One of the visual peaks of the 5th gen and still one of my favorite looking games. There's something aesthetically evergreen in the design and color choices here even after two decades of fidelity improvements leave it looking crunchy.

The first inklings of the technical perfectionism that would come to define Naughty Dog are detectable here. A refined second draft that, at least to me, stands clearly head and shoulders above the other two entries in the trilogy, the first one being significantly rougher in its graphics, controls and level design and the third game getting too bogged down in gimmick levels and - though granted this is a particularly subjective criticism - introducing the horrific bullshit of time trials being necessary for 100%. They have their precursor here in two level-specific challenges that add some variety, rather than an exhausting extra parameter stretched across the entire game.

This one is almost air tight. The controls still feel perfect and almost every level is laser focused straight forward platforming, pared down compared to its more free-roaming contemporaries but hitting an intersection between simplicity and polish that makes it significantly nicer to return to today. The variety of terrain, obstacle layouts and enemy designs squeeze every last drop out of Crash's move set - expanded here quite ingeniously with a slide that doubles as an attack and can lead into a high jump. The jetpack levels are questionable but brief and inoffensive, and the only other gimmicks - the polar bear, jet board, chase levels - are bangers, providing bursts of varied challenge rather than totally irrelevant and often wonky mechanics to be endured ala Crash 3's plane or bike racing levels.

The difficulty has been refined as well, levels are segmented with more checkpoints, with most of the harder bits being in the bonus levels that don't cost lives. It's subjective, of course, but this more forgiving approach after the first game's occasionally brutal difficulty to me indicates a matured team who know they're on top of the platform with nothing to prove. Plus when you do die you're treated to one of a couple dozen unique death animations, one of the more showy indicators of an increased attention to detail.

This does make a few sadistic choices stand out in a weird way - by far the most egregious is a box that's outside of your visible screen with no indication that its there. In other cases its not just the level of difficulty but requirements being esoteric enough that you might not clock them, like having to play through levels without dying and then backtrack to branch off into a harder route, sometimes against the camera. The most difficult parts feel like the game's design folding back on itself, like you're doing something that surely couldn't have been the intended method.

On the other hand I can't hate it because nothing has ever tickled the core of my gamer amygdala like finding a secret exit in Crash 2 and its a product of the same design mindset. No other game secrets capture the feeling that you've genuinely trespassed outside the normal and into the fringe as much as Crash 2's secret warp room with its shadowy, liminal levels, a feeling further emphasised by the room not being easily accessible even after its discovery, you can only get in through another obscure backdoor. Its magic.

The only thing that really bothers me (besides that one box) are the odd times when an alternate route platforms brings you back further along than when you branched off, making it unclear if you need to backtrack for boxes. That, and it's too short and too addictive. Every time I get 100% I have to start it over again.