twangyjuice
2007
My first review had to do with criticizing the presentation of the 360 version, as I thought they slapped on far too many "next-gen" graphical effects to what was clearly designed and built first as a PS2 game. This review is going to be spent detailing my experience with the game on the PS2 version and on the game as a whole.
As I usually like to do, I'll start by listing all my positives. I actually really like most of the redesigns in this game (Tiny aside, because he went from a Tasmanian Tiger with Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice to a Siberian Tiger with Mike Tyson's. I don't think it's even fair to compare him to his original incarnation because he's practically a new character). They're not better than the original Looney Tunes-inspired ones, and they were VERY off-putting and difficult to get used to; but I think with the drastic change in gameplay, a rebooted storyline and redesigned characters was for the best. I especially love how Uka Uka and Cortex look! I think Nina is the only design I dislike. She looks too... realistic? For lack of a better term? I hate the proportions of her face, but I guess her being "ugly" was the goal. She just doesn't really seem to fit in with the rest of the very cartoony cast. The general aesthetic of the game leans really hard into the tribal jungle feeling, while trying to still be "edgy and punk", according to the devs. It feels like a Nickelodeon cartoon I might've caught during the weirder NickToons era, and I sorta like that. The tribal tattoos, voodoo dolls and idols, and whatnot add to this really unique feeling that "this ain't your grand-daddy's Crash!!" for better and worse.
The animations are probably the best they've ever been in any Crash game until 4 came out. The cutscenes have great bouncy, comedic animations that help in selling the vocal performances, and the in-game animations are all very snappy and use lots of squash and stretch.
I'll say as a minor aside that while I don't necessarily find the writing of this game very funny, the animations do make some of those jokes at least bearable, and they help the joke be delivered better than if everyone was standing around flapping their mouths in idle poses. The jokes are just a time capsule of the "meta-humor, toilet humor, loud is funny, we're trying so hard to be zany and random"-kind of writing that was endemic to a lot of kids cartoons I watched growing up. Even as a kid, I found a lot of this stuff kind of annoying, but I'm not the demographic for this game NOW as a 22 year old woman. I'm sure hearing these little rat goons say "ooh, that's so silly!!" (seriously, this game loves to overuse the word "silly" as a punchline and I don't get what's funny about it), or making jokes about "hax0rz n n00bz!!!", "Leroy Jenkins", posting on MySpace, and "ha ha italian plumber in overalls, this is a video game!!" for 4 hours as a kid would be entertaining. Not all the jokes are bad. Like, I laughed at the 1968 Planet of the Apes ending joke that came out of absolutely nowhere at the start of the N. Gin stages, but what average, normal kid would get THAT joke?! I guess parents of the 2000s would've been alive in the 60/70s to MAYBE get it, assuming they're playing with their kids...
And finally, I like the CONCEPT behind the main gimmick of this game. The Titans, of those I witnessed in my playthrough, are almost entirely really well-designed. The Titans I found were most fun to play as were Spike, Sludge, Battler, Ratcicle, Magmadon, and Rhinoroller... which is about half of them. The main criticism I have is that a lot of them look way too similar to each other or very obviously reuse animations with each other, like Stench/Snipe/Ee-Lectric, and Titans like Goar/Shellephant/Rhinoroller look too similar to each other in silhouette and color scheme, which can make it hard to distinguish them in a big fight. But otherwise, Titan Jacking is really fun and theoretically serves a very fun way to diversify combat. These bigger enemies are designed in such a way that any move they can use against you, you can also use yourself once you Jack them. In concept, this is fair. But they all have very limited movesets, and a lot of their attacks are very slow and can be interrupted. And this leads into my most major criticism...
I know this is mostly on me for choosing to start on Hard Mode, but I consider myself pretty good at video games like these to feel confident starting like this. I played a little bit on Normal as well, to be clear, and the game is just too braindead easy and not very fun on that difficulty. It's such a slog. So I figured Hard would be more up my alley, and it was for a while.
On Hard, as soon as you reach Level 3, this game becomes extremely bullshit. You die in like 3 hits, even accounting for the points at which you'll naturally get health upgrades by collecting Mojo. There are so many mob fights that are just 5, 6, or 7 Titans all swarming you at the same time. Punching Titans builds up a Stun meter that leads to you being able to Jack them. If you don't attack them for long enough, the Stun meter VERY quickly runs out, so they expect you to be constantly assaulting these guys as much as possible, AND making sure you break through THEIR guards if they start blocking. There are also power-ups called Free Jacks in SOME mob fights that let you kick an enemy and immediately stun them to Jack them. Even when you utilize Free Jacks, the issue of slow and interruptible Titan attack animations just fuck me over so hard. There's a severe lack of good, reliable CC/AOE attacks to keep myself alive.
If I try to guard, I just end up getting hit consecutively by the other 6 Titans I'm swarmed by with no way to escape. If I try to swing, I might hit one or two guys, but then get decked in the face by a stray one I missed or I'll just get blocked and then swung at. If I try winding up a Special Move or a Heavy Attack, I get interrupted. Before I know it, I'm kicked off my Titan and desperately trying not to get two-shot by the entire swarm of Titans because there's no way to reasonably separate them. Blocking as Crash ONLY protects against Medium Attacks, so while 4 of the Titans are mashing their Medium Attacks against me, one might end up hitting me with a Heavy and I get chunked, or I'll get pushed into lava or toxic waste. Cue John DiMaggio laughing obnoxiously as the screen fades to black and I have to start the section over again. Dying too many times sends you all the way back to the start of the level. Hope you didn't spend the last 50 minutes breaking Spybots and working on your Combo King mission, because you gotta do it all over again for the Gold trophy!
I feel like Mojo collection is way too slow and you have such a barebones moveset at the start of the game to justify me starting over AGAIN. I was exactly halfway through the game, I got to level 10, before I figured this was too much for me. If I wanted to restart on Normal, I would have to grind ALL my Mojo back again because progression doesn't carry between levels. Otherwise, this is a game where you mash Square and maybe hold Triangle to break a guard once in a while, because there are not early-game combos that utilize the Triangle button mid-combo. It takes SO long before combat becomes interesting in this game that turned me off from wanting to restart.
As an avid defender of Sonic Unleashed, they at least had the good will to give you a decent amount of starting options. Even by Mazuri, you'll have access to fun, diverse combos and a lot of combat options in general (grabbing and executes with QTEs, sprinting, light attacks, heavy attacks, all with variable range, good AOE/CC moves, a decent blocking/dodging system, a super meter for more damage and faster attacks). No offense intended to the game's fans, but for me, this game just kinda sucks no matter if you try to challenge yourself or not.
Most of the conversations I had seen of this game before really trying it said things like "Crash shouldn't look like this!!! Tribal tattoos?! That's ridiculous!!" or "Crash shouldn't be a beat-em-up!!", when the real problem is that the game isn't fun to engage with at a higher level. I am VERY receptive to change, as I've hopefully made clear by embracing the new artstyle, the rebooted continuity, and the Titans. I see what others like about it, and I understand how people who did grow up with this game without caring about pre-Radical Crash love it.
EDIT: After a two day break, I came back to the game and 100%ed it, still on the same playthrough for Hard. I still stand by all my points above, but Hard mode actually becomes pretty manageable by the halfway point, or if you overlevel just a little bit by grinding Mojo (which is extremely time-consuming). Square>Square>Triangle and Square>Square>Triangle>Triangle trivializes the entire game, and then it's only a matter of getting in a safe spot to do the combo and staying on your Titan. But it takes 400,000 and 800,000 Mojo to unlock those combos, respectively. Either give me a skill tree or just give me all my moves at the start of the game and let Mojo collection be used exclusively for Spin duration and health upgrades or something.
Oh, and I'll mention this, since I heard about this part from folks who grew up with the game online: the Uka-Uka boss fight especially was a lot of fun and super challenging. I actually had fun trying to figure out what the fuck to do and how to survive. It only took me about 30 minutes of trying to figure out a fast strategy before I beat him.
I give this a 2/5, but honestly, 2-star games are still ones I derive some enjoyment from even if I fundamentally dislike the game design execution or if the game drives me mad with its unfunny writing. I can understand why the biggest of Crash fans of the 00s LOATHED this game. It seemed like an indefinite replacement for the games of the original series, and especially a replacement for the classic linear, box-breaking, almost-collectathon gameplay of the PS1 games. I think now that we have the benefit of games like N. Sane Trilogy, Nitro-Fueled, and 4 that (hopefully) revived the franchise's roots, some might be able to appreciate this game as an experimental spin-off. I certainly do, even if it clearly is not made for me.
As I usually like to do, I'll start by listing all my positives. I actually really like most of the redesigns in this game (Tiny aside, because he went from a Tasmanian Tiger with Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice to a Siberian Tiger with Mike Tyson's. I don't think it's even fair to compare him to his original incarnation because he's practically a new character). They're not better than the original Looney Tunes-inspired ones, and they were VERY off-putting and difficult to get used to; but I think with the drastic change in gameplay, a rebooted storyline and redesigned characters was for the best. I especially love how Uka Uka and Cortex look! I think Nina is the only design I dislike. She looks too... realistic? For lack of a better term? I hate the proportions of her face, but I guess her being "ugly" was the goal. She just doesn't really seem to fit in with the rest of the very cartoony cast. The general aesthetic of the game leans really hard into the tribal jungle feeling, while trying to still be "edgy and punk", according to the devs. It feels like a Nickelodeon cartoon I might've caught during the weirder NickToons era, and I sorta like that. The tribal tattoos, voodoo dolls and idols, and whatnot add to this really unique feeling that "this ain't your grand-daddy's Crash!!" for better and worse.
The animations are probably the best they've ever been in any Crash game until 4 came out. The cutscenes have great bouncy, comedic animations that help in selling the vocal performances, and the in-game animations are all very snappy and use lots of squash and stretch.
I'll say as a minor aside that while I don't necessarily find the writing of this game very funny, the animations do make some of those jokes at least bearable, and they help the joke be delivered better than if everyone was standing around flapping their mouths in idle poses. The jokes are just a time capsule of the "meta-humor, toilet humor, loud is funny, we're trying so hard to be zany and random"-kind of writing that was endemic to a lot of kids cartoons I watched growing up. Even as a kid, I found a lot of this stuff kind of annoying, but I'm not the demographic for this game NOW as a 22 year old woman. I'm sure hearing these little rat goons say "ooh, that's so silly!!" (seriously, this game loves to overuse the word "silly" as a punchline and I don't get what's funny about it), or making jokes about "hax0rz n n00bz!!!", "Leroy Jenkins", posting on MySpace, and "ha ha italian plumber in overalls, this is a video game!!" for 4 hours as a kid would be entertaining. Not all the jokes are bad. Like, I laughed at the 1968 Planet of the Apes ending joke that came out of absolutely nowhere at the start of the N. Gin stages, but what average, normal kid would get THAT joke?! I guess parents of the 2000s would've been alive in the 60/70s to MAYBE get it, assuming they're playing with their kids...
And finally, I like the CONCEPT behind the main gimmick of this game. The Titans, of those I witnessed in my playthrough, are almost entirely really well-designed. The Titans I found were most fun to play as were Spike, Sludge, Battler, Ratcicle, Magmadon, and Rhinoroller... which is about half of them. The main criticism I have is that a lot of them look way too similar to each other or very obviously reuse animations with each other, like Stench/Snipe/Ee-Lectric, and Titans like Goar/Shellephant/Rhinoroller look too similar to each other in silhouette and color scheme, which can make it hard to distinguish them in a big fight. But otherwise, Titan Jacking is really fun and theoretically serves a very fun way to diversify combat. These bigger enemies are designed in such a way that any move they can use against you, you can also use yourself once you Jack them. In concept, this is fair. But they all have very limited movesets, and a lot of their attacks are very slow and can be interrupted. And this leads into my most major criticism...
I know this is mostly on me for choosing to start on Hard Mode, but I consider myself pretty good at video games like these to feel confident starting like this. I played a little bit on Normal as well, to be clear, and the game is just too braindead easy and not very fun on that difficulty. It's such a slog. So I figured Hard would be more up my alley, and it was for a while.
On Hard, as soon as you reach Level 3, this game becomes extremely bullshit. You die in like 3 hits, even accounting for the points at which you'll naturally get health upgrades by collecting Mojo. There are so many mob fights that are just 5, 6, or 7 Titans all swarming you at the same time. Punching Titans builds up a Stun meter that leads to you being able to Jack them. If you don't attack them for long enough, the Stun meter VERY quickly runs out, so they expect you to be constantly assaulting these guys as much as possible, AND making sure you break through THEIR guards if they start blocking. There are also power-ups called Free Jacks in SOME mob fights that let you kick an enemy and immediately stun them to Jack them. Even when you utilize Free Jacks, the issue of slow and interruptible Titan attack animations just fuck me over so hard. There's a severe lack of good, reliable CC/AOE attacks to keep myself alive.
If I try to guard, I just end up getting hit consecutively by the other 6 Titans I'm swarmed by with no way to escape. If I try to swing, I might hit one or two guys, but then get decked in the face by a stray one I missed or I'll just get blocked and then swung at. If I try winding up a Special Move or a Heavy Attack, I get interrupted. Before I know it, I'm kicked off my Titan and desperately trying not to get two-shot by the entire swarm of Titans because there's no way to reasonably separate them. Blocking as Crash ONLY protects against Medium Attacks, so while 4 of the Titans are mashing their Medium Attacks against me, one might end up hitting me with a Heavy and I get chunked, or I'll get pushed into lava or toxic waste. Cue John DiMaggio laughing obnoxiously as the screen fades to black and I have to start the section over again. Dying too many times sends you all the way back to the start of the level. Hope you didn't spend the last 50 minutes breaking Spybots and working on your Combo King mission, because you gotta do it all over again for the Gold trophy!
I feel like Mojo collection is way too slow and you have such a barebones moveset at the start of the game to justify me starting over AGAIN. I was exactly halfway through the game, I got to level 10, before I figured this was too much for me. If I wanted to restart on Normal, I would have to grind ALL my Mojo back again because progression doesn't carry between levels. Otherwise, this is a game where you mash Square and maybe hold Triangle to break a guard once in a while, because there are not early-game combos that utilize the Triangle button mid-combo. It takes SO long before combat becomes interesting in this game that turned me off from wanting to restart.
As an avid defender of Sonic Unleashed, they at least had the good will to give you a decent amount of starting options. Even by Mazuri, you'll have access to fun, diverse combos and a lot of combat options in general (grabbing and executes with QTEs, sprinting, light attacks, heavy attacks, all with variable range, good AOE/CC moves, a decent blocking/dodging system, a super meter for more damage and faster attacks). No offense intended to the game's fans, but for me, this game just kinda sucks no matter if you try to challenge yourself or not.
Most of the conversations I had seen of this game before really trying it said things like "Crash shouldn't look like this!!! Tribal tattoos?! That's ridiculous!!" or "Crash shouldn't be a beat-em-up!!", when the real problem is that the game isn't fun to engage with at a higher level. I am VERY receptive to change, as I've hopefully made clear by embracing the new artstyle, the rebooted continuity, and the Titans. I see what others like about it, and I understand how people who did grow up with this game without caring about pre-Radical Crash love it.
EDIT: After a two day break, I came back to the game and 100%ed it, still on the same playthrough for Hard. I still stand by all my points above, but Hard mode actually becomes pretty manageable by the halfway point, or if you overlevel just a little bit by grinding Mojo (which is extremely time-consuming). Square>Square>Triangle and Square>Square>Triangle>Triangle trivializes the entire game, and then it's only a matter of getting in a safe spot to do the combo and staying on your Titan. But it takes 400,000 and 800,000 Mojo to unlock those combos, respectively. Either give me a skill tree or just give me all my moves at the start of the game and let Mojo collection be used exclusively for Spin duration and health upgrades or something.
Oh, and I'll mention this, since I heard about this part from folks who grew up with the game online: the Uka-Uka boss fight especially was a lot of fun and super challenging. I actually had fun trying to figure out what the fuck to do and how to survive. It only took me about 30 minutes of trying to figure out a fast strategy before I beat him.
I give this a 2/5, but honestly, 2-star games are still ones I derive some enjoyment from even if I fundamentally dislike the game design execution or if the game drives me mad with its unfunny writing. I can understand why the biggest of Crash fans of the 00s LOATHED this game. It seemed like an indefinite replacement for the games of the original series, and especially a replacement for the classic linear, box-breaking, almost-collectathon gameplay of the PS1 games. I think now that we have the benefit of games like N. Sane Trilogy, Nitro-Fueled, and 4 that (hopefully) revived the franchise's roots, some might be able to appreciate this game as an experimental spin-off. I certainly do, even if it clearly is not made for me.
2007
I appreciate having a version of the game with higher quality textures and FMVs, as well as natively higher resolution. The benefit of being a 360 title also means there are plenty of achievements for me to (eventually, maybe someday) accomplish to increase my gamerscore. But the Xbox 360 version is full of really ugly additional effects, like motion blur, refracting effects on the ice that traps Crunch in the first level (but like, it's not even really refracting... it just looks like glass that isn't rendering properly), and "more advanced, softer shadows" that leads to things like Coco's teeth being completely black in the intro scene. I presume it's because of these "more advanced effects" that the game occasionally drops huge frames if too much stuff is on screen.
I'll write a second review going more in-depth on my opinions of the game design and... interesting artistic liberties with this reboot; but after 3 levels on Xbox, I've decided I'm going to start over on PS2 for a more stable, better-looking experience.
I'll write a second review going more in-depth on my opinions of the game design and... interesting artistic liberties with this reboot; but after 3 levels on Xbox, I've decided I'm going to start over on PS2 for a more stable, better-looking experience.
2004
Considering my extremely harsh opinions on a game like Enter the Dragonfly for its unfinished and incomplete nature, me liking Twinsanity was both surprising and not surprising to me in the slightest. This is a game where, at every turn, you can feel that something more was planned for it. I like this game for the same reason I (kind of) like Sonic 06.
This truly feels like a next-generation leap for Crash. I loved the open-ended nature of the game progression and world design. The almost-entirely acapella soundtrack provided by the musical group Spiralmouth is memorable and distinct. The laugh-out-loud writing of cutscenes and the way it perfectly weaves the entirety of the franchise's mythos together kept me thoroughly entertained. The cutscenes, however, are this game's strength and its weakness. The game is blatantly unfinished, as I said, and that goes for the story as well. Quite a lot of the game's unused cutscenes (all available on YouTube via FakeNina) explain things that left me scratching my head regarding story beats that come up and are very quickly dropped, and that really stinks that I feel like I have to pause my game and go look up what the REAL scene was supposed to look like on YouTube while I erase the unfinished version I witnessed in-game from my mind.
There was even an instance between the airship level, fighting off Ant Drones with Cortex, and it abruptly cuts to Crash at the Academy of Evil. There wasn't even an unused cutscene to explain this when I tried looking it up. I thought I accidentally skipped a cutscene or something (which you can't do btw. They removed cutscene skipping to prevent crashes).
While playing, I had a feeling that this game could be even more fun if it was a couch co-op game akin to the Lego games made by Traveler's Tales after Twinsanity. I did some research and the game WAS planned to have been co-op all along. There are so many points where I could see having two players doing things independent of one another, helping each other defeat enemies and throwing switches, would've been more fun than if you did it alone, waiting and relying on Cortex's AI to do things after you toss him. Any time a level that has nothing to do with teamwork comes up, Cortex awkwardly vanishes or teleports away, which feels clearly unintended.
Don't get me wrong, this game is FULL of jank and things I don't like. Right before the bee level starts with Cortex, I hit an invisible death barrier in a spot with absolutely no indication of there being ANYTHING there that would kill me. I'm unsure if this is an emulator issue, but drop shadows would not render over crates, making lots of platforming sections on iron crates, bounce crates, or TNT far more difficult than they needed to be. TNT kills you instantly. Invincibility barely lasts very long and isn't useful because you don't even do contact damage to enemies or TNT/Nitro. In fact, you can DIE while invincible by touching Nitro or TNT. TNT ignores Aku Aku/Uka Uka protection.
But for most of my playtime, I really enjoyed myself and I saw the vision they were going for. 90% of the problems I had, I recognized likely stemmed from the game being rushed and unfinished. Whether I was playing as Nina in the escape from the Academy or using Cortex like a snowboard down mountains, I still had the biggest smile on my face while playing nearly the whole time. It's so full of heart and soul, and it's just DRIPPING with veneration for the entire franchise up to this point what with all the fan-service. So often, I felt as if this game would've been perfect as an anniversary title, and the extra 2 years of dev time surely would've helped this game come out as a true next-gen experience. Although inexperienced and amateur at the time, I have great respect for those at Oxford Studio who managed to get the game out the way it is.
As I said in my Wrath of Cortex review, I typically do not advocate for remakes or remasters of games over new products instead. But this is an even rarer situation where, given the choice between a sequel to It's About Time and a full remake of Twinsanity that implements all the cut levels, refines the gameplay, and makes the story feel a little more complete to the original vision, I would choose Twinsanity in a heartbeat. It obviously loses some points from me for being an unfinished, buggy game, but it speaks volumes to the potential this game had that this ends up being one of my favorite Crash games. If it gets this good a score as is, imagine how great it could be if it were finished.
This truly feels like a next-generation leap for Crash. I loved the open-ended nature of the game progression and world design. The almost-entirely acapella soundtrack provided by the musical group Spiralmouth is memorable and distinct. The laugh-out-loud writing of cutscenes and the way it perfectly weaves the entirety of the franchise's mythos together kept me thoroughly entertained. The cutscenes, however, are this game's strength and its weakness. The game is blatantly unfinished, as I said, and that goes for the story as well. Quite a lot of the game's unused cutscenes (all available on YouTube via FakeNina) explain things that left me scratching my head regarding story beats that come up and are very quickly dropped, and that really stinks that I feel like I have to pause my game and go look up what the REAL scene was supposed to look like on YouTube while I erase the unfinished version I witnessed in-game from my mind.
There was even an instance between the airship level, fighting off Ant Drones with Cortex, and it abruptly cuts to Crash at the Academy of Evil. There wasn't even an unused cutscene to explain this when I tried looking it up. I thought I accidentally skipped a cutscene or something (which you can't do btw. They removed cutscene skipping to prevent crashes).
While playing, I had a feeling that this game could be even more fun if it was a couch co-op game akin to the Lego games made by Traveler's Tales after Twinsanity. I did some research and the game WAS planned to have been co-op all along. There are so many points where I could see having two players doing things independent of one another, helping each other defeat enemies and throwing switches, would've been more fun than if you did it alone, waiting and relying on Cortex's AI to do things after you toss him. Any time a level that has nothing to do with teamwork comes up, Cortex awkwardly vanishes or teleports away, which feels clearly unintended.
Don't get me wrong, this game is FULL of jank and things I don't like. Right before the bee level starts with Cortex, I hit an invisible death barrier in a spot with absolutely no indication of there being ANYTHING there that would kill me. I'm unsure if this is an emulator issue, but drop shadows would not render over crates, making lots of platforming sections on iron crates, bounce crates, or TNT far more difficult than they needed to be. TNT kills you instantly. Invincibility barely lasts very long and isn't useful because you don't even do contact damage to enemies or TNT/Nitro. In fact, you can DIE while invincible by touching Nitro or TNT. TNT ignores Aku Aku/Uka Uka protection.
But for most of my playtime, I really enjoyed myself and I saw the vision they were going for. 90% of the problems I had, I recognized likely stemmed from the game being rushed and unfinished. Whether I was playing as Nina in the escape from the Academy or using Cortex like a snowboard down mountains, I still had the biggest smile on my face while playing nearly the whole time. It's so full of heart and soul, and it's just DRIPPING with veneration for the entire franchise up to this point what with all the fan-service. So often, I felt as if this game would've been perfect as an anniversary title, and the extra 2 years of dev time surely would've helped this game come out as a true next-gen experience. Although inexperienced and amateur at the time, I have great respect for those at Oxford Studio who managed to get the game out the way it is.
As I said in my Wrath of Cortex review, I typically do not advocate for remakes or remasters of games over new products instead. But this is an even rarer situation where, given the choice between a sequel to It's About Time and a full remake of Twinsanity that implements all the cut levels, refines the gameplay, and makes the story feel a little more complete to the original vision, I would choose Twinsanity in a heartbeat. It obviously loses some points from me for being an unfinished, buggy game, but it speaks volumes to the potential this game had that this ends up being one of my favorite Crash games. If it gets this good a score as is, imagine how great it could be if it were finished.
2001
Like Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, Season of Ice's pre-rendered sprites look really good. It controls fairly well, too. And I can commend the game for at least having more levels and content than Enter the Dragonfly.
The most obnoxious thing about the game, though, is that world states are completely reset after dying. With the exception of enemies not respawning or certain objectives like Lighthouses not turning off, that means any Jack-o-Lanterns or Sandcastles you've tried to destroy to save a Fairy completely reset. Any NPCs you've already talked to will repeat their dialogue boxes if you get too close, as well.
Fairies also only function like single-use Checkpoint Crates in Crash rather than checkpoint flags you can repeatedly return to. Once you save a Fairy, that's your checkpoint area now, and if you die, you return there. As far as I know, you can't interact with a different Fairy to set a new checkpoint for yourself, which makes backtracking annoying.
I'll come back to this later, I just don't think it's worth my time right now.
The most obnoxious thing about the game, though, is that world states are completely reset after dying. With the exception of enemies not respawning or certain objectives like Lighthouses not turning off, that means any Jack-o-Lanterns or Sandcastles you've tried to destroy to save a Fairy completely reset. Any NPCs you've already talked to will repeat their dialogue boxes if you get too close, as well.
Fairies also only function like single-use Checkpoint Crates in Crash rather than checkpoint flags you can repeatedly return to. Once you save a Fairy, that's your checkpoint area now, and if you die, you return there. As far as I know, you can't interact with a different Fairy to set a new checkpoint for yourself, which makes backtracking annoying.
I'll come back to this later, I just don't think it's worth my time right now.
Unlike most games I try to play completely blind, I ended up caving and researching BTS information about development before I even finished the first level. The reason I wait until after is so that I can play the game and form an opinion on it divorced from knowledge about a troubled development cycle that would cause me to feel sympathetic and grant it a higher review score. About halfway through the first level, I dropped my controller and did as much research as I could about what the hell happened here, I was THAT baffled (you can read a bit about it here: https://thewumpagem.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/the-enter-the-dragonfly-investigation-part-ii-interview-with-joel-goodsell/)
I'll start by saying things I like. I really like the idea behind the cycling breath power-ups. Joel Goodsell said in the above-linked interview "The original games did a great job with forcing the player to change up charge vs. breath attacks with clear enemy visuals, and I wanted to continue deepening this aspect of the Spyro franchise." I never really considered that enough to put it into words enough to praise this aspect, but with this philosophy, I think this was a really smart way to try and deepen Spyro's gameplay.
I also think the game LOOKS pretty good! Some models like Hunter and Ripto look pretty awful, but for the most part, Equinox did a really great job approximating the designs of just about everyone to give them a higher poly count without actually having any of the assets on-hand. Environments look really nice as well.
Check-6 did their best trying to approximate the controls of the Insomniac trilogy, which I appreciate. Many things feel close enough, like the gliding, jumping, sprinting, and I even like how climbing is actually faster here than it is in the Insomniac games. I think it's an improvement. But mainly, Spyro feels extremely sluggish if you're not constantly sprinting (funny, because I said the same exact thing about Wrath of Cortex, which this game shares many similarities with). Unlike Wrath of Cortex, though, this game feels unfinished in the sense that it's extremely unoptimized, full of bugs, AND has barely any content that distinguishes itself from predecessors.
This game TRIES to run at 60 FPS but usually falls more into the 30-45 range. I'm not usually a stickler for framerate, I think a game should run at whatever is most consistent, but they apparently had to scale the game back A LOT to try and reach a more acceptable frame rate, and it STILL doesn't maintain a solid 60. I'd rather them have just capped at 30 if the game was going to be this inconsistent.
Most of the content in this game is just really disappointing and lackluster. It's not just that this game can't distinguish itself from YoTD with its content, it just barely HAS content period! My jaw genuinely dropped when I saw there was only 7000 Gems, 90 Dragonflies, and 9 levels excluding the final boss arena (which you can clip through the floor and access immediately in the first hub area, if ya Gnasty). On one hand, that's not even half as much content as YoTD had. On the other hand, it's less game for me to play, so I'm grateful. On my third hand I just grew out of my torso, they also increased the amount of Gems per stage to like 700-800 per, which is REALLY excessive because these levels are gigantic. They're so big that they literally have entire sections of level in multiple levels that are just long, winding hallways. I didn't realize what the point of these were until it suddenly clicked that these exist to waste your time so the game can finish loading the next area without a loading screen.
The camera being on the right thumbstick now feels WRONG. L2 and R2 are used simultaneously for a defense move I really haven't been using at all because of how unnecessary it is. The buttons individually don't seem to do anything. The camera centering button I talked about in YoTD that made camera controlling a lot smoother and faster has been completely removed, and replaced with an inventory button. This is stupid because you can only have 5 things in your inventory at once, and most of the time, you're just going to be dropping things off at the Crystal Dragon statue or the NPC whose item you're supposed to deliver as soon as you get it, so why do I need to be checking my inventory often enough to need a button dedicated for it?
The rest of this review is just going to be spent listing all the glitches and Jank I experienced in a single playthrough. Sonic 06 somehow has a reputation for being a buggy unplayable mess, but I've already experienced more glitches before even finishing the game than I did completing 06 with every character:
-I headbutted a wall while falling and ended up being able to walk on nothing multiple times. There was also time I just headbutted a wall while running and ended up sliding across the whole screen unable to move stuck in the headbutt impact animation.
-Remember when I mentioned that the hallways in levels exist as loading zones? I wouldn't have realized this if I didn't run too quickly through one of these hallways and got to the next area only to find that none of it had loaded in and I just fell through the floor.
-Multiple sound effects are poorly mixed. There's one where Hunter's talking about UFOs where it sounds like he's trailing off midway through the voiceline, and then the next textbox is back to full volume.
-If you switch the game between natively supported 16:9 and 4:3 mid-game, the HUD elements will stay where they are until you exit and reload a level. If you start on 4:3 and change to 16:9, the HUD elements will stay centered as if you're still playing on a 4:3 TV until you enter a new area. If you, for whatever reason, switch to 16:9 on a 4:3 TV by accident and load a new area, your HUD will be rendered completely off screen.
-Switching to widescreen also messed with some layering and stretched out textures in the skybox in Crop Circle Country. The two moons layered on top of each other and became ovals.
-You can just clip through the power-up-gated fences you need to use to progress through the game without the correct power-up. You can just charge into the gates and you can go through to the next area.
-The honeybee enemies in Honey Marsh just keep infinitely spawning out of the honeycombs you need to destroy for a dragonfly and they wouldn't fly. So they just kept getting dropped into honey and dying instantly.
-In the last third of the game, pausing or opening the Atlas at any point for me caused the left earphone audio to stop working and be replaced by a beeping sound effect that persists through the whole level until you leave the area.
-The Riptoc wizard enemies in Thieves Den layer too many sound effects while they're alive, so the sounds will keep playing for a while after they die. Also, using the guard to deflect their magic attacks is extremely inconsistent and makes no sense. To send the magic back towards them, I had to turn AWAY from them.
-I randomly clipped through a drawbridge in Jurassic Jungle. I guess various platforms and bridges like these have actual physics to them? So they'll wobble when you land on them. Really obnoxious to put in a platformer with strict jumps like this, but I landed on it in a weird way that caused me to just fall through and die.
-Probably the funniest glitch I experienced. In Dragonfly Dojo, there's a bit where you (apparently) have to freeze the baby dragons to platform on them to grab the kites. Not only did the baby dragon ice blocks not work as platforms when I hopped up on them, I accidentally clipped into a Riptoc at the same time that I froze him and we both ended up frozen. I couldn't move at all and I couldn't pause. I actually softlocked the game by attacking an enemy too close. A similar bug happened randomly after collecting a dragonfly in Jurassic Jungle, where I just lost the ability to move with the analog stick or d-pad, couldn't charge, jump, or flame. I could pause this time, though, but I have no clue what caused this.
-When you do get the kites, they shrink and start flickering in the baby dragons' hands.
I'll start by saying things I like. I really like the idea behind the cycling breath power-ups. Joel Goodsell said in the above-linked interview "The original games did a great job with forcing the player to change up charge vs. breath attacks with clear enemy visuals, and I wanted to continue deepening this aspect of the Spyro franchise." I never really considered that enough to put it into words enough to praise this aspect, but with this philosophy, I think this was a really smart way to try and deepen Spyro's gameplay.
I also think the game LOOKS pretty good! Some models like Hunter and Ripto look pretty awful, but for the most part, Equinox did a really great job approximating the designs of just about everyone to give them a higher poly count without actually having any of the assets on-hand. Environments look really nice as well.
Check-6 did their best trying to approximate the controls of the Insomniac trilogy, which I appreciate. Many things feel close enough, like the gliding, jumping, sprinting, and I even like how climbing is actually faster here than it is in the Insomniac games. I think it's an improvement. But mainly, Spyro feels extremely sluggish if you're not constantly sprinting (funny, because I said the same exact thing about Wrath of Cortex, which this game shares many similarities with). Unlike Wrath of Cortex, though, this game feels unfinished in the sense that it's extremely unoptimized, full of bugs, AND has barely any content that distinguishes itself from predecessors.
This game TRIES to run at 60 FPS but usually falls more into the 30-45 range. I'm not usually a stickler for framerate, I think a game should run at whatever is most consistent, but they apparently had to scale the game back A LOT to try and reach a more acceptable frame rate, and it STILL doesn't maintain a solid 60. I'd rather them have just capped at 30 if the game was going to be this inconsistent.
Most of the content in this game is just really disappointing and lackluster. It's not just that this game can't distinguish itself from YoTD with its content, it just barely HAS content period! My jaw genuinely dropped when I saw there was only 7000 Gems, 90 Dragonflies, and 9 levels excluding the final boss arena (which you can clip through the floor and access immediately in the first hub area, if ya Gnasty). On one hand, that's not even half as much content as YoTD had. On the other hand, it's less game for me to play, so I'm grateful. On my third hand I just grew out of my torso, they also increased the amount of Gems per stage to like 700-800 per, which is REALLY excessive because these levels are gigantic. They're so big that they literally have entire sections of level in multiple levels that are just long, winding hallways. I didn't realize what the point of these were until it suddenly clicked that these exist to waste your time so the game can finish loading the next area without a loading screen.
The camera being on the right thumbstick now feels WRONG. L2 and R2 are used simultaneously for a defense move I really haven't been using at all because of how unnecessary it is. The buttons individually don't seem to do anything. The camera centering button I talked about in YoTD that made camera controlling a lot smoother and faster has been completely removed, and replaced with an inventory button. This is stupid because you can only have 5 things in your inventory at once, and most of the time, you're just going to be dropping things off at the Crystal Dragon statue or the NPC whose item you're supposed to deliver as soon as you get it, so why do I need to be checking my inventory often enough to need a button dedicated for it?
The rest of this review is just going to be spent listing all the glitches and Jank I experienced in a single playthrough. Sonic 06 somehow has a reputation for being a buggy unplayable mess, but I've already experienced more glitches before even finishing the game than I did completing 06 with every character:
-I headbutted a wall while falling and ended up being able to walk on nothing multiple times. There was also time I just headbutted a wall while running and ended up sliding across the whole screen unable to move stuck in the headbutt impact animation.
-Remember when I mentioned that the hallways in levels exist as loading zones? I wouldn't have realized this if I didn't run too quickly through one of these hallways and got to the next area only to find that none of it had loaded in and I just fell through the floor.
-Multiple sound effects are poorly mixed. There's one where Hunter's talking about UFOs where it sounds like he's trailing off midway through the voiceline, and then the next textbox is back to full volume.
-If you switch the game between natively supported 16:9 and 4:3 mid-game, the HUD elements will stay where they are until you exit and reload a level. If you start on 4:3 and change to 16:9, the HUD elements will stay centered as if you're still playing on a 4:3 TV until you enter a new area. If you, for whatever reason, switch to 16:9 on a 4:3 TV by accident and load a new area, your HUD will be rendered completely off screen.
-Switching to widescreen also messed with some layering and stretched out textures in the skybox in Crop Circle Country. The two moons layered on top of each other and became ovals.
-You can just clip through the power-up-gated fences you need to use to progress through the game without the correct power-up. You can just charge into the gates and you can go through to the next area.
-The honeybee enemies in Honey Marsh just keep infinitely spawning out of the honeycombs you need to destroy for a dragonfly and they wouldn't fly. So they just kept getting dropped into honey and dying instantly.
-In the last third of the game, pausing or opening the Atlas at any point for me caused the left earphone audio to stop working and be replaced by a beeping sound effect that persists through the whole level until you leave the area.
-The Riptoc wizard enemies in Thieves Den layer too many sound effects while they're alive, so the sounds will keep playing for a while after they die. Also, using the guard to deflect their magic attacks is extremely inconsistent and makes no sense. To send the magic back towards them, I had to turn AWAY from them.
-I randomly clipped through a drawbridge in Jurassic Jungle. I guess various platforms and bridges like these have actual physics to them? So they'll wobble when you land on them. Really obnoxious to put in a platformer with strict jumps like this, but I landed on it in a weird way that caused me to just fall through and die.
-Probably the funniest glitch I experienced. In Dragonfly Dojo, there's a bit where you (apparently) have to freeze the baby dragons to platform on them to grab the kites. Not only did the baby dragon ice blocks not work as platforms when I hopped up on them, I accidentally clipped into a Riptoc at the same time that I froze him and we both ended up frozen. I couldn't move at all and I couldn't pause. I actually softlocked the game by attacking an enemy too close. A similar bug happened randomly after collecting a dragonfly in Jurassic Jungle, where I just lost the ability to move with the analog stick or d-pad, couldn't charge, jump, or flame. I could pause this time, though, but I have no clue what caused this.
-When you do get the kites, they shrink and start flickering in the baby dragons' hands.
This review contains spoilers
First off, compared to the second game, I had absolutely no issues with camera controls in this one. They added a fast camera centering button, rather than having to slowly utilize the First-Person camera to re-center your camera all the time.
Next, I highly appreciate them consolidating the amount of Things to grab in this game. I hated collecting a lot of the Orbs in the second game, so reducing the things you need to get in this game to just ONE (Dragon Eggs) was appreciated. You have to get a lot of them, but you get Dragon Eggs left and right, more than enough to complete the game. And rather than doing constant side quests and helping NPCs for them, you can just find a lot of them hidden in levels.
The game balances a really involved and in-depth storyline with humor and comedy. If the second game was Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, then the third game is Sonic SatAM. I loved the little lore drops of the Dragons coming from this other world, and that they were the source of magic in this world before they were banished by the Sorceress and took all the magic with them. I loved the slow progression of Bianca turning away from the Sorceress once she realizes she can't make concessions with her master regarding the safety of the Dragon Eggs. I thought it was neat that Hunter gets kidnapped partway during the story, and that locks you out of doing his challenges during levels until he's freed by Bianca later on. I liked that they developed a cute romance between the two of them as well.
The game is pretty funny, too. I lost it when I saw Greta reference The Matrix through the entirety of Fireworks Factory. The end of Charmed Ridge was really funny too. It was a funny twist that the princess actually WANTED to get with the cat prince, and gives you an egg if you let them ride off on his magic flying motorcycle (which I can't decide if that's supposed to be a reference to Grease or not). There's a bit where one of the NPCs asks you to go check on his girlfriend Rapunzel in the tallest tower. When you get there, she says something like "I have a restraining order against that guy, can you tell him to leave me alone". All the NPCs in Spooky Swamp speak in haiku. Though the quality of the writing is not much of a shock considering how much I enjoyed the first two games' writing.
I really liked the additional "Playable Critters". On one hand, I hate that they were used to essentially gate certain levels from being beatable, forcing you to backtrack (akin to Colored Gems in Crash); on the other, everyone but Agent 9 was really fun to play and their levels were mostly great. I thought it was cool how Agent 9 had a House of the Dead-style level and a Doom-style level, but I got the feeling his levels were the least developed of the bunch. I didn't like his controls, and he was easily the most obnoxious and unfunny of the four.
Being able to play as Sparx was really cool, especially that you could upgrade him by finishing each of his levels. I didn't utilize the Treasure tracking feature much in 2, but it came in REALLY handy during the endgame wrap-up of collecting everything I was missing in hub worlds and in levels where the Gems were just really tough to find on my own.
At the start of the review, I did say I appreciated them limiting progression to Dragon Eggs, but god some of the levels were just completely awful to try and complete. The Yeti boxing sucked, I kinda hated Haunted Tomb, the Leap of Faith Egg in Dino Mines was really stupid and the enemies are really annoying to fight, the rooftop jumps in Frozen Altars frustrated me to no end... and oh my god, the Yeti snowboarding in the Super Bonus Round was awful. Ripto's Rage was just kinda tedious, but this game actively frustrated me with some of the stupid shit they want you to do.
I don't see myself ever trying to 100% this game again, but I give it half a star more than Ripto's Rage just because I think I had an overall better time with this one, barring those few moments of gamer rage lol. Also, getting to charge into Moneybags and beat all of the Gems he squeezed out of you was so satisfying and I laughed my ass off the whole time. I liked him in the second game, but he's a sleazy motherfucker in this one.
Next, I highly appreciate them consolidating the amount of Things to grab in this game. I hated collecting a lot of the Orbs in the second game, so reducing the things you need to get in this game to just ONE (Dragon Eggs) was appreciated. You have to get a lot of them, but you get Dragon Eggs left and right, more than enough to complete the game. And rather than doing constant side quests and helping NPCs for them, you can just find a lot of them hidden in levels.
The game balances a really involved and in-depth storyline with humor and comedy. If the second game was Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, then the third game is Sonic SatAM. I loved the little lore drops of the Dragons coming from this other world, and that they were the source of magic in this world before they were banished by the Sorceress and took all the magic with them. I loved the slow progression of Bianca turning away from the Sorceress once she realizes she can't make concessions with her master regarding the safety of the Dragon Eggs. I thought it was neat that Hunter gets kidnapped partway during the story, and that locks you out of doing his challenges during levels until he's freed by Bianca later on. I liked that they developed a cute romance between the two of them as well.
The game is pretty funny, too. I lost it when I saw Greta reference The Matrix through the entirety of Fireworks Factory. The end of Charmed Ridge was really funny too. It was a funny twist that the princess actually WANTED to get with the cat prince, and gives you an egg if you let them ride off on his magic flying motorcycle (which I can't decide if that's supposed to be a reference to Grease or not). There's a bit where one of the NPCs asks you to go check on his girlfriend Rapunzel in the tallest tower. When you get there, she says something like "I have a restraining order against that guy, can you tell him to leave me alone". All the NPCs in Spooky Swamp speak in haiku. Though the quality of the writing is not much of a shock considering how much I enjoyed the first two games' writing.
I really liked the additional "Playable Critters". On one hand, I hate that they were used to essentially gate certain levels from being beatable, forcing you to backtrack (akin to Colored Gems in Crash); on the other, everyone but Agent 9 was really fun to play and their levels were mostly great. I thought it was cool how Agent 9 had a House of the Dead-style level and a Doom-style level, but I got the feeling his levels were the least developed of the bunch. I didn't like his controls, and he was easily the most obnoxious and unfunny of the four.
Being able to play as Sparx was really cool, especially that you could upgrade him by finishing each of his levels. I didn't utilize the Treasure tracking feature much in 2, but it came in REALLY handy during the endgame wrap-up of collecting everything I was missing in hub worlds and in levels where the Gems were just really tough to find on my own.
At the start of the review, I did say I appreciated them limiting progression to Dragon Eggs, but god some of the levels were just completely awful to try and complete. The Yeti boxing sucked, I kinda hated Haunted Tomb, the Leap of Faith Egg in Dino Mines was really stupid and the enemies are really annoying to fight, the rooftop jumps in Frozen Altars frustrated me to no end... and oh my god, the Yeti snowboarding in the Super Bonus Round was awful. Ripto's Rage was just kinda tedious, but this game actively frustrated me with some of the stupid shit they want you to do.
I don't see myself ever trying to 100% this game again, but I give it half a star more than Ripto's Rage just because I think I had an overall better time with this one, barring those few moments of gamer rage lol. Also, getting to charge into Moneybags and beat all of the Gems he squeezed out of you was so satisfying and I laughed my ass off the whole time. I liked him in the second game, but he's a sleazy motherfucker in this one.
This game is brimming with even more personality and expressive animation than the first. I love the storyline and the new, charming characters of Avalar. Much more than the first, the game feels like a Saturday morning cartoon in the best way.
The game also fixes a major issue I had with the first game, in that you could not veer left or right too much while gliding or else you'd just barely miss the platform and eat shit. They expected you to glide straight with little room for error. So this game adds the Hover maneuver so you can do a tiny little double-jump mid-flight to give yourself a little bit of extra verticality to make a jump if you're about to miss. They removed the roll, though, which I didn't get much use out of in the first game, admittedly. But the boss fights against Gulp, Crush, and Ripto, I could've imagined SO many uses for the roll to make those fights a little easier. Also, I felt like I had to wrestle with the camera way more often than I ever had to in Spyro 1, so I had more control issues with this game in general than I did with the first game.
Overall, I think this game sort of suffers from adding TOO much. You not only have to accomplish the main objective of a level, but you also have to find every gem and do every sidequest for Orbs. Many of them are very easy, but enough are obnoxious to the point that I didn't have fun doing them. It just made me wish the game could be over already.
Dragon Shores was a very fun completionist/post-game reward, though. Reminded me of the first time I unlocked the Museum in Modern Warfare 2, where you just get to mess around and have fun after stressing for the whole game. It's not as great a reward as Gnasty's Loot, though, just as Spyro 2 wasn't as great as its predecessor to me.
The game also fixes a major issue I had with the first game, in that you could not veer left or right too much while gliding or else you'd just barely miss the platform and eat shit. They expected you to glide straight with little room for error. So this game adds the Hover maneuver so you can do a tiny little double-jump mid-flight to give yourself a little bit of extra verticality to make a jump if you're about to miss. They removed the roll, though, which I didn't get much use out of in the first game, admittedly. But the boss fights against Gulp, Crush, and Ripto, I could've imagined SO many uses for the roll to make those fights a little easier. Also, I felt like I had to wrestle with the camera way more often than I ever had to in Spyro 1, so I had more control issues with this game in general than I did with the first game.
Overall, I think this game sort of suffers from adding TOO much. You not only have to accomplish the main objective of a level, but you also have to find every gem and do every sidequest for Orbs. Many of them are very easy, but enough are obnoxious to the point that I didn't have fun doing them. It just made me wish the game could be over already.
Dragon Shores was a very fun completionist/post-game reward, though. Reminded me of the first time I unlocked the Museum in Modern Warfare 2, where you just get to mess around and have fun after stressing for the whole game. It's not as great a reward as Gnasty's Loot, though, just as Spyro 2 wasn't as great as its predecessor to me.
1998
I wasn't feeling this game at first, but I've gotten probably halfway through the game at the time of this review and felt compelled to drop what I was doing to state my thoughts. The level design is so great, there's so much you can do, so many fun secrets to find, so much shit to collect, and so much personality imbued in the animations and voice acting of the characters.
This is the kind of game that has that "oh my god, you can DO that???" magic to it. The kind of magic that makes you talk about the game with your friends at the playground, trading secrets that one of you found and not the other.
In the early game, a lot of the dragons you rescue just sorta regurgitate manual information or obvious stuff you could figure out on your own, and that's the part of the game that didn't sell me at first. The first few levels are a little too standard. But then, they start dropping level-specific hints that help you start to piece things together that aren't as obvious, and they start to get way more creative with the sort of things you can do in the levels.
Not every level is a winner, but after enjoying Cliff Town and Ice Cavern, and then High Caves blowing me away, I think it's cemented itself as one of my favorite 3D platformers of all time. My only real complaint is that the camera controls bugged me with no way to invert them (L2 turns the camera to show the right, and R2 turns left), and some of the jumps in this game aren't very forgiving. You fall kinda fast with the glide so they expect you to be at the very peak of your jump and jump right at the edge of a platform to make certain jumps. Otherwise, the game's fantastic.
This is the kind of game that has that "oh my god, you can DO that???" magic to it. The kind of magic that makes you talk about the game with your friends at the playground, trading secrets that one of you found and not the other.
In the early game, a lot of the dragons you rescue just sorta regurgitate manual information or obvious stuff you could figure out on your own, and that's the part of the game that didn't sell me at first. The first few levels are a little too standard. But then, they start dropping level-specific hints that help you start to piece things together that aren't as obvious, and they start to get way more creative with the sort of things you can do in the levels.
Not every level is a winner, but after enjoying Cliff Town and Ice Cavern, and then High Caves blowing me away, I think it's cemented itself as one of my favorite 3D platformers of all time. My only real complaint is that the camera controls bugged me with no way to invert them (L2 turns the camera to show the right, and R2 turns left), and some of the jumps in this game aren't very forgiving. You fall kinda fast with the glide so they expect you to be at the very peak of your jump and jump right at the edge of a platform to make certain jumps. Otherwise, the game's fantastic.
2003
I've seen folks online call this the racing-equivalent to "Wrath of Cortex" and I have to agree. This game doesn't suck, just as Wrath of Cortex doesn't suck; but it's a lesser version of one of the best racing games ever made, just as Wrath of Cortex is a lesser version of Warped.
Unless you're constantly drift-boosting, it feels like the game is so slow. You can't really even tap brake on the ground to help your steering without losing a lot of speed, and some tracks just aren't really designed for drifting. Mid-air braking works really well, but you can't always rely on there being a jump to make a strong turn. I'm playing Crunch who supposedly has the best top speed of Team Bandicoot, and I still have no sense of speed unless I'm snaking through every track that lets me. It doesn't make the game harder or anything, I'm consistently coming in first, it just feels really sluggish.
Speaking of "Team Bandicoot", I kinda didn't care for the team mechanic of this game. It seems to rely on your teammate doing as well as you are for item spam as a reward? Getting hit by an item also immediately takes you out of it, which I can't decide whether I like that or not.
The cutscenes and presentation of the Adventure Mode are a huge step-up from CTR imo. These cutscenes are both a blessing because they're super charming and often funny, but a curse because it means they only animated cutscenes for the two main teams of Adventure Mode. As a result, it's only playable with Team Cortex or Team Bandicoot, which is REALLY lame. That aside, the hub worlds (especially Fenomena) are really nice-looking. I love how the first game had the galactic threat of Nitros Oxide coming to you, but this game inverts that. Now, you race across different planets to save yours. That said, I wish there were more playable alien racers from these planets, because Zem and Zam are kinda lame, generic green aliens. The boss characters and other alien characters like Oxide are way more interesting in terms of character design, and they have way more personality that makes them lovable additions to the cast.
The racetracks themselves don't really embrace the interplanetary setting that the storyline establishes. So much so, that even the first planet you race on is apparently a carbon-copy of Earth called "Terra". There's jungle levels, water/ice levels, desert levels, and "technology" levels (?) and none of them really feel like you're on another planet. The tracks aren't bad though, and I especially find Clockwork Wumpa to be a great track. Lots of tight turns and a fun shortcut to take by drift-boosting onto the ramp.
I do like that I'm apparently able to completely avoid non-juiced missiles by snaking or steering at the last minute, which is not something I think I could do in CTR. You either had to block the missile with an item (unreliable) or drift around a corner/invisible barrier to make the tracking hit the wall instead of you. If there's no corner to drift around, then you just kinda had to take it. That's not a bad thing, because I think items in kart racers help even out the playing field for people who aren't as good at the game.
Also I just wanted to mention that I clipped through the track at one point in Android Alley and almost lost a race because I fell OOB. Not sure if that's an emulator-specific bug or if the game's just kinda buggy like that lol.
EDIT: At the time of this review, I've clipped through the floor at least 5 times during Relic attempts, and once in the hub world as well.
Unless you're constantly drift-boosting, it feels like the game is so slow. You can't really even tap brake on the ground to help your steering without losing a lot of speed, and some tracks just aren't really designed for drifting. Mid-air braking works really well, but you can't always rely on there being a jump to make a strong turn. I'm playing Crunch who supposedly has the best top speed of Team Bandicoot, and I still have no sense of speed unless I'm snaking through every track that lets me. It doesn't make the game harder or anything, I'm consistently coming in first, it just feels really sluggish.
Speaking of "Team Bandicoot", I kinda didn't care for the team mechanic of this game. It seems to rely on your teammate doing as well as you are for item spam as a reward? Getting hit by an item also immediately takes you out of it, which I can't decide whether I like that or not.
The cutscenes and presentation of the Adventure Mode are a huge step-up from CTR imo. These cutscenes are both a blessing because they're super charming and often funny, but a curse because it means they only animated cutscenes for the two main teams of Adventure Mode. As a result, it's only playable with Team Cortex or Team Bandicoot, which is REALLY lame. That aside, the hub worlds (especially Fenomena) are really nice-looking. I love how the first game had the galactic threat of Nitros Oxide coming to you, but this game inverts that. Now, you race across different planets to save yours. That said, I wish there were more playable alien racers from these planets, because Zem and Zam are kinda lame, generic green aliens. The boss characters and other alien characters like Oxide are way more interesting in terms of character design, and they have way more personality that makes them lovable additions to the cast.
The racetracks themselves don't really embrace the interplanetary setting that the storyline establishes. So much so, that even the first planet you race on is apparently a carbon-copy of Earth called "Terra". There's jungle levels, water/ice levels, desert levels, and "technology" levels (?) and none of them really feel like you're on another planet. The tracks aren't bad though, and I especially find Clockwork Wumpa to be a great track. Lots of tight turns and a fun shortcut to take by drift-boosting onto the ramp.
I do like that I'm apparently able to completely avoid non-juiced missiles by snaking or steering at the last minute, which is not something I think I could do in CTR. You either had to block the missile with an item (unreliable) or drift around a corner/invisible barrier to make the tracking hit the wall instead of you. If there's no corner to drift around, then you just kinda had to take it. That's not a bad thing, because I think items in kart racers help even out the playing field for people who aren't as good at the game.
Also I just wanted to mention that I clipped through the track at one point in Android Alley and almost lost a race because I fell OOB. Not sure if that's an emulator-specific bug or if the game's just kinda buggy like that lol.
EDIT: At the time of this review, I've clipped through the floor at least 5 times during Relic attempts, and once in the hub world as well.
Barring a few control inconsistencies with other games that may or may not have been intentional (such as only being able to spin through 1 column of boxes at a time, not being able to slide jump off ledges, some collision oddities as the result of everything being pre-rendered at a weird angle), this game is pretty good. I think by putting Crash solely in 2D, you miss a lot of what makes his games special as a 3D platformer, but it's not that big of a deal either. It's the first true handheld Crash game, and it's good enough for what it is.
The pre-rendered graphics look REALLY nice (all the bosses pre-Cortex and the big yeti that runs at you in the ice levels especially stood out), the music is all lovingly recreated from older games (though the bosses curiously had their themes all swapped with each other... there's a patch you can grab from ROMhacking.net to fix this), and aside from getting plat relics, the game itself usually isn't too hard.
The pre-rendered graphics look REALLY nice (all the bosses pre-Cortex and the big yeti that runs at you in the ice levels especially stood out), the music is all lovingly recreated from older games (though the bosses curiously had their themes all swapped with each other... there's a patch you can grab from ROMhacking.net to fix this), and aside from getting plat relics, the game itself usually isn't too hard.
This game, so far, extremely fascinates me. The game is like an alternate universe version of Warped if it was extremely mid. Like, not even bad. I just wonder what happened during development for the game to come out like this? The visuals of the environments go back and forth between looking really nice to really awful, and the character model quality varies heavily (usually leaning towards looking bad). Aku-Aku invincibility states don't have a clear indicator of when they end because the invincibility music is way more quiet and subtle compared to the loud tribal drums that clearly gave you a sign of when they're about to end, and your hitbox is not increased. Lots of sound effects either don't play when they're supposed to or they're mixed incorrectly. The music is often very good (ESPECIALLY for Cortex Vortex and Eskimo Roll), but it's also mixed so poorly that I sometimes can't hear it even when the game is at max volume.
But despite all that, the level design itself isn't awful? I actually like the way the levels are laid out in this game, they're just dreadful to actually play because Crash and Coco control so terribly. They're extremely floaty and slow. They feel like if you stuck a Lego Star Wars character into Crash Bandicoot. Normally, Lego Star Wars feels very fine to control, but Crash shouldn't feel like this.
The boss fights mostly suck. Rok-Ko's fight was a cool idea, but the execution fell flat because the ball controls are terrible outside of the ball levels designed for them. Wa-Wa isn't even a boss fight against him and Crunch, you're really fighting against the camera and the terrible depth perception above instant-kill water and projectiles. I also probably spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to beat Py-Ro before I realized that shooting the water cannon on the mech suit slows you down when you're chasing him back to the other side. It took me ages to realize what I was doing wrong, but the fight is piss-easy otherwise. Lo-Lo actually has a really fun boss fight that I enjoyed, probably only because it was copied from N. Gin's Crash 3 fight. The final boss was anticlimactic, but REALLY good! I actually like the Cortex/Crunch fight a lot! But yeah, the Elementals are extremely disappointing, as underdeveloped characters with underdeveloped boss fights.
That issue of depth perception I mentioned for Wa-Wa actually has affected my whole experience with the game. I can't tell if I'm being tricked because Crash moves so slowly compared to the previous games that I think he should be farther ahead than he really is, or if it's because of the collision of the character being bad, or if it's because the camera is so terrible that I can't tell how close or far something is from Crash. I'm misjudging the distance of so many jumps and enemies, taking contact damage, falling into pits, and whiffing spin attacks that you'd think I'm a brand new player based on how poorly I've been doing in the first 3 worlds of the game, as I write my initial thoughts. I literally have never had this issue with the PS1 games so I'm not sure what's the problem here.
This is one of those games that I think REALLY deserves a remake, though I'm typically opposed to the idea of game remakes, generally. You don't have to change anything, just adjust the controls, stick the game in a new engine, and give the game the polish it lacks. I think it would be way more passable if just a few things were tweaked.
EDIT: I wrote this review before fully completing the game, so I wanted to add on at the end that I had a way better time getting all the Platinum Relics in this game than I did playing most of these stages normally. With a few exceptions, this game was extremely easy to get the Plat Relics for. The issue of depth perception will always be a problem, and made some relics way harder to get than others because you waste time whiffing so many spin attacks and jumps, but using the Crash Dash somewhat remedied the control problems I complained about. It sucks that this is a post-game powerup that exists only for getting Relics, but it was like that in Warped as well. Unlike Warped, though, Crash controlled completely fine at normal speeds so it felt like a proper powerup rather than a fix for slow and floaty controls.
Also, after understanding the circumstances the game was made under, I'm a little nicer towards it. It was supposed to have been a next-gen, ambitious experience, and Traveller's Tales had to restart development partway through and finish in 12 months. That explains why so much of the game is like a worse version of Warped, they probably tried to refer back to it and base the new game off it as closely as possible in the time they had. It doesn't excuse the quality entirely, but I understand how it turned out the way it did.
But despite all that, the level design itself isn't awful? I actually like the way the levels are laid out in this game, they're just dreadful to actually play because Crash and Coco control so terribly. They're extremely floaty and slow. They feel like if you stuck a Lego Star Wars character into Crash Bandicoot. Normally, Lego Star Wars feels very fine to control, but Crash shouldn't feel like this.
The boss fights mostly suck. Rok-Ko's fight was a cool idea, but the execution fell flat because the ball controls are terrible outside of the ball levels designed for them. Wa-Wa isn't even a boss fight against him and Crunch, you're really fighting against the camera and the terrible depth perception above instant-kill water and projectiles. I also probably spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to beat Py-Ro before I realized that shooting the water cannon on the mech suit slows you down when you're chasing him back to the other side. It took me ages to realize what I was doing wrong, but the fight is piss-easy otherwise. Lo-Lo actually has a really fun boss fight that I enjoyed, probably only because it was copied from N. Gin's Crash 3 fight. The final boss was anticlimactic, but REALLY good! I actually like the Cortex/Crunch fight a lot! But yeah, the Elementals are extremely disappointing, as underdeveloped characters with underdeveloped boss fights.
That issue of depth perception I mentioned for Wa-Wa actually has affected my whole experience with the game. I can't tell if I'm being tricked because Crash moves so slowly compared to the previous games that I think he should be farther ahead than he really is, or if it's because of the collision of the character being bad, or if it's because the camera is so terrible that I can't tell how close or far something is from Crash. I'm misjudging the distance of so many jumps and enemies, taking contact damage, falling into pits, and whiffing spin attacks that you'd think I'm a brand new player based on how poorly I've been doing in the first 3 worlds of the game, as I write my initial thoughts. I literally have never had this issue with the PS1 games so I'm not sure what's the problem here.
This is one of those games that I think REALLY deserves a remake, though I'm typically opposed to the idea of game remakes, generally. You don't have to change anything, just adjust the controls, stick the game in a new engine, and give the game the polish it lacks. I think it would be way more passable if just a few things were tweaked.
EDIT: I wrote this review before fully completing the game, so I wanted to add on at the end that I had a way better time getting all the Platinum Relics in this game than I did playing most of these stages normally. With a few exceptions, this game was extremely easy to get the Plat Relics for. The issue of depth perception will always be a problem, and made some relics way harder to get than others because you waste time whiffing so many spin attacks and jumps, but using the Crash Dash somewhat remedied the control problems I complained about. It sucks that this is a post-game powerup that exists only for getting Relics, but it was like that in Warped as well. Unlike Warped, though, Crash controlled completely fine at normal speeds so it felt like a proper powerup rather than a fix for slow and floaty controls.
Also, after understanding the circumstances the game was made under, I'm a little nicer towards it. It was supposed to have been a next-gen, ambitious experience, and Traveller's Tales had to restart development partway through and finish in 12 months. That explains why so much of the game is like a worse version of Warped, they probably tried to refer back to it and base the new game off it as closely as possible in the time they had. It doesn't excuse the quality entirely, but I understand how it turned out the way it did.
1999
An absolutely great kart-racer, rivalling Mario Kart 64 for my favorite of all time. The Adventure mode does a great job of prepping you for playing against friends with extra modes like CTR Challenges, where you collect three letters hidden throughout the course, and Relic Races to practice speedrunning and alternate pathways.
Typically, racers like these are purchased to mostly play against friends, but the single player is worth playing as a practice mode that actively teaches you the fastest pathways through placing time trial boxes and CTR tokens on the fastest pathways and shortcuts, rather than just letting you figure it out with experimentation.
Typically, racers like these are purchased to mostly play against friends, but the single player is worth playing as a practice mode that actively teaches you the fastest pathways through placing time trial boxes and CTR tokens on the fastest pathways and shortcuts, rather than just letting you figure it out with experimentation.
2010
I started to get really frustrated with this game at first because I chose to play as Blues. Once I started getting enough screws to buy useful items from the shop and beat my first Robot Master, I had a much better time getting through the rest of the game. It's fun! But I think I played for 2 hours before I made any meaningful progress, resetting my playthrough at least twice because I wanted to see if playing as Rock would feel better, before I decided to go back to playing as Blues.
Rock feels EXTREMELY limited compared to Blues. In a similar way to how it feels like a lose:lose situation playing as Forte and Rock in RM&F, Blues gets better tools at the expense of taking double damage and double knockback, and vice versa for Rock. It feels rewarding dodging enemies and their attacks efficiently by forcing yourself to learn patterns rather than just boosting through everything, but I wish that double damage was just a Hard mode option rather than locking the Charge Shot and Slide behind the Hard mode character.
Blues taking double damage was a fair tradeoff in 9 because he was DLC. You were sticking new, powerful mechanics into a game not designed for it, so the tradeoff is that they expect you to be a master at the game if you want to abuse these mechanics. But why not just design this new game around the Charge Shot and Slide? Let Rock use them, and give Blues something else aside from his Shield move to differentiate him. I was thinking it'd be cool if they implemented Break Man as a "glass cannon" option into a playable iteration of Blues. You go Break Man to deal twice as much damage, while also receiving twice as much. Though considering that 10 doesn't dare risk or innovate much in the same way 9 didn't, I feel like that would be far too complicated an idea to put in this game.
My friend suggested I should try playing the Legacy Collection version with Extra Armor enabled. That way, Blues' double damage quirk cancels out and you only take as much damage as Rock. At this point, I've made too much progress to start over a fourth time, but I just wanted to include that in my review in case anyone happens to feel the same way as I do.
Rock feels EXTREMELY limited compared to Blues. In a similar way to how it feels like a lose:lose situation playing as Forte and Rock in RM&F, Blues gets better tools at the expense of taking double damage and double knockback, and vice versa for Rock. It feels rewarding dodging enemies and their attacks efficiently by forcing yourself to learn patterns rather than just boosting through everything, but I wish that double damage was just a Hard mode option rather than locking the Charge Shot and Slide behind the Hard mode character.
Blues taking double damage was a fair tradeoff in 9 because he was DLC. You were sticking new, powerful mechanics into a game not designed for it, so the tradeoff is that they expect you to be a master at the game if you want to abuse these mechanics. But why not just design this new game around the Charge Shot and Slide? Let Rock use them, and give Blues something else aside from his Shield move to differentiate him. I was thinking it'd be cool if they implemented Break Man as a "glass cannon" option into a playable iteration of Blues. You go Break Man to deal twice as much damage, while also receiving twice as much. Though considering that 10 doesn't dare risk or innovate much in the same way 9 didn't, I feel like that would be far too complicated an idea to put in this game.
My friend suggested I should try playing the Legacy Collection version with Extra Armor enabled. That way, Blues' double damage quirk cancels out and you only take as much damage as Rock. At this point, I've made too much progress to start over a fourth time, but I just wanted to include that in my review in case anyone happens to feel the same way as I do.
1994
This game replaces the Charge Shot with a new attack called the Rockin' Arm, and this thing rules so hard. Like, it's a little TOO overpowered, especially with the Clobber Hand upgrade (this turns it into the "Me When I Fucking GET You" attack. It's a little inconsistent in how it activates, it seems; you either have to hold B or mash B to get it to work, and it only works on certain enemies, but it will just start GRIPPING the everloving shit out of whatever it touches and kills it extremely fast) and the Mega Hand upgrade (this one just turns your fist into a weapon like Boomerang Cutter. You just fire your Rockin' Arm at close or far range and it'll bring back ANY item it collides with. Makes a lot of the puzzles to get extra lives and E-Cans a lot easier lol). But it's really fun to use either way.
It's just kind of a shame that I had so much fun messing around with the Rockin' Arm that I never found a reason to use Tango. Really cute cat companion that contrasts Rush as a character, but Tango's just kind of useless imo? He curls into a ball and just follows you around? And then he vanishes when you leave the room. I feel like the game never really put me in a situation where I felt like I NEEDED to use Tango to get through anything the Rockin' Arm or one of the Space Rulers' weapons couldn't handle.
And speaking of, I absolutely need to mention that I'm totally in love with the Space Rulers. Why these awesome characters are stuck behind a Game Boy game very few people probably played and even less finished is certainly a choice on Capcom's part. They're so cool! Them all being themed after the planets of our Solar System was such a unique choice rather than just doing (Thing) Man again. Not that I have a problem with Robot Masters at all, but this game doing something so radically different stood out to me as something worthy of praise. Most of the Space Rulers had really nice weapons aside from Uranus' weapon just being Super Arm. Mercury's weapon being a lifesteal was especially interesting.
And the final confrontation against Sun God was nothing short of awesome. If you asked me to pull out one scene from the entire series as a way to explain what I love about Rock as a character, it's his exchange with Sun God after beating him at the end of this game. It's the perfect summary of his character and what he stands for.
IDK, I love Rockman 4-6, but 6 being about some tournament with the third consecutive bait-and-switch twist villain "oh, it was Wily all along!" as a quick setup for 7's events was really lame. Personally, I think THIS game deserved to be Rockman 6 on the NES. The story, the gameplay, and the characters all deserved better than the Game Boy. At least this game has real support for the Super Game Boy, which means I'm not staring at brown and red the whole game like RMW1-4.
It's just kind of a shame that I had so much fun messing around with the Rockin' Arm that I never found a reason to use Tango. Really cute cat companion that contrasts Rush as a character, but Tango's just kind of useless imo? He curls into a ball and just follows you around? And then he vanishes when you leave the room. I feel like the game never really put me in a situation where I felt like I NEEDED to use Tango to get through anything the Rockin' Arm or one of the Space Rulers' weapons couldn't handle.
And speaking of, I absolutely need to mention that I'm totally in love with the Space Rulers. Why these awesome characters are stuck behind a Game Boy game very few people probably played and even less finished is certainly a choice on Capcom's part. They're so cool! Them all being themed after the planets of our Solar System was such a unique choice rather than just doing (Thing) Man again. Not that I have a problem with Robot Masters at all, but this game doing something so radically different stood out to me as something worthy of praise. Most of the Space Rulers had really nice weapons aside from Uranus' weapon just being Super Arm. Mercury's weapon being a lifesteal was especially interesting.
And the final confrontation against Sun God was nothing short of awesome. If you asked me to pull out one scene from the entire series as a way to explain what I love about Rock as a character, it's his exchange with Sun God after beating him at the end of this game. It's the perfect summary of his character and what he stands for.
IDK, I love Rockman 4-6, but 6 being about some tournament with the third consecutive bait-and-switch twist villain "oh, it was Wily all along!" as a quick setup for 7's events was really lame. Personally, I think THIS game deserved to be Rockman 6 on the NES. The story, the gameplay, and the characters all deserved better than the Game Boy. At least this game has real support for the Super Game Boy, which means I'm not staring at brown and red the whole game like RMW1-4.
1993
This review contains spoilers
It's pretty cool that this game is the origin of the Screw Shop feature from later games. Dr. Right has you collect P-Chips as a currency to buy lives, E/W/S-Cans, the Energy Balancer, and other useful upgrades.
I loved the new take on the revolving stage selection screen, and how it keeps track of the BEAT/WILY plates. I'd love for a hypothetical Rockman 12 to do something like this rather than the traditional grid.
The stages in the second half of the game are really good. Like, "makes me go 'wow, that was cool' after I notice it" good. Crystal Man's stage had a section with a branching pathway that I thought was interesting, and then I used Rain Flush to put out a fire in Napalm Man's stage and found a hidden stash guarded by Blues with an E-Can and a P-Chip. In Stone Man's stage roughly halfway through, there's a branching path where you can either take a ladder down to continue on through the stage, or you have to figure out a way to slide through a one-block-tall hole above the Tatepakkan. I used Rush Jet to quickly slide through before Rush hit the side of the wall and vanished, and it led me to a free E-Can! I love levels that reward both your curiosity and your understanding of how to utilize the tools at your disposal.
The Wily Station level was really challenging and fun, exactly how I like my Rockman games. But it is the funniest shit that you can game over AFTER you beat the final boss. For some reason the screen starts scrolling before the boss is officially dead and I got caught off-guard, missed a jump, and had to redo the whole boss over again. Dying in between each phase of the Wily Golem gives you a checkpoint, though, so I didn't have to do the whole thing over again, thankfully.
I wasn't expecting this game to have so many cutscenes and so much dialogue. Especially the final cutscenes of the game, when Rock first sees the Wily Golem and the sequence where Ballade sacrifices himself to help Rock escape Wily Station. The only other game I can think of that's close to this level of quality in terms of cutscenes on the Game Boy is the Dragon's Lair port, and maybe Link's Awakening. At least for this franchise, where the previous 3 Rockman World titles on Game Boy had little to no conversations or cutscenes, this was a big step up in story and presentation that I wanted to acknowledge.
Though I'm not sure how I feel about the recoil on the Charge Shot (it hardly affects me, but it's still an odd inclusion), this is a really impressive Game Boy game. Far from the best game on the system, but they do some really cool stuff in this game!
I loved the new take on the revolving stage selection screen, and how it keeps track of the BEAT/WILY plates. I'd love for a hypothetical Rockman 12 to do something like this rather than the traditional grid.
The stages in the second half of the game are really good. Like, "makes me go 'wow, that was cool' after I notice it" good. Crystal Man's stage had a section with a branching pathway that I thought was interesting, and then I used Rain Flush to put out a fire in Napalm Man's stage and found a hidden stash guarded by Blues with an E-Can and a P-Chip. In Stone Man's stage roughly halfway through, there's a branching path where you can either take a ladder down to continue on through the stage, or you have to figure out a way to slide through a one-block-tall hole above the Tatepakkan. I used Rush Jet to quickly slide through before Rush hit the side of the wall and vanished, and it led me to a free E-Can! I love levels that reward both your curiosity and your understanding of how to utilize the tools at your disposal.
The Wily Station level was really challenging and fun, exactly how I like my Rockman games. But it is the funniest shit that you can game over AFTER you beat the final boss. For some reason the screen starts scrolling before the boss is officially dead and I got caught off-guard, missed a jump, and had to redo the whole boss over again. Dying in between each phase of the Wily Golem gives you a checkpoint, though, so I didn't have to do the whole thing over again, thankfully.
I wasn't expecting this game to have so many cutscenes and so much dialogue. Especially the final cutscenes of the game, when Rock first sees the Wily Golem and the sequence where Ballade sacrifices himself to help Rock escape Wily Station. The only other game I can think of that's close to this level of quality in terms of cutscenes on the Game Boy is the Dragon's Lair port, and maybe Link's Awakening. At least for this franchise, where the previous 3 Rockman World titles on Game Boy had little to no conversations or cutscenes, this was a big step up in story and presentation that I wanted to acknowledge.
Though I'm not sure how I feel about the recoil on the Charge Shot (it hardly affects me, but it's still an odd inclusion), this is a really impressive Game Boy game. Far from the best game on the system, but they do some really cool stuff in this game!