CTR:NF Observations & Thoughts

hey i didn't actually buy the game and played it for free for like 25 hours so you can draw your own conclusions from that

i will talk about the game from the perspective of release versions i played, just because something gets added/fixed/whatever doesn't mean it's acceptable to ship a game clearly unfinished
	if they do fix things good on them, too bad the game has potential to die out before then

I'll try to list issues with the remake in order of importance yea yea

if you ever try to claim that something isn't an issue "because it was in the original" i think you're an idiot. the original had glaring issues, why stay faithful to it when you have a chance to improve upon it? if you want to play the same game again; play the same game again

if you're some weird youtube content creator, i can't make a video out of this (don't and won't own the game) so you might aswell steal every point listed here idc

--- Glossary stuff

MT - Mini-turbo, the game teaches you what this is

Reserves - Invisible counter that goes up with any types of boosts you do and ticks down every frame of the game. As long as you maintain the counter above 0, you can drive your kart at maximum speed obtainable only from both types of turbo pads. If they run out, you're put back to regular speed.

U-Turn - Diagonal down input + Square, allows turning much tighter than normal.

Blue Fire - In the original known as Ultimate Sacred Fire, a type of overclocked speed you can only obtain from Super Turbo Pads. Maintained with reserves.

--- Lack of physics

The biggest difference compared to the original (from here on referred to as OG), is that NF doesn't have a physics engine. I mean obviously it does but here's what I mean;

Terrain doesn't make a difference in driving. Atleast at full speeds, which is awfully reminiscent of CNK. At full speed, regardless of whether you're on an up- or downhill, they don't have any effect on your speed. This is a massive mistep, because jumping on shit is the core of OG CTR's gameplay, not the drifting or boosting systems or whatever.
	Very few racing games can hold up without a physics engine to increase depth, and they usually have to cram the mechanics themselves full of nuance. (See; Sonic Transformed boost stacks or anything in F-Zero GX)
	Regarding OG CTR however, it is a game originally designed with physics in mind. This is evident from how most tracks have a million bumps or ramps to maneuver around and jump off of. Downhills, big or small, also increase speed you can then retain by bunnyhopping after. Even uphills are cleared faster by doing multiple jumps on them, as each consecutive one gives you more horizontal momentum.
	In NF, all this is removed and aiming at specific parts of tracks stops mattering. The game turns autoscrolly and there is no reason to go off of the optimal racing line. In OG, you would sometimes have to not follow the optimal racing line, because off to the side there may be a bump that gives you more downhill speed. You need to be more observant of your surroundings, instead of blindly racing the same lines. Or if the optimal line gets blocked, you could probably make the time back up better by hitting a specific other part.

- Drifts and handling

Not only are physics different in NF, but base kart handling has been changed drastically. Infact, trying to play NF with any of your previous understanding from OG is completely useless and will fuck you over in the long run.
	When you enter drifts in NF, you're forced into an angle dependent on your choice of character type. Most character types aren't able to drift in straight lines anymore, thus making drifting more committal and less freeform. In OG, you're able to control your drift's line much more accurately from the getgo, even allowing for snaking at times if you needed to build more reserves. In NF, only Speed characters can reasonably do this.
	Exiting drifts outwards has also been changed. Exiting inwards is only slightly different, but not enough to matter. Karts in OG have more weight to them and both enter and exit smoothly. In NF however, they made things unintuitive by having your kart violently snap out of drifts instead of "exiting" smoothly. The effect changes depending on your character type, but is most evident with Speed type characters. They snap out of drifts outwards in a practically horizontal line to the side. Snapping has odd effects in character type balance, too.

- Jumps

NF doesn't let you buffer jumps from mid-air anymore. Which actually doesn't matter that much, because without a physics engine you're not going to gain increased speed off of downhills, anyway. You can however still retain speed through offroads by jumping, but your efficiency at doing so is dependant on either timing or mashing skill. Arguably more "skill-based", but feels far worse and removes a layer of control from you. With it, mid-air mini-turbos are gone, removing both a layer of depth and making drifts far more committal, since you can't slightly delay them from seeing a bad jump anymore. (Mid-air mini-turbos are being able to jump with a drift, so you can do MTs mid-air and get a landing boost. This input is done in OG by buffering a drift mid-air and your kart will bounce upon landing.)
	Being in the air functions in a new way in NF. Your turning is increased massively, even if you've only been in the air for a little. It's really annoying on downhills, because due to the lack of a physics engine, you don't gain lower trajectory jump off of jumping on a downhill anymore. This means you gain regular height by jumping directly up, and the track you're supposed to land on is lower in relation and now you've got increased airtime and increased turning. Oxide Station down spiral and N. Gin Labs turbo tunnel practically require you to jump first and turn as late as you can for a drift. Otherwise you're prone to hitting a wall quick. This was never an issue in the OG, because it both didn't increase turning mid-air, but also because drifts don't harshly enforce angles. Increased air turning does have its benefits for cutting corners better, but catches you offguard for a good while if you keep applying OG logic to the game. Overall, makes jumping itself another committal mechanic.
	With the lack of a physics engine, Beenox realized "oh wait we can't make things work without scripts" and added scripted events all over the game. The first notable instance of this comes with nosedives that activate after you've been in the air for x amount of time. It's an instantenous forced 30-degree-or-so down angle that also gives you a ton of downwards momentum to force landings. Obviously, this first removes any jump momentum control the OG had (not that this game has physics even still) and forces you away from doing certain skips.
	In OG, the way you jumped off of ramps would affect your momentum off of them. If you drive through a ramp and jump at the end, you'll have more vertical momentum than you would, if you instead hopped a couple times through the ramp and preserved more horizontal speed. NF forcing a nosedive lessens the importance of how you take a jump beforehand.
	Increased nosedive speed feels nice for as long as it lasts, but because you can't chain it to landing on a downhill anymore (rip Roo's Tubes), all your gained momentum comes to an abrupt stop, looks awkward, and means it has no synergy with anything. Most of the movement in NF seems disjointed and you can't fluently make it work together with itself anymore. This is why emphasizing the importance of OG's physics engine is so important. It's what chains every movement mechanic together. Your reserves, the terrain of the track, your previous momentum, angle, timing of jumps, everything matters every moment. Without something to tie it all together, NF feels incredibly flat in comparison.
	The second instance of scripts you'll notice are very specific spots in tracks, like the now infamous Sewer Speedway shortcut. Noticing you can't actually make it with regular jump height, Beenox slapped a fucking moonjump at a random spot and called it a day. The spot seems to barely be as wide as a kart, so a lot of people are going to, and do miss it. It's also affected by previous momentum and that one spot is too long to actually get into proper here, whatever. Other tracks also have seemingly random jumps that propel you forward a ton and other wonky effects. It's all over the place and seems to vary in results depending on your previous momentum and probably literal rng for all I care. Every new time I played the game I had something new happen, none of it seems consistent and also gets frustrating when trying to optimize Time Trials. Random moonjumps can easily cost you a second with Blue Fire.

- Character types

Interestingly, NF made character balance completely ass backwards by giving Speed type characters the highest control. As previously mentioned, Speed characters can both drift in straight lines better than anyone, but as an added bonus have harsher snaps from drift exits than others.
	Drifting in straight lines is important for preserving reserves in tracks like Tiger Temple or anything with tight straight corridors. Playing with Turning characters in a tight corridor forces you into a tight turn and you don't have enough time to get a full mini-turbo out before colliding with a wall. There are also no tracks in the game with tight enough turns to warrant playing as Turning characters, especially with U-turns not losing fire anymore, so Turning characters are the ones having most trouble with maintaining reserves.
	Snapping out of drift exits also increases control for Speed characters, because it makes doing a bad drift less committal as you can immediately shoot away from an oncoming wall collision. Cancelling a drift outwards with other types doesn't move them away as much, so despite having supposedly better turn control, they can't recover from mistakes as well. Admittedly the snapping creates problems with how unpredictable it feels, but that's more on you thinking with OG logic than it being faulty.

- Collision

As tribute to NST, NF uses a similar collision system with pill hitboxes. On karts for some reason. If you land on edges (happens all the time after the pillar shortcut in Papu's Pyramid), you won't actually "land" on them proper and get a landing boost. Instead, you'll bounce forward off of it, but your jump timer gets reset again for some reason. So despite never properly landing you can't chain it to get a 250 landing boost, which would atleast help. You can manually replicate this effect sometimes by jumping frame perfectly(?) when landing. The kart bounces off without a landing boost and goes for another jump height count instead. Pill hitbox bouncing also applies to the tips of hills. At the end of Blizzard Bluff, you'll sometimes land on top of a hill and gently bounce off of it.
	Even after understanding the logic behind the collision system, the actual hitboxes aren't where they seem to be. Practically everything in the game seems to extend outwards with invisible collision and you have to learn each individual wall by feel. (Pyramid spiral is a good example of this, just drive against the corners and see how far out they actually go.) Some walls might have proper collision, but are hidden by props or grass or whatever Beenox felt like shoving into the track.
	Even things on the drivable portions have weird hitboxes. Oftentimes you'll find yourself jumping on a turbo ramp or a hill, and hitting a seemingly invisible wall. This seems to be caused by the end of the ramp doing something weird and treating it as a wall.
	There are also literal invisible walls all throughout the game. This feels lazy, because they could've fixed major skips from the OG game with a better checkpoint system instead of hindering movement. It also gets annoying in tracks like Hot Air Skyway or Thunder Struck, where with Blue Fire you could cut massive corners mid-air, but have to keep in mind that you they just shoved the great wall of China in the middle of an empty void to prevent you from having fun. Oh, and some tracks have invisible ceilings you can hit that lose fire lol
	Collision with other players is different from OG in that landing on people has you riding on top of them instead of jumping high in the air with a goombastomp. Messes up more delicate landings for drifts bad. Not perfect in OG, either, but your momentum coming to a halt and gaining a new jump was easier to recover with.

--- Balance

- Blue fire

As a "new" addition to the game, NF added 'Blue Fire'. It's actually the same thing as ULTIMATE SACRED FIRE from the OG game, but functions differently thanks to U-turns no longer losing fire. You also don't lose Blue Fire by doing other types of boosts anymore, meaning you can keep it up for entire tracks.
	USF and Blue Fire are both highly overclocked speed you can retain as long as you have reserves around. Reserves are obtained by doing any types of boosts throughout the track. Mini-turbos net you the most, followed by boost pads/items and landing boosts. The more turbos you do, the higher an invisible "reserves" counter goes, which keeps ticking down every frame of the game and you need to make sure it never hits zero by doing boosts consistently. The better your mini-turbos are, the more reserves you gain, too, allowing you to take better racing lines if your MTs are good. This system is largely untouched from the original, with only minor differences in the amount of reserves you gain.
	Because the speed in Blue Fire/USF is so high, you can't make most turns in the game without U-turning or quick MTs. In OG this loses USF immediately, but NF lets you get away with it. OG's USF is much more contained into specific parts of the track, which probably makes it more balanced for multiplayer.

- Tracks in relation to blue fire

In order to activate Blue Fire, you need to hit a 'Super Turbo Pad'. These are specific turbo pads that aren't denoted by anything visual. Some tracks have more of them, some less. The less you have, the bigger a problem Blue Fire becomes in terms of balance.
	When there's only around one place to obtain Blue Fire from, making mistakes anywhere after it or just plain getting hit by a Clock spells the end of the race for you. Blue Fire saves multiple seconds, at worst probably a minute over normal speed. Most tracks like this become snowbally quick, especially so when they have stage hazards like Tiny Temple. As mentioned, controlling Blue Fire doesn't give much room for leniency, both in turning or reserves. Tiny Temple has a split path with flames covering the path depending on which one was left active by a !-crate. If you're frontrunning with Blue Fire, the people behind you are more in control of your fate than you are, and should you get hit, they'll not only immediately overtake you but also gain a solid atleast-5-second lead on you by virtue of the speed difference. Tracks like Electron Avenue on the other hand are a much more enjoyable experience for everyone, because Super Turbo Pads exist all over it. Making a single mistake doesn't lose you the entire race as you can recover quickly.
	Unlike USF, Blue Fire isn't set at a constant speed and you can both decrease and increase it depending on the momentum you gain from jumps. Because the game doesn't have reliable physics and works off of probably scripted garbage everywhere, you'll get moonjumps and effectively halve your speed for a good chunk of time due to being unlucky. (Notable in Deep Sea Driving multi-ramp section.) In addendum, getting fucked by wonky hitboxes suddenly crashing you for no discernible reason lets other people snowball you for free.

- Items in relation to blue fire

Thanks to Blue Fire, frontrunning is extremely prevalent in the game. The standings are technically already decided by the spawn positions, but get set in stone during the first item crate scramble. Being in the front allows you to quickroll an item in first and protect you from whatever incoming fire could potentially happen. This is especially the case, because you can roll a Shield or Mask in first.
	With Blue Fire, being in the lead means everything as you can freely place drop items behind you without caring about anyone doing it to you. Drop items are extremely strong against Blue Fire, because controlling it doesn't have much leeway. Not only do people behind you have to take worse corners now, but some turns can potentially become borderline impossible. If anyone hits your item or even a wall out of the sheer threat of it, they'll lose Blue Fire and you're snowballing them. In first.
	Front shooting items exist, yes, but none of them are able to catch up to Blue Fire's speed. This includes the Warp Orb, oddly enough. The only bad items in first are Turbo and Bombs. Bombs should technically be great, because you can clear hazards in front with them, but since you're going at higher speed than the Bomb they don't actually do anything. Firing them backwards dicks others over quick, if you're good at manual detonation.
	The only realistic comeback item for anyone behind first is the Clock. Depending on how tight the pack is, you can snowball by using it from the immediate backline making it by far the strongest item to go for. If you're the last one to a Super Turbo Pad and use it after everyone's already gotten Blue Fire, you can leave yourself as the only person with Blue Fire and gain an easy 10-second lead.
	Clocks can be """countered""" thanks to being able to roll Shields or Masks in first though. Mask in first seems ridiculous at first, but offroad in NF is largely a non-entity when jumping over it. And against a Clock you can't predict when to use it. Shields on the other hand can be rolled in first and filled to blue with just two wumpa crates, usually within the first few corners of the track. You now have an infinitely lasting safety net against anyone using a Clock, which will not only snowball with avoiding a hit, but also lets you be the only one keeping Blue Fire, already ahead of the pack. These two items mostly decide entire games on their own, Clocks and Shields.
	Balancing Blue Fire is a tricky one due to the sheer speed of it. I'll try to keep this write-up mostly about what's in the game though, because I'm not here to fix things. If you're interested in ideas, the long and short of it is either changing how items work, increasing Super Turbo Pads in multiplayer tracks (only) or introducing a Team Mode.

- Items without Blue Fire

As ridiculous as Akus and Shields in first place are, they don't guarantee snowballing as much on tracks without Blue Fire and are more accentuated thanks to it. Without Blue Fire, front-shooting items, including the Warp Orb can now catch up to you again and you're only going to prevent getting by one item. People are mostly going to keep pace with you and you're not losing them time by forcing them on wider curves.
	However, OG CTR did not have good item balance to begin with. Item rolls were not distance-based, and nothing's changed in NF. You can tailgate someone and be able to roll Clocks just fine in both games. The less players there are, the more efficient it becomes to just linger behind someone and roll better items than them. Then use them at specific parts to win the entire race off of one interaction. Copying the old game's item "balance" wholesale spells they did not give it much thought to it. Weird, considering online's a selling point.

- No items

Removing items from a race makes online more "skill-based", but removes most elements of fun. Since there are no comeback mechanics at all, the race results are set from the spawn positions already. I won a Coco Park no items race by 0.2 seconds for having the best spawn, great entertainment. Beenox would need to make a mode that's just multiplayer Time Trial in specific for things like this.
	Either way it wouldn't be much different from just playing single player, so ideally they'd rework the entire item system from the ground up. Not that it necessarily means anything if they did, because you can't have custom item settings in private lobbies. Thanks.

- Battle mode

Public lobby battle mode item pool is some insufferable shit who thought being able to roll 2 different types of boosts all the time was a good idea what the hell. Fortunately in private lobbies you're able to change item settings however you like.
	As long as more unfair items aren't on, it's actually an overall enjoyable experience. Having an arena allowing for freeform movement makes predicting shots and controlling space fun. Unlike OG, NF doesn't suffer from lack of performance having to deload items, either. Obstacle courses are now entirely possible. Even something like TNT-only works, because of having to make reads on movement and controlling infinite space. Really fun in Lab Basement.
	Although you can make Battle Mode fun, most arenas aren't suited for bringing the best out of it. Arenas allowing high ground get messy with shooting items at people quick. Most of them are also far too big for how small the space items control is. Lab Basement and Parking Lot are practically the only ones small enough to bring out a hectic experience, but even they seem to have too little item crates to remain fun for extended matches. You can stop items from spawning if you place items in the way of it, and arenas with 4 item crates can quickly stalemate. Probably fixable with allowing item crates to spawn in either random locations or larger areas but i'm not here to fix the game whatever

--- Longevity

- More a platform than a game

As seems evident from wonky gameplay and lack of thought given to multiplayer balance, Beenox must have their priorities somewhere else. And they do, they're trying to turn NF into a platform more than a game. What do I mean?

The game is littered with unlockables regardless of their actual quality. Practically anything you do in the game rewards you somehow, whether it's with direct unlockables or just tossing coins your way to be able to buy more of them. There are also bonus systems for coins for playing at specific times (like weekends or first hour of day reset or something). The game's item shop has daily deals to keep you coming back to check it. (Admittedly really weird considering it functions like a daily login bonus but doesn't even reward you lol)
	Not only does the initial release of the game drown you in lots of added content from characters to tracks to customization garbage, the game has an entire roadmap of upcoming update content. These include even more things to refresh interest whenever an update comes out.
	Outside rewards Beenox also crammed more props into every track of the game, adding "detail". Their priorities seem to lie in adding more content to the game, rather than substance and keeping players addicted through unlockables rather than gameplay. This is a backwards approach though, because racing games both live and die on their gameplay and gameplay alone. There's no incentive to go through Beenox's forced apparently thousand-hour grind for every skin in the game if the actual "grind" isn't fun in the first place. The game also doesn't do anything to incentivize "getting good" at it, either. There are no tutorials telling you how any of the advanced techniques can be performed, despite clearly having been intentionally coded in. If you played NF (or even the OG) blind, you would have no clue on most of the things I've talked about. Lack of tutorials also perpetuates the image of kart racers as party games created by Mario Kart. If you don't teach the audience what the genre is capable of, you'll never generate interest for the masses to keep getting better at it. In addition, being dropped into an online lobby and seeing better players beat you by literal minutes leaves you with two options. You either one, get frustrated because the game doesn't tell you how to do whatever arcane bullshit they pulled off. Or two, you go online and pray the community made sufficient resources for you to learn from.

- No online leaderboards

Despite online being a major selling point, the game has no online leaderboards of any kind. Matchmaking isn't actual matchmaking, it's just based on the best connectivity to other players. The game doesn't have a ranked game mode, so playing in public lobbies becomes deathly boring quick. Most people, partially in thanks to lack of proper tutorials, are going to lose to anyone remotely competent by entire minutes. When first place finishes, the other racers get 20 (now 30) seconds to finish the race. With how strong Blue Fire is, this isn't even nearly enough time to finish. At this point most people are just going to switch lobbies to get matched with people who allow them to finish instead. Also, like, ranked mode is expected in most online games these days I'm surprised they didn't add it. People fucking love growing numbers.
	Time Trials don't have online leaderboards either (but NST's did???), which sucks even more, because TTs are what stay alive for longer than the game's servers probably will. People are still actively playing OG's Time Trials to this day. Allegedly they're being added in a later patch, but NF is easy enough that Time Trials will be reasonably optimized within a few months. Maybe they'll grab the existing ghosts from local saves who knows the game shipped bad.

- Online & Netcode

Public lobbies are not only bad for competition, but also force weird rules and waiting times on you. Before you're even allowed to play, there's a 30-second long voting time for the next map. Unlike Mario Kart or any sensible online racing game, you can't vote for a track yourself and instead need to pick from a randomly chosen pool of 3 tracks. The random button below them isn't truly random either, and just picks from the 3. A lot of the time you'll just end up playing tracks you don't want over and over. After the voting period is over, you get ANOTHER 30 seconds to change character to suit the track and jack off or something. This seems excessive, but it gets worse and I'll keep the explanation lengthy to suit. Following the waiting period is a loading screen. NF's loading screens are probably thrice as long as OG's, and owning a PS4 Pro with an SSD doesn't mean anything when another person in the lobby doesn't. Intro skipping isn't turned on by default online, so in public lobbies some jackass will watch the entire thing every time.
	When you finally enter a game, the netcode doesn't exactly make your waiting worthwhile either. I said Battle Mode was probably the most fun multiplayer option, but you can't rely on what you see on the screen. Firing items at people works as intended, but getting hit by them seems wrong. Most items you get hit by were nowhere near you at time of impact. Also trying to keep track of opponent spacing is mostly useless, since them being directly behind you could also mean they're ahead of you on their end.
	In race mode, Warp Orbs and Missiles have an incoming danger tracker to them to tell you the exact time of impact. With NF's netcode, this cannot be trusted as it'll most likely hit you by the time it shows the halfway point. Looking backwards isn't any better, as you can visibly see a Missile 3 kart-lengths behind you and it'll suddenly teleport in your face. Because you can't trust what you see, the gameplan turns into hard reads more than reactions or space control.

--- Bugs

Honestly while the game's seemingly shoddily programmed I didn't bother making a list of various bugs I encountered. There are recorded instances of save corruption, online lobbies not allowing people to refill your lobby, Battle Mode lobbies arranging teams entirely wrong. It's worth mentioning that you'll encounter something every time you play, but I'm not the one to expand on it.

--- Misc. shit

Adventure Mode now has difficulity selection, but the game doesn't necessarily become more "difficult", just more luck-based. Playing on Hard, the AI will keep using more and more items to potentially mess you up and not much else. If you can escape the pack you're as good to go as ever. It only serves as a nuisance and the only time luck is an important factor is Oxide's challenge in Hard mode. He starts in front and is tough to overtake, but if you get a good item you win instantly. If you get hit by anything instead you might aswell restart. Relic times are also tied to difficulity. Some people complain about it, but it makes sense to me.
	You're able to switch skins/characters/karts on the fly in Adventure Mode now. Skins specifically have a sometimes unique victory animation tied to them. Sounds fun on paper, but single player is the only place they play in. And you can't skip them until after having watched one loop of it. Doubly odd considering that the victory animations NEVER SHOW UP ONLINE. I doubt there's a single person who wants to watch the same animation 50 times over in a playthrough no matter how nice.

- Missing quality of life improvements

Instead of "fixing" or improving upon anything from its predecessor, NF decides to copy everything it reasonably can wholesale with no thought given to how it actually plays out. Obvious quality of life improvements go overlooked.
	Beating Time Trial ghosts from the first run already STILL forces you to race against them again just to prove you can despite having beaten Oxide by 30 seconds. Made worse by retrying not loading the ghosts, and having to instead exit to main menu, challenge the ghost and load the track again. Wastes a ton of time with this game's loading times.
	Private race lobbies have seemingly lacking customization options. Battle's options are fine, but you can't change the item pool in racing. You also can't pick a random track, meaning you need to choose one manually every time for a change.
	Menus are clunky and restarting Time Trials can't be done with instantenous inputs, you need to wait a bit. It also gives a small loading screen after for some reason lol. OG menus were both instant and didn't enforce loads when restarting.
	Because public "matchmaking" enforces weird rules on the lobby, it seems obvious to be able to have a server browser for custom lobbies. Unfortunately not there.
	Somehow despite being in a new engine entirely, NF managed to copy OG's inconsistency when it comes to optimization. Frame grinding effectively relies on some luck, but this time for entirely different reasons.

- Visual design

Graphics do matter, but not in terms of making the game look pretty. Racing games are very delicate in control, because you want to be cutting corners as close as possible at all times. Visual clarity here is key, without it, you'll become unnecessarily scared of playing the best you can. Especially the case with the game's insistence on having invisible walls everywhere and generally untrustworthy collision. Despite tracks now having more visual flair going on for them and being able to flaunt skins, you never fully register any of it in your head because it all fades away to the back during gameplay. Only thing that matters is being able to clearly tell the road ahead.
	I'm no visual expert, so this isn't going to be a detailed explanation, but much like NST, NF's colors blend into eachother all the time. Most things in the game, even if a different color are of similar shade. This includes your character and kart. Your character doesn't have a well-defined shape anymore and depending on shading can easily blend into tracks. OG was aware of this and made wheels pitch black, there's nothing else as dark in the game so you can tell where your kart's hitbox is at all times from a quick glance. In NF, they're still darker, but depending on lighting and track shading, quickly become less visible. You can take screenshots from both games and turn the images black & white. NF's screenshots will become harder to read, because the game doesn't like working with outlines or contrast. Motion blur also literally blurs the view ahead of you and can make tracks indistinguishable from the environment before you're actually there. The worst part is motion blur hiding stage hazards, you need to specifically focus on them to be able to tell where they are a lot of the time. OG's screenshots on the other hand never get blurred, and perhaps in thanks to hardware limitations, have higher visual clarity. All colors are well contrasted and karts and tracks have quickly readable outlines.
	Also due to or thanks to hardware limitations, OG CTR couldn't add "unnecessary" props all over the tracks and made walls and ground distinguishable. Beenox seemingly liked the idea of reimagining tracks and "bringing them to life" by cramming them as full of shit as the PS4 could possibly handle. Papu's Pyramid has palm trees bleeding onto the track itself or straight blocking view of oncoming turns. Hot Air Skyway has seemingly randomly ctrl+v'd assets they didn't feel like wasting or clouds blocking your view. Crash Cove's walls have proper collision, but is hidden by grass growing in front of it. Lots of tracks have lovingly made detail animations, but the issue again is that you'll never catch it thanks to a combination of motion blur and being focused on gameplay over all else. While having detail is nice, Beenox's priorities do seem to be in cramming as much content as they possibly can into the game, instead of focusing on gameplay. Even when looking at just the graphics, they didn't give much thought to how sun shining directly on the track and hiding the edge of it would affect the play experience. All design flaws can be overcome, but that means you're putting up with shit more than having an enjoyable experience you're in control of.
	They also redesigned CNK tracks probably because nobody remembers them anyway but it's more fun than seeing more of the same things remade anyway.


--- Actual misc.

- Can't have infinite time in private Battle Mode why?

- Can't buy skins you want, instead need to wait for the item shop daily deals to refresh or spend money on skins you don't want to have it potentially be replaced by the one you do. Insanity.

- Stats are tied to characters instead of karts. Because Speed characters are overbearingly superior right now, that's more or less the pool you get to choose from instead of repping your favorites. (Like, not all females are gonna be in it, anyway. Coco isn't.) Weird choice, considering karts are much less visible, but they gave them more customization options anyway? Could've just tied stats to them I doubt people ever even pay attention to them. You can't even see stickers in front 99% of the time to begin with.

- When drifting, you go a bit to the side of the camera I think. Like, hitting a crate with the camera doesn't necessarily mean you hit it

- Doing a 180 from a standstill sucks without buffered jumps. It's super clunky and slow. Mashing X to get a quick 180 out doesn't work in NF anymore, either. The quickest option is to hold down diagonal + Square to turn in place.

- Doing a 180 from movement with direction + Square has a really weird effect if you time an X input to accelerate after. The ending of the braking probably has some animation that overtakes your acceleration for a little bit and you get a small stutter. This isn't anything at all btw just weird

- Getting squashed by a barrel in Sewer Speedway isn't in relation to your model. Instead, if you're squashed on a wall, your model becomes taller. It's in relation to the ground lmfao

- The side walls in Oxide Station don't have collision asdf

- Wait why doesn't this game have drafting

- Some Time Trial N. Tropy ghosts just straight out don't get a starting boost ahaha what

- Red bottles are now stronger by giving you a consistent effect of tumble and item re-rolling. Beenox didn't code it fairly either, so falling off a track after getting hit doesn't remove its effect. Tricky placement means you can not only fuck someone over by making them fall, but if the respawn is near a Blue Fire pad, they won't be able to get reserves to make it last either.

- Bombs cannot be manually blown up immediately from shooting anymore. Becomes a real hassle with a triple bomb pull you'd like to replace. Also makes hitting people in Battle Mode that much harder. They also curve weirdly so I couldn't even make sense of how to aim them like that anymore. Wish they made them manually curvable in this game.

- Turbo item being able to goombastomp people is certainly interesting? Can't really imagine it being a bad thing but who knows how the meta will evolve

- TNTs are actually interesting online because you can place them in high airtime places and people won't be able to jump them off. This is NOT points for Beenox though I just thought it was cool

- They added more "jokes" to Story Mode cutscenes. Like, the cutscenes themselves are the same but someone like Papu has random slapstick put inbetween every line? They really can't help but cram more shit in, can they