Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced
released on Jan 07, 2003
Crash is back and ready to take on an all-new nefarious villain. After the events of Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, Tropy, with the help of N. Trance, kidnaps Coco and Crunch, planning to brainwash them to the evil side. Now, Crash must travel to N. Trance's twisted realm, battle and rescue Coco and Crunch, and ultimately defeat N. Trance and N. Tropy. To achieve these goals, you must use all of Crash's spin, slide, and jumping abilities across 24 different levels. As you progress through the game, you'll find yourself flying a helicopter, water-skiing, and piloting a spaceship--all for the sake of saving your friends.
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Played the heck out of this one.
More polished than Huge Adventure / XS, a worthy portable game with good Crash spirit. Not bad.
Crash Bandicoot N-Tranced (2003): Mejora a su predecesor y se siente mucho más fiel en los movimientos a la trilogía original, lástima que el diseño de niveles sea tan flojo porque lo demás raya a buen nivel. Incluso la historia sin ocupar más que un post-it, es graciosa. Bien pero mejorable (6,90)
N-Tranced is another handheld translation of the classic Crash gameplay, this time taking more inspiration from Crash 3. Credit to them for coming up with a unique plot, even if there's not much here, But the new villain N-Trance hypnotising Team Bandicoot leads to some unique boss fights against the heroes so I liked that.
The game shares almost all the positives and negatives of the previous game, there's still button delay, leaps of faith and unoriginalilty, though I do find this to be the more creative game. The themes and gimmicks are borrowed, but mid stage you may find yourself riding a magic carpet or using an actually fun jetpack in the Crash series.. who thought it was possible. There's genuinely some fun but challenging platforming, especially in the last few stages.
Alongside the normal Crash power-ups, N-Tranced has 2 unique powers for us, the Super Slide and the Rocket Jump. The Rocket Jump allows you to leap very high up but not very far horizontally, and the Super Slide allows you to slide very far and very fast, often into incoming enemies or hazards. These are okay overall, pretty situational, and annoying when in time trials as they share the same button to activate as the Crash Dash, but they do give the game some indentiy.
The non platforming stages are pretty good too, there's a shark chase level, 3D ball rolling stages like in The Wrath of Cortex that control really well, and a space shooter stage with Coco. There aren't that many stages overall, but the variety is appreciated when these aren't intrusive at all.
In a small change, we actually have a world map to pick stages from, meaning you can't go out of order within a selection of stages... it barely matters but it is different.
Bosses are pretty fun at first, like I mentioned you fight Team Bandicoot, including a clever mimic fight with Fake Crash. But I don't like the fights with N-Trance or N-Trophy for the same reason.. they take too long for a game where you die in one hit. Multiple phases would be fine if you had a little breathing room.. but you don't so these were annoying.
Honestly this is a solid game, only held back by the limitations of a strictly 2D Crash. The music is ripped from other games, and the graphics have aged, but this was a solid platformer. - 7.3/10
The game shares almost all the positives and negatives of the previous game, there's still button delay, leaps of faith and unoriginalilty, though I do find this to be the more creative game. The themes and gimmicks are borrowed, but mid stage you may find yourself riding a magic carpet or using an actually fun jetpack in the Crash series.. who thought it was possible. There's genuinely some fun but challenging platforming, especially in the last few stages.
Alongside the normal Crash power-ups, N-Tranced has 2 unique powers for us, the Super Slide and the Rocket Jump. The Rocket Jump allows you to leap very high up but not very far horizontally, and the Super Slide allows you to slide very far and very fast, often into incoming enemies or hazards. These are okay overall, pretty situational, and annoying when in time trials as they share the same button to activate as the Crash Dash, but they do give the game some indentiy.
The non platforming stages are pretty good too, there's a shark chase level, 3D ball rolling stages like in The Wrath of Cortex that control really well, and a space shooter stage with Coco. There aren't that many stages overall, but the variety is appreciated when these aren't intrusive at all.
In a small change, we actually have a world map to pick stages from, meaning you can't go out of order within a selection of stages... it barely matters but it is different.
Bosses are pretty fun at first, like I mentioned you fight Team Bandicoot, including a clever mimic fight with Fake Crash. But I don't like the fights with N-Trance or N-Trophy for the same reason.. they take too long for a game where you die in one hit. Multiple phases would be fine if you had a little breathing room.. but you don't so these were annoying.
Honestly this is a solid game, only held back by the limitations of a strictly 2D Crash. The music is ripped from other games, and the graphics have aged, but this was a solid platformer. - 7.3/10
Hidden gem of the franchise.
A bit better than the last because it’s at least mildly original in some aspects, but retains everything bad