Croc is absolutely full of loveable charm, from its colourful visuals, music, character designs and sound effects.
Unfortunately it suffers from having a rather terrible tank control scheme. For a platformer it makes playing the entire game somewhat of a chore at times, and often too slow.
However what survived quite well was the actual platforming. I almost never felt like I missed a jump due to the fault of the game, which is quite impressive for such an early 3D platformer.
Level variety and enemies don't differ too much unfortunately. It kind of feels like playing the same levels, just with a different theme for each world.
The last world on the other hand turns a lot of this on its head (or at least the last normal world - there is a secret world that I never bothered to unlock because I didn't think it was worth it). On one hand there is so much more variety in this world, from brand new, interesting enemy types, new types of platforming sections and puzzles. On the other hand this is where the not-quite-perfect but accept platforming goes to hell. The amount of tiny, moving platforms, at different levels, with no real sense of distance made some of these levels a huge pain.
Some existing IPs absolutely bombed with their first 3D game, while Croc showed promise. Tighten up the controls a little bit and it could have been great. I haven't yet played the 2nd game, but based on this one alone, I think the series died too early and with some improved technology it could have been something special.
Unfortunately it suffers from having a rather terrible tank control scheme. For a platformer it makes playing the entire game somewhat of a chore at times, and often too slow.
However what survived quite well was the actual platforming. I almost never felt like I missed a jump due to the fault of the game, which is quite impressive for such an early 3D platformer.
Level variety and enemies don't differ too much unfortunately. It kind of feels like playing the same levels, just with a different theme for each world.
The last world on the other hand turns a lot of this on its head (or at least the last normal world - there is a secret world that I never bothered to unlock because I didn't think it was worth it). On one hand there is so much more variety in this world, from brand new, interesting enemy types, new types of platforming sections and puzzles. On the other hand this is where the not-quite-perfect but accept platforming goes to hell. The amount of tiny, moving platforms, at different levels, with no real sense of distance made some of these levels a huge pain.
Some existing IPs absolutely bombed with their first 3D game, while Croc showed promise. Tighten up the controls a little bit and it could have been great. I haven't yet played the 2nd game, but based on this one alone, I think the series died too early and with some improved technology it could have been something special.