(NOTE: THE PS4 COPY OF CRASH N-SANE TRILOGY I PLAYED ON MY PS5 IS A USED COPY. ACTIVISION DID NOT GET A SINGLE CENT FROM ME. WHY I AM MENTIONING THIS? LOOK UP ACTIVISION’S LONG TROUBLED HISTORY AND “BOBBY KOTICK” AND YOU WILL SEE WHY I DID NOT BUY A NEW COPY.)

Crash Bandicoot is a classic platformer from the PS1. He got a remake with his other two PS1 games in the N-Sane Trilogy. My history is Crash started with playing Crash of the Titan and Mind over Mutant on my PS2 over 10 years ago. The last Crash game I have played and beaten was Crash 3 Warped on the PS3 and that was years ago, too. I got to play and beat the first Crash and holy fuck, it is hard.

I am not kidding; this game is difficult. The difficulty comes from the precise platforming. If you overshoot or undershoot a jump, you will die. Checkpoint boxes and Aku Aku masks are not that common, so you are a fragile bandicoot. Some stages will make you want to rip your hair out. Temple Ruins, Road to Nowhere (Oh god), Sunset Vista, The High Road (OH GOD), Slippery Climb (OH MY GOD), and Castle Machinery almost made me quit. I will never 100 percent this game or touch Stormy Ascent because I care about my mental health.

In the first of the N-Sane Trilogy, the game looks great. Everyone is expressive and the graphics and art design will never look dated.

Crash 1 might be a tough game to sell because of its difficulty. If you have the patience and willpower, you will beat this game. The game is good, but I do not see myself replaying it. It is so hard.

Oola baga? Uwa baka? What in the lord's good name are you saying funny words man?

Need a lesson in humility? Meet Crash! He can jump and spin and fall into every trap laid by man HOLY SHIT. I never improved at all and felt in fact demotivated further and further which led to my jumps to grow imprecise. Another thing that disappointed me was the lack of sauce. How tf does Crash not have sauce? The fucked up depth perception is this game's only identity. N. Brio is a funny name though my child will inherit the moniker. He had the only good boss fight in the game and you could tell him and I did not know what we were doing an equal amount.

games in the 90s had very different principles compared to the games of today. a lot of ideals from the arcade and NES era were still prominent; most notably, punishing, high-difficulty games remained commonplace.

i have no problems with difficulty. hell, celeste is my favorite game ever and that game kicked my ass more times than i could count. what i do have problems with is unfair difficulty. crash isn't painfully bad because it's hard, it's painfully bad because it's hard for all the wrong reasons.

much of crash 1's difficulty comes with precise platforming. through the whole game, from beginning to end, almost all the jumps are pretty tight. normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. the problem lies with the camera angle; during 3D segments, the camera is both placed behind crash in a very awkward angle, and it's unadjustable. for precise platforming, this is a nightmare. the depth perception is consistently off, making many of my deaths feel less like my lack of skill and more like poor game design. combined with an already difficult base game, this makes many levels hell to complete.

it doesn't help that the game also takes a lot of time to laugh at you when you fail. after every level, you have to painfully watch as crash gets hit by all the boxes you missed. during the game over, a tiki head laughs after they say their line. enemies will stand in place after killing you, which, intentional or not, feels like a real punch in the stomach. this doubling up of deaths feeling unfair & the frequent feeling of being made fun of sets up for a truly awful game experience.

the checkpoint system is also atrocious. there are maybe 3 or 4 per level, and failing right before a checkpoint means wading through 2-3 minutes of obstacles you just passed. this waiting is exemplified by the majority of crash 1's obstacles running on cycles, which means you're already doing a lot of waiting your first time through.

speaking of obstacles, crash 1's level design is awful. if i have to play another bridge level, i might end it all. enemy placement is generally poor, some levels drag while others feel inconsequential. every boss is just a waiting game for 4 or 5 minutes while you wait to take advantage of their incredibly obvious or stupidly cryptic openings. there is no in between.

all this, and i didn't even mention the poor hitbox work, the awfully loose controls, the one-tile pits place exactly where you'd expect to jump...

this game is awful. sure, it looks great, sounds fine, there's a good amount of personality here; but at the end of the day, it miserably fails at what it tries to be - a challenging yet fun 3D platformer.

The toughest of the trilogy, and Slippery Climb caused me to nearly pull my hair out and led to a low-life count that manifested a few game over screens.

As a remake, it doesn't simplify anything. Its the same game as the original, just smoother and prettier to look at. It's a little more robust in some areas like Hog Wild, but other than that. The preference of the game is going to come down to how modern you want it to look!

Its almost more impressive playing the original, due to how well it still plays

Classic platformer with one of the most recognizable characters of all-time. The remaster has treated this game well, the graphics look great, but the controls could be very frustrating. I think I read about them changing Crash's hitbox? Something about squares and pills? Regardless, I completed every challenge this game threw at me, and felt immensely satisfied when it was over.

100% Completion Notes: Going for the 100% turns this game from a challenge to pure lunacy. Stormy. Ascent. Time Trial. That is all.

I loved Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Twinsanity a ton as a kid, and the N-Sane trilogy has been on my radar since launch. Not that I finally have a PS5, I feel like it was time to give this trilogy a shot.

I had a ton of fun with this first entry! Difficult at times, but very rewarding once you make it through. Any time I felt frustrated, I stopped playing for the day and tried again tomorrow, and I usually made it within a few tries at that point. Fantastic platformer with a lot of character and charm. Reminds of both Pac-Man World 1 and 2, and that’s always a great thing.

Crash Bandicoot is a series I've always wanted to play but never really got the chance to, previously I've only played 3 of the racing games. So when this new trilogy bundle came out I was excited to experience the actual platforming of Crash. I'm incredibly disappointed, for reasons that probably are only caused by this remake.

The biggest thing about the remake is the graphic upgrades done, and yeah they certainly look nice. But also they make the game play like shit at some points. The majority of my deaths come from simply jumping into death pits in jumps that would be incredibly simple if the platforms weren't annoying difficult to discern cause of their visuals. In the ruin stages what seems like the edge of the block actually isn't cause some of the crumbled bits can still be stood on, and annoyingly there's so many jumps you actually need to be on edges for.

The camera is also absolutely absurd sometimes. A lot of times you just can't see what the fuck you're doing, like where you're being chased by boulders you can barely see what's coming up in the path because of how zoomed in it is. The field of view is often so obnoxious for this, and especially becomes a problem when you're trying to play fast for the time trials. They're so many camera angle changes that it feels awkward to play at times, or backtracking level becomes nearly impossible cause the camera doesn't show what's behind you (try walking backwards in the level Toxic Waste for example).

And all this is a shame because the game has so much potential and is pretty fun outside of those issues. Unfortunately, those issues make going for anything but any% unfun as hell. Some additional complaints would be that the time trials feel absurdly difficult at points, and some like Generator Room have so many cycles that it becomes necessary feeling to wait at the start for a lucky cycle. I also completely despise how unobvious it can be at times that a colored gem is required to unlock boxes in stages, for a while I would try to get All Boxes while playing through only to find out I completely wasted my time because it's impossible. (There is a hint tool tip on loading screens for when you do need a gem, they go away pretty fast and also doesn't seem obviously level specific at first, so you don't think much about it for a while).

Overall, I just can't say this first game in the set feels worth the purchase. It seems like emulating the original Crash Bandicoot would probably be more enjoyable.

Crash's first game is interesting to me. On one hand, you have some really fun stages that are well thought out and satisfying to finish. On the other hand, you have some bad stages that have annoying gimmicks or go on for a bit too long. Overall, the 3D sections and bosses are fun, but any sidescrolling parts are either going to be fine or bad. I loved Crash as a kid, and still do, but even remade the first game is still just kinda ok. If I played the original instead, then I would've given this a much lower score.
Final score: 6/10

Mega brutal.

Much better than the OG thanks to the new controls imported from Crash 2. Much less floaty.

Don't do time relics unless you hate yourself.

Crash Bandicoot is a platformer with an emphasis on skill, with just two moves to make use of, keeping things pretty straightforward. I played through the game normally and it wasn't really anything special, levels which use the same templates, questionable design choices like crates which are off screen, giving you no indication where they are, buffered inputs for jumps could also be annoying sometimes too.

None of that really matters though, because the best part of this game is the relics, which require you to beat every stage under a certain time without dying. You learn to navigate through some long, complex stages, especially the DLC, and when you finally get that perfect run it's pretty satisfying. That's where this game shines, when it demands real skill from the player.

If there was a little more variety in the stages and some of the gems didn't have bullshit crates off screen, I'd probably rate it higher.