games, the hard setting is usually very doable, or at least not really tough for a new player. Needless to say, I had to drop to medium difficulty and actually learn how to play.

I do enjoy the game and am happy with my purchase. For being a remake, the racing/mechanics seem to have held up pretty good and the visuals are quite nice. Sound track is good and I believe you can also set it to the Original soundtrack from the ps game. The game seems to be very skill based and I just love the power sliding triple boosting mechanic, even though it has to be done pretty much all the time for optimal play. You really have to learn the tracks and all the shortcuts. I see myself trying to complete hard mode in the near future. It has really grown on me and I prefer it to Mario Kart. Though Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is definitely better particularly for playing multiplayer locally or online 2p coop especially with new players since it has steering assist and auto acceleration. Like another has said, MK8 deluxe is newb/casual friendly CTR really isn't.

Some negatives for me - the racing stats only come from the characters, and there's only 3 types of character stats, balanced, speed and acceleration. Karts are just for decoration. It's not that big of a deal but worth mentioning, and if I did any research I probably would have known that before buying. Also another negative is the low amount of Wumpa coins earned per race when compared to the amount required to unlock a skin/cart.  Wumpa coins can only be earned while connected to the game servers and the game servers determine the amount earned. Though once a day there seems to be a considerable boost in earnings when racing online for the first hour or so. The duration of the boost seems both timed and quantity based, whatever comes first, 5000 or so coins earned or 1 hour elapsed, then the boost ends. Not really sure on the exact specifics of that.  You're Wumpa coin earnings are at the whim of Activision it appears. They'll probably start doing MTX and sell coin packs soon enough(which sucks and explains why races give 20-80 coins when not boosted depending on the track while skins are 2500 and karts are 4000ish). The online is kinda meh, only single races are possible atm and it also lacks 2 player co-op online.

Anyways, CTR Nitro Fueled definitely scratches the challenging/skills based kart racing itch that Mario Kart couldn't, but I'll always long for a Modnation Racers type kart racer with custom level creation.

Technically you have 4.

Crash being the average gamer who doesn't know where to put his stats so all his stats are are the same.

Tiny/Dingodile being 'Kart has to go fast' so their speed stats are full

Coco/N.Gin being the smarter ones and choose to go for accelartion

And at last you have the ones who can't drive like Polar (who even has his driving book upside down) and go for full Turn speed stats.

In the original game you only had one kart and the stats are based on the 'lore' of the characters.

I am fine with the wumpa coins for the moment and I have basically unlocked everything that I want.

What's going to make the game potentially great is the grand prix because I am sure you will also unlock bonus wumpa coins.

The online I agree with but not sure what they can do, I love the idea of racing with no power ups and cups but people log out frequently so how fun will a cup be.

Edit: Oh yeah this week this will online stuff like online ranking so it is possible you will race against people who played it a lot or who are on the same skill level.

I agree that it would be nice if there were karts that changed a characters speed class. So you could play with a character you like without being restricted to specific stats. Though I like Polar, Crash and Penta so that's Turning, Balanced and Speed covered for me.

The addition of the online leaderboards in the next update will make online more meaningful, other than farming wumpa coins.

I like that the heavy characters are more useful in CTR. In most games of this kind they're a bit crappy as their top speed is outweighed by their poor recovery when hit by items and poor handling, but here there's more balance between classes.

Yeah and Peta Penguin!!  Some tracks especially time trials are better for Heavy classes.

It took 5-6 tries to beat N'trophy on Tiny's arena with coco but beating Oxide seemed I had to drive like a master but then I changed to Pinguin and did it in one try.

This will be it for the first grand prix, it will go live tomorow around 12am GMT (so basically 4 July in the morning in Europe).

Overall it looks fine except for the Champion kart, only the top 5% best drivers will get it. I personally hate it because I believe I can get it but even when I win it I hate it that 95% of the people will not get it.   

Eh I'm still not sure on the time. From my understanding July 3rd 12am is the beginning of July 3rd, not the end. So it would be Wednesday morning, or roughly 10 hours from now.

Well funny 12 AM is so confusing because for some 12 AM is midday for others it is midnight and some say it doesn't exist because after 11.59 AM it is 00.00 not 12.00.  So yeah that's why everyone should use 24.00.   We will see I hope it is tomorrow ^^'.

On the Activision blog post it says "5:00 PM PDT, July 2" so yeah it starts in 4 and a half hours. They should use 24 hour clock. 00:00 on July 3rd is a lot less confusing, you know it's the beginning of the day then and not the end lol.