The newest title in the Crash Bandicoot series takes me right back to where I quit playing game consoles for awhile and headed over to playing PC games. I was never a huge fan of Super Mario Brothers and the whole platform concept. The addition of the 3D platform play just made matters worse with busy environments and odd storylines at best. I thought, however, that I would give this game a shot since it featured some cart racing and who could really mess that up, right?Well kids, I was wrong. This game reinforced why I do my best to avoid this whole genre. In this game you will race as Crash and several other title characters in efforts to save an amusement park by collecting crystals that are needed to power the park. You will do some platform adventuring but the main focus is on the cart racing. The new concept that is used in the game is that you can actually combine your vehicle with another racer during the race and use your combined speed and power to compete. You can either drive and switch up and fire cannons and other weapons at the other racers. By combining, or tag teaming, up with another racer, you pretty much assure yourself of winning most races by obliterating your competition.
The platform work during the game is tedious at best as you try to pick up copious amounts of, hey what a concept, coins! You accumulate the coins and then can trade them in a level's end for crystals. In addition to that you fight penguins from time to time. It was never really clear as to why the penguins wanted to take out Crash. Perhaps the amusement park was built on their former habitat or Crash had some sort of falling out with them when they were young. No one really knows but just know they are out to get you.
The graphics are solid but not spectacular with the typical cartoon world full of vibrant colors, surreal landscapes and use of 3D environment. Some of the environmental landscapes look cool and present some challenges to the gamer. The sound is decent but the voice acting is lame and dialogue is just plain dumb.
The game play itself is fairly easy to pick up and most young gamers would be able to master it very quickly. The racing portion doesn’t require a lot of dexterity as you can race and fire off cannon shots without much difficulty. The platform areas just require the typical ability to time your jumps and learn how to use the environment around you.
If you are a fan of this genre, then this may be a game you would want to take a stab at. If you are not, I would not waste your time as there are plenty of other really good games out there if you want to maximize the time you have to play games. Yep, you guessed it; I still don’t like this genre.
I’m a married professional with a 2 year old son and a baby on the way. I’ve played game for what seems like my whole life. Intellivision, Activision, Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, etc. After college I got away from gaming but a friend at work got me into the PC gaming world and I was hooked all over again. Mostly now I just play PS2. I would say that I am an average gamer when it comes to RPG’s but when it comes to Sports games I can compete with most people. I love gaming ok. There I said it
