Mojib-Ribbon is one of the Japan-exclusive spin-offs that NanaOn-Sha made to the original Vib-Ribbon.
Instead of featuring the vector rabbit Vibri, we now follow the sumi-e styled Mojibri, and then later on, Mojiko and the robot Osorezan 1999.

Before I get into the gameplay, I think the game's Japanese caligraphy artstyle is absolutely gorgeous and still holds up well! It is a bit similar to a game called Okami, but this one takes a more simple approach to the use of colors.

The music was once again composed by Laugh & Peace, but they don't sing any of the songs. The beats of the songs are really good! Not all of them are bangers, but there's a lot here I do enjoy.

And this leads me into the gameplay.
See, the reason why the band Laugh & Peace doesn't sing their songs unlike last time, is because this isn't exactly a Rhythm game in the traditional sense.
Your objective in the game is to write the song according to the beat of it, and the characters will say the sentences as you're writing.
That's a pretty cool idea, but how do you do it?

Remember how in Vib-Ribbon, you only utilized 4 buttons to play through the game?
In this game... you only one of the analogue sticks, with the right being the default (you can use either the left, right, or both of them if you go to the options menu).
While you're writing a sentence, you're constantly moving, and you need to flick the stick up and immediately down to write a part of a sentence. If you do it too late, you miss. If you only flick down, you write with thin syllables, and if you flick up too early, you write the thick syllables. These get you a lower score.
And this is where my main frustration with the game comes from.

The timings for writing a sentence well are really, really, really fucking strict!
It's so hard flicking the analogue stick constantly up and down to write well, and even when I can do it, it hurts my thumb so much!

If you ever think about playing this game, please rest in between songs.
And there's way more of them this time around, triple the amount Vib-Ribbon had! I appreciate the effort in making a longer game, but levels can get really intense later on... and they hurt my thumb even more.

There are also little annoyances the game has that absolutely made me frustrated whenever I was trying to write the sentences.
For example, like Vib-Ribbon, if you miss a lot, you'll transform to a smaller form. When you transform in this game, it can mess up your sense of flow, and it fucking sucks.
I know this was the case with Vib-Ribbon, but since this game demands more from you, this really makes me lose my concentration.

Another thing that pissed me off was exactly when to let go of the analogue stick. Now, when you're finishing a part of a sentence, and there's nothing coming up right afterwards immediately, you need to stop holding the stick down. This is indicated by the clouds obscuring the syllables in the stages.
Thing is, sometimes the clouds did not have a color that contrasted too well with background color, and as such, I couldn't exactly see where I should've stopped.
Once again, messing my flow and make me less concentration.

This kind of shit happened to me all the goddamn time, and all of this added up to me not felling fulfilled whenever I beat a stage. Just relieved that it was over.

Overall, Mojib-Ribbon, while it has plenty of charm, is a game that I have a hard time recommending unless you really want a challenge.

Crash Twinsanity's development has been talked about a lot. From its switch from a more mature tone to a more comedic one, to the butt-load of things they had to scrap to meet the deadline.

There are people who love this game. There are people who hate this game.
Personally, I've always had an interest in this one. Not just because I'm a fan of Crash, but because some of the cutscenes were really funny.

And I think I'll start right there. The comedic tone that they went for really paid off! There were a lot of times I laughed my ass off! From Cortex's falling into a spiked pit, to Crash's dumb facial expressions, to Crash having a very interesting look when looking Cortex's behind.
Cortex even spanks Crash, nice to see they're getting along.

And that's the main gimmick with this one. Crash and Cortex have to team up to defeat an even greater evil... the Evil Twins.
I feel like that generic name might've been intentional.
You'll playing as Crash and Cortex throughout the adventure, either as just one of them, or both of them. Launching Cortex and smacking his head into boxes, or using him as a sled, and hurting his balls on rails.

There's also a new playable character in Nina Cortex, the daug-- niece of Neo Cortex, and she... just kinda exists, to be honest.
I liked her gameplay style of using a hook on certain objects, but you don't play as her much.

The level desing has also seen a big change. While the game is linear like previously, the stages are bigger, and you can explore around them to get the game's gems, as they are no longer tied to boxes.
Getting these can be fun, because obtaning them is kinda like a puzzle. But I didn't feel like gathering them all, especially in the Slide levels, which are the hardest to obtain all of the gems.

Regardless, this change in level design is a welcome one, and I wouldn't mind future Crash games returning to this style. And it also does not come at the sacrifice of the game's platforming, as it's very well designed and fun to go through!

One thing that I think should be said about this game, and probably is the biggest point of contention of it... is the fact that you can clearly see that this game is unfinished.
Examples include, but not limited to:
- Collision detection being all kinds of wonky.
- Story jumps around a lot, and some plot threads are wrapped up out of nowhere.
- Characters like Evil Crash and Nina just kind of exist, and don't have much of a presence.
- Plenty of sound effects simply not existing in various cutscenes.
- A stunned Coco has a hitbox.

By collecting the gems, you receive a lot of the game's concept art, and it serves to also confirm that there's a lot of cut content.
Now, is this a 100% bad thing?
Not necessarily. I still think the game we got is pretty serviceable, but it definitely needed more time in the oven. I wish certain things got expanded upon, like the two characters I mentioned earlier.

Outside of the comedy and the gameplay, another thing I really liked about this game was the overall presentation! Compared to The Wrath of Cortex, this is night and day. Crash Twinsanity's graphics and art direction still hold up to this day, and I love how the game looks!
Character animations are also pretty good, especially Crash's and Cortex's.
The voice acting is also very good, but it came with a change. Clancy Brown is no longer the voice of Cortex, now Lex Lang is at the helm.
Simply put, I love the voice he brought to Cortex! His line delivery is on point, and it enhanced the comedy that much more.
What I find weird is that Crash never emotes anything in Twinsanity. Like, there are no grunts... at all. Weird, considering Crash is pretty expressive in this game, you'd think he'd "talk" more, but I guess not.
Also, Nina is pretty much a mute until her "Huh?" at the final cutscene. Most likely a consequence of the rushed dev time.

Speaking of voices, you'll be hearing plenty of them in the music, as it was composed by a band called Spiralmouth, an accapella band. Since it's accapella, which only involves voices, the game's soundtrack has its own unique vibe. It's not for everybody, but I really enjoyed it, and I think it enhanced the game's tone nicely.

Overall, Crash Twinsanity, while definitely flawed, was a really fun game to play through, and I can see myself playing this again sometime in the future.

The Crash series makes its debut on the next generation of consoles, and it's forgoing PlayStation exclusivity, as it's now also going on the Nintendo GameCube and Xbox.

Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex follows up the last game, as Crash and Coco must once again stop Cortex and Uka Uka from taking over the world... but they've got company this time, with new rival, Crunch!
Also, the Elemental Masks are also here to cause a ruckus, so we have new enemies this time.

And that's where this game's originality sort-of ends. Of course, there are a few more things, but this game borrows heavity from Crash 3, that it many aspects, one can call this game a rehash.

There are new aesthetics this go around, in addition to old ones, but many of these new themes only last one or two levels, because this game's name is inconsistency.
Remember in my Crash 3 review how I said that the game's vehicles and how many there were could be a point of contention amongst fans?
This game has even more vehicles, and some of them are not really fun to control, like the aerial fly-like vehicle. With that one, you can only shoot after you've locked-on, which takes a bit, and leaves you vulnerable to enemy attacks. I find this one really dumb, because they already had used the airplane from Crash 3 earlier in the game, so why introduce this new, inferior one?
There's also the mech, which its jump while standing still is horrible, and there's the mini-submarine, which its turning is really slow.

It's not all bad, for example, the game's new ball levels were actually pretty fun to go through, but there were only 3 of them, so they barely got fleshed out.
And that's the thing, this game barely fleshes out anything because it's constantly switching things up.

Like Coco herself is playable without any vehicles... for like 2 levels, I believe. And I liked playing as her. I know she's inferior to Crash since her moveset is just jumping and spinning, but I don't know, I actually liked that simplicity.
But again, you don't get to play as her that much, so I'm left unsatisfied and underwhelmed.

The game's presentation is also pretty underwhelming. The characters look pretty ugly in general, especially Cortex. Although the game's voice acting does pick up the slack, as we have new voice actors joining in like Mark Hamill, Thomas Wilson and Jess Harnell, and their performances were really good, in spite of their lines being very bland.
The music as well was also pretty good, reminded me a lot of Traveller's Tales previous work, like their soundtrack on the Toy Story 2 video game.

Overall, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, while not a bad game, just leaves me underwhelmed.