slagghi
Log Status
Completed
Playing
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Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
May 28, 2023
Platforms Played
This game feels like it came out in 1999!
That is not a compliment.
From a design perspective, I like to call the original Crash (and this one, apparently), barely-3d-platformers. They combine the freedom of 2d levels with the sharp precision platforming of 3d levels. That is to say, they get the worst of both worlds.
There is a reason why you don't see platformers with a fixed, behind-the-character camera nowadays. A reason why you don't see running-towards-the-camera levels. It's because they are bad ideas, they make depth perception a nightmare, and modern design sensibilities rightfully grew out of them. Having a new, shadow-highliter to help you with depth perception isn't a solution, it's just showing that the fixed camera system sucks, essentially putting a bandaid on a gaping wound.
The fact that this game clings to these anachronistic tropes shows that it loves the original ps1 material to a fault, as it has no capability whatsoever of criticising, finding its limits and improving it (how foolish of me to suggest such a thing for a nostalgia-fueled throwback game, I know)
Hell, even the PS2 games did a better job at trying to innovate the Crash series. They failed, mind you, but at least they tried. The fact that this new 2020 instalment pretends that those game don't exist is a perfect representation of how it is completely and utterly stuck 20 years in the past.
Let's give credit where credit is due, there are some new additions, mainly new masks that introduce additional movement mechanics. Some of them almost aren't clunky as hell. The same goes for the bonus characters, each one having at least one clunky mechanic that seems to arbitrarily fail to work 10% of the time (dingo's hover-jump, cortex's block-gun and tawna's grapple hook)
The game also has a new, infinite-lives mode, which is apparently the preferred way to play it. As soon as I saw it, I thought of two questions: "what does collecting sets of 100 wompa fruits do, then?", and "does it just mean that the developer just didn't bother to properly design a difficulty curve for a limited-lives system?"
After having played the game, I can safely say that the answers are, respectively, "fuck all" and "yup". I played with lives and I had 99 of them most of the game, since wompa fruits are plenty, and then I started hemorrhaging them by the end, once the difficulty abruptly and obnoxiously spikes up. I still got no game over, though, which is nice, I guess.
Most of this game's drawbacks are directly inherited from the original Crash trilogy. Those games have an excuse though, as this was a cutting-edge, brand-new genre at the time, and basically only Mario figured out how to make a satisfying 3d-movement system. Crash 4 came out in 2020, so it absolutely doesn't deserve the same leniency
That is not a compliment.
From a design perspective, I like to call the original Crash (and this one, apparently), barely-3d-platformers. They combine the freedom of 2d levels with the sharp precision platforming of 3d levels. That is to say, they get the worst of both worlds.
There is a reason why you don't see platformers with a fixed, behind-the-character camera nowadays. A reason why you don't see running-towards-the-camera levels. It's because they are bad ideas, they make depth perception a nightmare, and modern design sensibilities rightfully grew out of them. Having a new, shadow-highliter to help you with depth perception isn't a solution, it's just showing that the fixed camera system sucks, essentially putting a bandaid on a gaping wound.
The fact that this game clings to these anachronistic tropes shows that it loves the original ps1 material to a fault, as it has no capability whatsoever of criticising, finding its limits and improving it (how foolish of me to suggest such a thing for a nostalgia-fueled throwback game, I know)
Hell, even the PS2 games did a better job at trying to innovate the Crash series. They failed, mind you, but at least they tried. The fact that this new 2020 instalment pretends that those game don't exist is a perfect representation of how it is completely and utterly stuck 20 years in the past.
Let's give credit where credit is due, there are some new additions, mainly new masks that introduce additional movement mechanics. Some of them almost aren't clunky as hell. The same goes for the bonus characters, each one having at least one clunky mechanic that seems to arbitrarily fail to work 10% of the time (dingo's hover-jump, cortex's block-gun and tawna's grapple hook)
The game also has a new, infinite-lives mode, which is apparently the preferred way to play it. As soon as I saw it, I thought of two questions: "what does collecting sets of 100 wompa fruits do, then?", and "does it just mean that the developer just didn't bother to properly design a difficulty curve for a limited-lives system?"
After having played the game, I can safely say that the answers are, respectively, "fuck all" and "yup". I played with lives and I had 99 of them most of the game, since wompa fruits are plenty, and then I started hemorrhaging them by the end, once the difficulty abruptly and obnoxiously spikes up. I still got no game over, though, which is nice, I guess.
Most of this game's drawbacks are directly inherited from the original Crash trilogy. Those games have an excuse though, as this was a cutting-edge, brand-new genre at the time, and basically only Mario figured out how to make a satisfying 3d-movement system. Crash 4 came out in 2020, so it absolutely doesn't deserve the same leniency