Ok. First of all what the fuck was that zombie doing under there. WAS HE JUST HAVING A SWIM DOWN THERE? Can they swim?? But none of that would have even HAPPENED, if BONNIE WASN’T THE BABOON BRAINED GLUE SUCKING DIRT EATING NEANDERTHAL THAT SHE IS. Oh ya let’s just DOUBLE THE WIEGHT ON THE ICE. And then she has the NERVE to live if her dumbass falls in! LOCK. IN. The audacity to kill the only good new character, one of three good characters in this whole game, in such an absolutely loony tunes ass way right before the finally is genuinely insane.

Bog-standard Fortnite.

A couple cool new skins, more very okay skins. Two new, pretty POIs. Medallions got fleshed out or ruined depending on who you ask. And that's... about it.

Oh, they also removed cosmetic item rarities to obfuscate the pricing scale and locked Aang behind a terrible mini-pass to make him more expensive. I guess the machine printing their unlimited money wasn't printing fast enough.

It's always tough ending a trilogy when the 2nd game already improves a lot on the 1st one. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped now has the tough task of trying to follow that up, so what does Naughty Dog do exactly?

TIME TRAVEL!! I see this as an absolute win.
Yes, Crash and Coco now have to stop Cortex, and new character Uka Uka (the evil twin of Aku Aku) by going through one of his henchman's time machine, and find the Crystals scattered all over through time!
Whether it be Ancient Egypt, the Middle East, deep underground waters or the future, Crash 3 is no slouch when it comes to stage variety, and I absolutely love it!
Crash 2 already made some efforts to bring in more environmental diversity, but Crash 3 easily trumps it, and it's one of my favourite things about this game.

This goes right alongside the presentation of this game. While in terms of graphical prowess, Crash 3 doesn't look much different from Crash 2, there are now some new elements added in that make this game look better than 2, especially the water seen in the Jet Ski levels.
The voice acting is absolutely fantastic for the year this was released, with even more voice actors jumping in, and Aku Aku now having a voice, which is always nice.
And once again, Clancy Brown kills it by not only returning as Cortex, but also voicing Uka Uka!
And the music is still as good as Crash 2, with the world map theme being one of the best tracks in the original trilogy, in my opinion.

But of course, what about the gameplay?
Well, I'm glad to say that they've kept everything from Crash 2. Jumping, sliding and spinning all feel like before, and it's great.
But this time around, you get a new power-up after defeating a boss, whether that'd be a Double Jump, a Super Belly-Flop, or a fucking Bazooka!
The Double Jump and Super Tornado Spin are definitely my favourites, because with great timing, you can do some cool shortcuts, and that feels awesome to pull off.

But jumping through levels is not the only thing this game has.
One of the most contentious aspects of this game is the fact that you'll be spending a good chunk of it riding vehicles. Whether that be racing in a motorcycle, riding a Jet Ski or shooting down blimps in an old-school airplane, Crash 3 makes you do quite the number of diferrent tasks.

I can definitely understand why people don't like this much, considering the lack of consistency, but not only do these vehicles control great, I think they allow for greater gameplay variety, that was not seen previously.
I also think that Naughty Dog might've added those in to prevent the overall Crash formula from getting stale.
Of course, whether you agree with this notion is up entirely to what you felt before, but once again, I liked playing as these vehicles... even if I wasn't the biggest fan of getting Crystals in the Motorcycle stages.
Oh well.

Also, Coco is playable, which is nice, but her levels are just most of those vehicle levels, so you don't get to play around as just her much.
Oh well. (x2)

The biggest thing that I love about this game though is, outside of going back to go to the Colored Gem pathways in previous levels... there is next to no backtracking within the levels themselves, which makes the act of collecting gems so much easier!
Although I decided to not go for 100% this time, mainly because they also added the Time Relics!

New to this game is the ability to, after beating that level once, to do a time trial of it, and by betting it under a certain time, you can get either a Sapphire Relic, a Gold Relic or the holy shit, this is so difficult Platinum Relics.
Short into the point, I don't care about them, but to get 100% (or 105%), you need to at least get Gold Relics on every stage... and I just don't feel like it.
But kudos to the game, it gives you more replay value, which is nice.

Overall, while it may lack consistency, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped makes up for it by providing really fun gameplay, and trimming the bad parts of previous games!
Definitely my favourite in the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy!

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is pretty much an improvement over the original in almost every single way.

The level designs and aesthetics are more varied and fun, providing the player with a good challenge, but I believe levels never become quite as hard as Crash 1, which allows this game to be more beginner-friendly, in my opinion.

Crash now has a new move, that being the slide! Doing a slide jump in this game is very satisfying, especially when you're trying to do longer jumps, or when you're just casually running through the stage!
Additionally, Crash also has the Belly Flop, which is performed by pressing the slide button after a jump, and I think it's fine. I found it useful for breaking my momentum in the middle of a jump, but I don't find it as reliable as something like the Stomp in the Boost Sonic games.

I think the bosses are a bit better than last time, not by much, but they are fun to fight, as simple as they may be.
Additionally, there's a bit more story this time around.
I didn't really discuss this during my Crash 1 review, but the plot of last time was that Crash was a failed experiment by Dr. Neo Cortex, and that he escaped the lab, but his girlfriend Tawna, is still stuck in there, and Crash has got to save her from Cortex and stop him from taking over the world with his army of animal experiments.
This time around, Tawna is nowhere to be seen (I wonder why) and Crash has a younger sister named Coco. She doesn't do much in the story, mainly just trying to warn Crash of Cortex's actual plan, which is pretty obvious to see, but considering that Crash is a big dumbass... yeah. Cortex is using Crash to get all crystals, the plot McGuffin of this game, to power up the Cortex Vortex and rule over the world!

The biggest glow-up, I'd say, has got to be the voice acting. Now, in the original game, voice acting was minimal and we didn't hear many characters talking, but when they did... it was meh. Nothing bad per say, but nothing really good either.
This time around, there are more cutscenes, and we hear more of Dr. Cortex, this time being voiced by Clancy Brown, and I love how much character he gives to the mad scientist, it's great!

And that also applies to the game's overall presentation, as the graphics look slighty better, especially Crash's model, and the music is more catchy than the original. Not all of it is memorable, but there are some pretty good tracks in here.

This time around, I actually decided to go for 100% completion, being the first time I ever 100%'d a Crash game, and while it is generally a better experience than the original, but not having to worry about dying, there's probably way more backtracking here than last time.
Now, Crash 1 had its backtracking moments, especially with the colored gems, but this time around, not only can you get a gem by breaking all of the boxes, but also by doing something different, and this is where the Death Routes come into play!

Not all stages have a Death Route, and not all secondary gems require you do a Death Route, but a Death Route is an alternate route of a stage that you get by not dying up to that point. The thing is, a good chunk of stages that have Death Route have boxes in said route and in the main route, which requires a bunch of backtracking and fighting against the game's locked camera to break every box in the stage and get one of the gems.

While this game is an improvement over the original in many aspects, this was the pits, and not really that fun.
But I will admit, I did smile when I finally got 100% completion, especially because it was my first time doing so.

Overall, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is a great sequel to the original, improving on a lot, but still has a couple of snags holding it back from being the best it could be.

Ah, Crash Bandicoot. One of the earliest pioneers in 3D Platforming Action, coming out the same year as the revolutionary Super Mario 64.

Unlike Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot decides to opt for a more traditional approach when it comes to level design.
While Super Mario 64 was very open and sandbox-like in its level design, Crash Bandicoot is like the 2D Platformers of old, where you go from point A to B, while trying your best not to lose all your lives.
It may be simple, but Crash Bandicoot succeeds in providing fun level design... but it can get quite challenging, even early on in the game.

Some levels are long, others are challenging, and then there are some that are both. Crash Bandicoot will challenge you, and it will challenge you even more if you're trying to go for 100%!

Probably one of the most well known things about the Crash series is the fact that you can jump and spin boxes you find throughout the levels.
That's all well and good, especially because the act of breaking boxes, and hearing that ricochet sound while you're spinning them, is ultra satisfying, but you'll need to break all of them if you want to get that stage's gem, which all of them will be required to 100% the game, and get the best (?) ending.

The problem with this original game is that, it doesn't matter if you broke a checkpoint box or not, if you die once, you will not be able to get that stage's gem, which means you have to get every box without losing a life.
And with how hard these levels can get... yeah, fuck doing that.

I personally didn't 100% the game during my most recent run, simply because it just turns from something that can be fun but challenging, to something very frustrating. And that's not even accounting the colored gems that you'll get later on in the game, that you'll need to use in previous levels to get just those few missing boxes that you couldn't get to before.
I salute those who have 100% this game!

But when you're not going for 100%, even with its difficulty, I'd say Crash Bandicoot is a good game. Crash himself is a bit heavy on his jumps, but you'll get used to it, and overall, I just had a good time going through the levels and beating the bosses.

Speaking of the bosses... they're ok. They have their own obstacles to avoid, and most of them have a sort-of gimmick, like with Ripper Roo where you defeat him with Big TNT crates, or in Pinstripe Potoroo's fight where you hide behind some objects to avoid his gunfire.
They're fine, but nothing too special.

Outside of that, this game looks great for an early PlayStation game! Crash's model is not as detailed as future games, but I think it looks fine for a 1st game, and the environments that Crash goes through are really nice looking!
I remember when I was a kid, and when I saw this game for the 1st time, even though I already had much more modern games to play, I still liked looking at Crash 1, in spite of being older.
It was probably the sunsets.

The music is fine. I think they decided to go for an atmospheric sound for a lot of the stages, and it works in the moment, but not a whole lot of it I find catchy. But the main theme is classic!

In conclusion, while it gets hard quite early in the game, and going for 100% is not worth your time, Crash Bandicoot can be a pretty fun 3D Platformer!

Back in 2022, I played Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine. I knew it was Puyo Puyo with Sonic characters, but I wanted to give it a try since I was playing a lot of Sonic games around that time. Turns out I sucked at it! Only got to like stage 6 before I gave up, and even then I'm surprised I got that far lol.

Kirby's Avalanche is Puyo Puyo again, only Kirby themed. This time around I only got to stage 3 before I quit(if were not counting the starter stages which I did complete). Idk man, my brain just melts sometimes whenever I'm playing. I'm way more of a Tetris guy than a Puyo Puyo guy, but those early stages were somewhat fun I'd say.

Besides me liking Kirby more than Sonic, something I definitely thought put this over Mean Bean Machije was the dialogue before each stage. Goddamn, Kirby is savage in this one. Maybe feels a little out of character, especially for how he is nowadays but it was very entertaining. Had to look up all the scenes cuz I knew I didn't want to miss them. If anything, its worth it to see them alone cuz they're hilarious.

Considering how short this game is too, the length of the OST is super short as well but the couple stage themes being remixes of Kirby's Adventure songs was nice.

Yeah, as you can see, I don't have much to say about this one. It's Puyo Puyo but Kirby themed like I said and I got filtered by Puyo Puyo yet again 😢. Guess that series just isn't for me haha. Kinda stinks this is another Kirby game I ended up not beating but it will probably be the last (unless one of the future spinoffs filter me as well). Either way, next Kirby game is Dreamland 2 so I'm happy to finally get to another mainline again.