By Matthew Nemeth
So after playing all 3 remastered editions of Crash Bandicoot 1,2 and 3 on the PlayStation 4, I can safely say that these games have the most complicated mixture of frustration, fun and rewarding feeling that I have ever had playing a game. The pure frustration of running a time trial and having 4 seconds to spare and then having Crash miss the final jump was incredibly frustrating. On the other hand successfully finishing a time trial with half a second to spare and seeing the gold relic pop up genuinely gave me a feeling of incredible success, This is of course just one example.
I thought it would be best to review these games as a whole franchise and simply compare and contrast. Where Crash 1 is much more of a basic and almost beta game to the 2 and easily the worst and most frustrating it is still a great video game and I can’t praise Vicarious Visions enough for making this remaster of a PlayStation 1 game from 1996 look like something that was released as a brand new game in 2017 the way the characters and gameplay looks graphically is nothing short of phenomenal and probably even looks better than some games released today.
So yes Crash 1 is a frustrating and very outdated game in terms of level design but again the reward for things like just making it to a level and not falling off and then proceeding to finish the level is well worth it although to be honest Crash 1 did feel like a slight grind but in a way it made me look forward to seeing what the other 2 had to offer being new games.
Crash 2 steps up its game with the ability to slide and eventually the ability to run therefore making time trials easier it also changes the game with having the series’ 1st warp room and with different level designs which I really like. I would definitely recommend waiting until after you get the ability to run to do the time trials, You could still go for the gems but to get the extra speed just finish the game 1st then use the run ability.
Crash 3 Warped is my favourite game of the series with abilities such as tornado spin, double jump, body slam, the bazooka and the running ability again. I would again recommend in the 3rd game that you wait to get everything before doing time trials at least.
Some of my favourite levels in the game are Coco‘s boat ones, Crash’s bear and bike ones and Coco’s Tiger levels. All are fast paced, well designed, challenging and are fairly quick. I definitely would have preferred the game to have more but shorter levels as some do go on for too long and can become even more frustrating if they are some of the later harder levels that just keep throwing things at you (sometimes literally), But I appreciated the more difficult levels more once I had finished them and went back with all of the abilities, therefore, being able to do them easier and with far less frustration. For example having the bazooka and being able to shoot enemies in front allowed me to enjoy the platforming more rather than worrying about hitting an enemy and going back to another checkpoint.
In conclusion, this is a phenomenal remaster from the ground up and allows gamers and newer generations to play these games in the stunningly beautiful remaster that vicarious visions have done, this is the true way to play these games now. Putting aside some of the incredible frustration this game can cause (which just got so bad sometimes) these are incredibly rewarding games to play because even though the frustration is there, it isn’t always I mean some levels ARE easier and fun and even though the levels I pointed out were not the most platformy in the game I did still enjoy those levels a lot. Just to put the frustration to a side one more time, these games ARE supposed to be challenging and there isn’t actually much wrong with the game at all, at least as a video game. So thank you vicarious visions and I hope to see another Crash Bandicoot game in the future (yes I am planning to play The Wrath Of Cortex).
Ratings:
Crash 1 8.0/10
Crash 2 9.0/10
Crash 3 10/10
Overall 10/10
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