Crash Bandicoot was absolutely a staple of my childhood. I was too young to appreciate the original trilogy, so my experience was all post PS1 era, at which point Crash was already steadily falling out of relevance, and eventually just kind of vanished entirely and unceremoniously. Seeing an entirely new entry ignited the deepest cockles of my heart.
The art direction stomps the remake trilogy into the earth. Every bit of movement has such bounce and personality behind it. There is a huge variety of locales and they are all lengthy and dense with stuff just happening. It's just fun to look at.
The game has four different playstyles revolving around the character available for a level and they all feel great… mostly. The last character you get just feels off (I won't mention who for the sake of spoilers but I feel like it's kind of obvious who it would be). The addition of a marker indicating where you will land is absolutely necessary. It feels weird to give praise for a feature that feels like it saves the game from being miserable, but it is genuinely a much needed touch. The game provides a pretty decent challenge at the base level as well as absolutely brutal challenges if you want it. And you definitely don't want it.
This game is great if you just want to go through it without any of the added fluff, but if you are intent on completing it wholly like I was you're gonna be in for an absolute dick kicking. This game expects an unreasonable amount of commitment for a completionist playthrough. It wouldn't be so egregious if the goals were at all sane, but they involve going through levels over and over again trying to collect gems. I liked doing the initial 6 gem runs and the time trials are always a blast, but once you add the inverted levels into the mix, which are just the level flipped with some sort of filter applied, the repetition kind of mulches your brain.
I can't help but to feel a sense of vindictiveness if you played this game like I did. I resigned myself to just collecting all of the costumes because doing everything was too much of an ask for really no tangible gain. I liked this game even as I was struggling with it but it taught me my limits when it comes to what I will endure for the sake of completion.
The art direction stomps the remake trilogy into the earth. Every bit of movement has such bounce and personality behind it. There is a huge variety of locales and they are all lengthy and dense with stuff just happening. It's just fun to look at.
The game has four different playstyles revolving around the character available for a level and they all feel great… mostly. The last character you get just feels off (I won't mention who for the sake of spoilers but I feel like it's kind of obvious who it would be). The addition of a marker indicating where you will land is absolutely necessary. It feels weird to give praise for a feature that feels like it saves the game from being miserable, but it is genuinely a much needed touch. The game provides a pretty decent challenge at the base level as well as absolutely brutal challenges if you want it. And you definitely don't want it.
This game is great if you just want to go through it without any of the added fluff, but if you are intent on completing it wholly like I was you're gonna be in for an absolute dick kicking. This game expects an unreasonable amount of commitment for a completionist playthrough. It wouldn't be so egregious if the goals were at all sane, but they involve going through levels over and over again trying to collect gems. I liked doing the initial 6 gem runs and the time trials are always a blast, but once you add the inverted levels into the mix, which are just the level flipped with some sort of filter applied, the repetition kind of mulches your brain.
I can't help but to feel a sense of vindictiveness if you played this game like I did. I resigned myself to just collecting all of the costumes because doing everything was too much of an ask for really no tangible gain. I liked this game even as I was struggling with it but it taught me my limits when it comes to what I will endure for the sake of completion.