The Crash series makes its debut on the next generation of consoles, and it's forgoing PlayStation exclusivity, as it's now also going on the Nintendo GameCube and Xbox.

Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex follows up the last game, as Crash and Coco must once again stop Cortex and Uka Uka from taking over the world... but they've got company this time, with new rival, Crunch!
Also, the Elemental Masks are also here to cause a ruckus, so we have new enemies this time.

And that's where this game's originality sort-of ends. Of course, there are a few more things, but this game borrows heavity from Crash 3, that it many aspects, one can call this game a rehash.

There are new aesthetics this go around, in addition to old ones, but many of these new themes only last one or two levels, because this game's name is inconsistency.
Remember in my Crash 3 review how I said that the game's vehicles and how many there were could be a point of contention amongst fans?
This game has even more vehicles, and some of them are not really fun to control, like the aerial fly-like vehicle. With that one, you can only shoot after you've locked-on, which takes a bit, and leaves you vulnerable to enemy attacks. I find this one really dumb, because they already had used the airplane from Crash 3 earlier in the game, so why introduce this new, inferior one?
There's also the mech, which its jump while standing still is horrible, and there's the mini-submarine, which its turning is really slow.

It's not all bad, for example, the game's new ball levels were actually pretty fun to go through, but there were only 3 of them, so they barely got fleshed out.
And that's the thing, this game barely fleshes out anything because it's constantly switching things up.

Like Coco herself is playable without any vehicles... for like 2 levels, I believe. And I liked playing as her. I know she's inferior to Crash since her moveset is just jumping and spinning, but I don't know, I actually liked that simplicity.
But again, you don't get to play as her that much, so I'm left unsatisfied and underwhelmed.

The game's presentation is also pretty underwhelming. The characters look pretty ugly in general, especially Cortex. Although the game's voice acting does pick up the slack, as we have new voice actors joining in like Mark Hamill, Thomas Wilson and Jess Harnell, and their performances were really good, in spite of their lines being very bland.
The music as well was also pretty good, reminded me a lot of Traveller's Tales previous work, like their soundtrack on the Toy Story 2 video game.

Overall, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, while not a bad game, just leaves me underwhelmed.

The most underrated Crash game by a country mile. Buttery smooth 60fps, a pleasant aesthetic with fluid animations and some genuinely fun and creative level design (shout out to the safari jeep level). It was no small task taking over the mantle from Naughty Dog, and Traveller's Tales did an admirable job given the short dev time they had. I personally had a better time with this than Warped, and it's far better than the entries that came after. Unless you're playing the version with the ten hour long loading screens, I don't see why this game gets so much hate. The dark horse of the franchise.

This game, so far, extremely fascinates me. The game is like an alternate universe version of Warped if it was extremely mid. Like, not even bad. I just wonder what happened during development for the game to come out like this? The visuals of the environments go back and forth between looking really nice to really awful, and the character model quality varies heavily (usually leaning towards looking bad). Aku-Aku invincibility states don't have a clear indicator of when they end because the invincibility music is way more quiet and subtle compared to the loud tribal drums that clearly gave you a sign of when they're about to end, and your hitbox is not increased. Lots of sound effects either don't play when they're supposed to or they're mixed incorrectly. The music is often very good (ESPECIALLY for Cortex Vortex and Eskimo Roll), but it's also mixed so poorly that I sometimes can't hear it even when the game is at max volume.

But despite all that, the level design itself isn't awful? I actually like the way the levels are laid out in this game, they're just dreadful to actually play because Crash and Coco control so terribly. They're extremely floaty and slow. They feel like if you stuck a Lego Star Wars character into Crash Bandicoot. Normally, Lego Star Wars feels very fine to control, but Crash shouldn't feel like this.

The boss fights mostly suck. Rok-Ko's fight was a cool idea, but the execution fell flat because the ball controls are terrible outside of the ball levels designed for them. Wa-Wa isn't even a boss fight against him and Crunch, you're really fighting against the camera and the terrible depth perception above instant-kill water and projectiles. I also probably spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to beat Py-Ro before I realized that shooting the water cannon on the mech suit slows you down when you're chasing him back to the other side. It took me ages to realize what I was doing wrong, but the fight is piss-easy otherwise. Lo-Lo actually has a really fun boss fight that I enjoyed, probably only because it was copied from N. Gin's Crash 3 fight. The final boss was anticlimactic, but REALLY good! I actually like the Cortex/Crunch fight a lot! But yeah, the Elementals are extremely disappointing, as underdeveloped characters with underdeveloped boss fights.

That issue of depth perception I mentioned for Wa-Wa actually has affected my whole experience with the game. I can't tell if I'm being tricked because Crash moves so slowly compared to the previous games that I think he should be farther ahead than he really is, or if it's because of the collision of the character being bad, or if it's because the camera is so terrible that I can't tell how close or far something is from Crash. I'm misjudging the distance of so many jumps and enemies, taking contact damage, falling into pits, and whiffing spin attacks that you'd think I'm a brand new player based on how poorly I've been doing in the first 3 worlds of the game, as I write my initial thoughts. I literally have never had this issue with the PS1 games so I'm not sure what's the problem here.

This is one of those games that I think REALLY deserves a remake, though I'm typically opposed to the idea of game remakes, generally. You don't have to change anything, just adjust the controls, stick the game in a new engine, and give the game the polish it lacks. I think it would be way more passable if just a few things were tweaked.

EDIT: I wrote this review before fully completing the game, so I wanted to add on at the end that I had a way better time getting all the Platinum Relics in this game than I did playing most of these stages normally. With a few exceptions, this game was extremely easy to get the Plat Relics for. The issue of depth perception will always be a problem, and made some relics way harder to get than others because you waste time whiffing so many spin attacks and jumps, but using the Crash Dash somewhat remedied the control problems I complained about. It sucks that this is a post-game powerup that exists only for getting Relics, but it was like that in Warped as well. Unlike Warped, though, Crash controlled completely fine at normal speeds so it felt like a proper powerup rather than a fix for slow and floaty controls.

Also, after understanding the circumstances the game was made under, I'm a little nicer towards it. It was supposed to have been a next-gen, ambitious experience, and Traveller's Tales had to restart development partway through and finish in 12 months. That explains why so much of the game is like a worse version of Warped, they probably tried to refer back to it and base the new game off it as closely as possible in the time they had. It doesn't excuse the quality entirely, but I understand how it turned out the way it did.

In honor of how incohesive and haphazardly designed Wrath of Cortex is, I would like to pay tribute by writing this review in the most incohesive and haphazardly written method possible.

WoC doesn't even try to set its own identity. Rather, it seemed to try its hardest to hide in the shadow Of course, Crash 3 also had plenty of eggs in one basket, but WoC never seemed to try justifying its random gimmicks Even the core gameplay, which you probably spend like 40% of the game actually playing The challenge these levels offer only amount to the absurd amount of nitro boxes they seemed to spam everywhere With how much 3D platformers had changed since even Crash 3, this game just feels horribly out of touch for 2001 Aside from the first power-up, which wasn't even utilized much aside from some bonus areas from what I remember The level design is basically just walking through hallways with little to no platforming or challenge And then after THAT, you're thrown into a marble madness clone??? I don't find Crash very engaging from a design or mechanical standpoint, and the depth perception always throws me off That doesn't change just how uninspired and unpolished the final product is.

The result of an ungodly crunched development cycle stemming from a game that had to be squashed down from an ambitious open-world Crash game, and ends up feeling like a much worse Crash 3 with a hell of a lot less both quality and polish.

Within Wrath Of Cortex is a solid base for a game, when it's allowing you to play a traditional Crash level. Instead, the crunched development cycle ultimately lead to a game that's hampered by all kinds of genre-shifting levels, ranging from fun Monkey Ball-esque stages, to the literal worst underwater stages I've played in any video game. Probably the best OST of the entire Crash series, and the select few great stages are all that keep me giving it a lower rating. No amount of nostalgia can save this one from being a tedious slog and a half.

Um dos mais subestimados jogos do Crash Bandicoot.

Os gráficos do game são bons mas longe de serem um dos melhores do Playstation 2. Apesar da história ser completamente esquecida, o jogo é muito bom em jogabilidade e diversão (principalmente pela variedade de fases e níveis durante a gameplay).

Os ambientes são bem detalhados e os níveis proporcionam um bom desafio. O jogo como um todo é um bom jogo de plataforma, tudo o que você esperaria de um jogo Crash. A música (especialmente o tema do último chefe) é bem feita e se encaixa em cada nível, mas a dublagem de alguns personagens (especialmente N. Gin e N. Tropy) simplesmente não combina com eles.

Para o bem ou para o mal "The Wrath of Cortex" não é diferente dos jogos do Crash Bandicoot anteriores. Aqueles que ainda gostam da mecânica de jogo de girar e pular irão curtir muito o game.

PRÓS:
- Ótimo level design.
- Uma boa variedade de gameplay.
- Boa variedade de coletáveis.

CONTRAS:
- Telas de carregamento terrivelmente longas e frequentes.
- A câmera é um adversário em muitos momentos.
- Comparado com o game anterior, poucas coisas novas foram adicionadas.

Ainda é Crash, mas não é Crash

É engraçado escrever esse titulo, pois por mais que o jogo tenha o nome, personagens, estética e tudo que você encontra nos primeiros 3 títulos, principalmente no último já que esse aqui é quase que uma cópia descarada, ele ainda sim passa toda a sensação de não ser um Crash, mas sim isso, uma cópia vazia e sem alma.

Os gráficos são interessantes, a trilha sonora é bem boa, mas a essência do que fez a franquia ser o que é que são com boas fases, jogabilidade complicada porém justa e inovações de gameplay, não se fazem presentes aqui, já que em termos de história podemos passar adiante pois isso nunca foi o forte mesmo.

TWC entrega fases genéricas e com level design muuuito aquém do que foi feito anteriormente, basta pensar que nos jogos anteriores, você ia tendo uma crescente de dificuldade a cada warp room e tendo uma "lógica" em termos da estética delas, aqui isso não acontece, pois ele cisma em entregar fases que não dialogam entre si e que não possuem o apelo para engajar na jogatina, principalmente pela quantidade exorbitante de fases com veículos que se no 3 já enchiam o saco, aqui então...

Falando sobre o desafio do game como um todo, vários inimigos são desnecessários. Antes você tinha que ter, mesmo que simples, uma estratégia para não morrer ou perder um Aku Aku, aqui em vários momentos os inimigos não representam uma ameaça e você pode simplesmente contorna-los sem nenhuma dificuldade. Sobre os bosses, esses são tão sem graça e chatos de enfrentar quanto assistir 40 minutos de uma preguiça dormindo.

Por fim, acredito que tudo isso passaria de boas se a jogabilidade não fosse tão travada e lenta. Em muitos pulos ou sequências que demandam isso, parece que o Crash comeu uma feijoada e está com um pouco de gravidade, pois ele é lento para pular e lento para cair, mas vou fazer uma ressalva sobre esse item pois eu não lembro se o os anteriores eram assim também, pois minha memoria está muito mais atrelada aos remakes recentes. De qualquer modo, a jogabilidade nesse game aqui não é das melhores e envelheceu mal.

Resumindo: é Crash, mas não é Crash. Tem seu valor por ser a primeira entrada da franquia na era do PS2, mas não inovou em absolutamente nada. Talvez por ser também o primeiro titulo fora das mãos da Naughty Dog e como o último foi sucesso, repetiram a fórmula. Mas se pensarmos bem, talvez foi esse jogo aqui que decretou que esse estilo que o Crash vinha tendo, não era mais tão interessante de seguir, pois não foi um sucesso aclamado igual os outros, mas não pq a formula é ruim e sim o produto. Então, nota 2,5 que no meu modo de julgar significa o meio termo, que não fede, nem cheira.

Absolutely terrible.

Anyone who wants to understand game design should play this. On the surface, it looks and plays just like the first three, but spend a bit of time with it, and it falls apart very fast.

Story involves time travel again for no real reason, cortex creates a terrible budget-crash who uses elemental masks (very cliched), etc etc. Nothing special.

Visually everything looks kind of off. Crash's extra lives are janky 3D heads instead of the charming 2D art. Cortex's eyes are all fucked up, and his 'N' is too big. N Tropy looks all messed up, repeating assets from older games. Animation is much better on cutscenes in older games. Levels are kind of just repeated ideas from previous games visually.

Gameplay is unforgivable. Levels are too widely spaced, meaning 90% of enemies can just be walked around, so many enemies in this just stand harmlessly throwing stuff into the middle of what is essentially a massive motorway.

You fight the same boss every time, Crunch with a new flavor added on. The flame-mask one in particular stood out as really dumb. Where you just ran back and forward chasing each other with a pathetic looking water pistol in some non-descript pathway.

Vehicles all handle in a really poor way, especially the aliens-power loader thing, which i audibly groaned at everytime it made an appearance.

Can you tell i hated every second of this?

Easily the worst crash game, i played them all in order, and i've gotta say, the latter entries after this are much more tolerable, as much as they miss the mark.

A true companion-piece to Spyro Enter the Dragonfly.

With every Crash Bandicoot game after the original trilogy being seen as a sort of black sheep of the series (well, besides Crash 4), I really didn't know what to expect with Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. All in all I found it to be a decent enough experience as the classic Crash Bandicoot gameplay was carried by some solid level design, though it can't be understated how the designers had a fetish for gimmicks. I'd say this game definitely lacks focus as you're often interrupted mid-level to jump into a different gimmick on the fly. Gimmicks themselves will often be the make or break for this game as they take up so much of the runtime, though I didn't find any of them to be hair-pullingly awful. A bit uninspired in some areas for sure, but I think they fare alright for the most part. Bosses were pretty solid. Music slapped tbh. Not a bad game by any means, but not Crash's best either.

Bom... O crash não chegou muito bem no PS2, em? Level design inferior, gráficos horríveis, gameplay travada, e MUITA fase de veículo. O jogo tem ideias bem boas, mas não foram executadas muito bem, e não é como se ele fosse de todo ruim, ainda é Crash, com certeza da pra se divertir, destaque especial para a trilha sonora, é a melhor coisa desse jogo.

Mesmo com os seus tropeços, ainda é um jogo que dá pra te tirar do tédio, recomendo mesmo com os erros que ele tem, peguei 106% dele e não me arrependo.

Completed this for the first time yesterday with 106%, though I did not get platinum relics in every stage, too many gimmicky stages for me to go for that.

I'm happy to have finally completed this one, as it's one of the first games I remember playing on my PS2 nearly 20 years ago, though I think the furthest I had ever gotten was a few levels into the second set of stages.

Playing it today, it feels like the game has taken a LOT of inspiration from Crash 3, with the constant shift in gameplay styles, Crash's unlockable abilities, the hub world, and having Coco playable, now properly on foot for some stages. I'm not the biggest fan of Crash 3, as I feel many of the vehicle stages in that game just aren't especially enjoyable to play, like the boat and bike levels. It's a shame that WoC doubles down on gimmicks because many of the vehicle levels are easily the worst in this game, and far worse than the worst of Crash 3. The submarine levels in particular are absolutely god awful, it moves at a snail's pace and you will constantly die from objects you could not predict and some shoddy hitboxes.

The aerial levels don't fare much better, Tornado Alley is a poor second level with annoying sound effects and dull gameplay, and That Sinking Feeling is even worse with a frustrating lock-on system and clustered level design. Not a fan of the Crashteroids level either. The Atlasphere levels were generally enjoyable, and I didn't mind the mech suit either, aside from the lack of attack options. The jeep and copter are present, but these I'm probably the most indifferent about, they're just there.

As for the platforming stages, they were the most consistently fun to play, and while I don't think they reach the heights of the best stages in the original trilogy, there were still some memorable and inventive levels here that I had a lot of fun with, like any of the Nightmare Castle or Space Station stages. I also enjoyed the Coco stages, her moveset is weirdly very lacking, but her stages were generally fun and pretty well designed.

I wasn't a huge fan of a majority of the boss fights, as they felt way too gimmicky aside from the second fight which was a decent test of platforming reflexes, and the final boss was also pretty solid in this regard. The other three, especially the plane boss, I found quite irritating to play.

I will say that the game was clearly rushed, and feels less polished than either Crash 2 or 3, with a ton of questionable hitboxes, slippery platforming that doesn't feel that tight, and an overall sense that the game just needed more time in the oven.

It has a solid soundtrack with a couple of really great tunes, and some decent voice acting as well, including the always entertaining Clancy Brown as Cortex and Uka Uka. Some cool cameos from R. Lee Ermey and Mark Hamil as the elemental masks also.

Visually the game looks alright, not among the best looking games from 2001 but the environments look decent and most character models look okay. The GameCube version certainly isn't great, with a lot of frame-rate issues and it looks a little rougher visually compared to the PS2 version. Strange as this version released almost a full year after the original release. Not the best port from Eurocom, a shame as I have enjoyed some of their output, like Sphinx and the Goldeneye remake.

Certainly not the best game in the series, and the low points here are genuinely terrible, but there's enough here that I enjoyed that I can still give this game a light recommendation. Just barely 3 stars for me. If you do want to play it, the Platinum/Greatest Hits PS2 or Xbox release would be a preferable option to the GameCube version.

not a complete trainwreck as i had worried but it's still a downgrade from the original trilogy. the biggest issue is the overabundance of vehicle/gimmick based levels. this was an issue with Warped (and it's why that was my least favorite in the original trilogy) but that game was better than this one almost universally. the absolute desperation to innovate or shift the gameplay in this series will always be baffling to me when the core gameplay was so solid.

when the game let's you do some actual platforming it's not too bad. sometimes the awful aesthetics get in the way with hitboxes/ledges being unclear in terms of placement but it isn't too prevalent of an issue. i appreciate the gesture of giving us Coco levels that aren't tied exclusively to vehicle or autorunner levels even if i would've rather they just gave us the same gameplay as Crash like in the later games. as it is Coco's moveset leads to some truly diabolical moments with precision platforming but stiff movement.

looking forward to getting to Twinsanity eventually. not expecting a ton from that in terms of gameplay and level design but i remember the dialogue and music having so much character.

Como fazer um novo Crash Bandicoot sem a Naughty Dog? Simples, é só pegar o último trabalho deles e tentar fazer igual, afinal, aquela deve ser a fórmula do sucesso! Assim nasce The Wrath of Cortex, o jogo com a responsabilidade de continuar o legado da adorada franquia de plataforma em uma nova geração.

Uma nova geração! Mas ironicamente, esse até então era o jogo mais feio da série, animações esquisitas, fases escuras e modelos pobres, apresentando um Crash sem expressões que lembrem o apelo cartunesco da franquia, são poucos os momentos que WOC consegue ser visualmente interessante. Em compensação, sua trilha sonora é bem atraente em boa parte dos níveis.

É lamentável como Wrath of Cortex não traz absolutamente nenhuma evolução em relação aos jogos anteriores, algumas mecânicas (como rasteira + giro) foram até removidas, o jogo inteiro parece uma skin feia de Crash 3. Houve a introdução do Crunch e das máscaras elementais, que sinceramente, deixam o jogo ainda mais chato levando em conta que dessa forma o boss é sempre o mesmo, enquanto os verdadeiros chefões da saga viraram minions genéricos em algumas fases. A novidade mais relevante é que agora a Coco protagoniza algumas fases a pé, a jogabilidade dela é super limitada, ela não pode dar rasteira e não recebe nenhum upgrade durante o jogo, mas até que é divertido controlar ela fora de um veículo pela primeira vez na franquia.

E haja veículos! Desde o primeiro jogo, esse tipo de fase foi aparecendo cada vez mais, talvez tenham dado uma estrapolada no terceiro jogo, mas a variedade na jogabilidade era divertida. Em WOC a variedade aumentou muito, e junto trouxe algumas fases horríveis (por favor, Crash, nunca mais entre em um submarino). Eu gosto dessa quantidade de mecânicas diferentes, mas aqui nem sempre a jogabilidade é boa e definitivamente exageraram na dose ao ponto de você sentir falta das fases comuns.

No fim, The Wrath of Cortex é suportável, foi o último jogo 3D da franquia no molde dos clássicos (até o recente ressurgimento), e apesar de ser inferior aos seus antecessores em todos os aspectos, da pra se divertir. Além disso, ele deixou explícito o quão importante a Naughty Dog era pra série, e que dificilmente Crash Bandicoot voltaria a ter a mesma relevância e carisma de antes.

7/10