Crash Bandicoot is the first in a series of games that I have a tremendous amount of nostalgia towards. My friend across the street had a Playstation when I was still rocking my Sega Genesis, and so it was absolutely mindblowing to go over to his house and play games together. We had a lot of favorites, including Road Rash 3D, Tekken 3, Hot Shots Golf, Spyro the Dragon, Twisted Metal, and WWF Smackdown, but the game we played most often was certainly one of the Crash Bandicoot series (probably the second game). We spent countless hours playing this series, and really enjoyed it, but I decided to circle back around to it because it's been on my mind since the rerelease for PS4 this year. I haven't played the rerelease, but I am lucky enough to have all three of the Crash games for PS1, so I'm going to play and review all of them here in the next few weeks, and hopefully finally get on to finishing The Legend of Dragoon. As a side note, it's really hard to play RPGs at home with the kids and demands of family life, so I really am trying! It's nice to have a game that if I have to turn it off, I won't have to redo 15-20 minutes of it due to not hitting a save point in forever.
Crash Bandicoot is a 3D platformer in a similar style to games like Super Mario 64. Rather than the more open environment of Mario, however, Crash Bandicoot has far more levels, but most of them are designed as narrow tunnels that you must run straight through, dodging obstacles and reaching the end of the stage. Crash can jump on or over enemies and obstacles, and also has a spin attack that can be used to defeat enemies or open boxes. The boxes contain extra lives, wumpa fruit (Crash's version of coins), and occasionally a tribal mask who shields you from one hit. Crash dies after 1 hit from any enemy, so these masks are frequently very important to navigating the more challenging parts of the game.
So what were my impressions circling back to the game? It's remarkably good looking to this day, especially when compared to its peers. Compared to a game like the blocky and hideous Tomb Raider, it's a delight. It benefits from going for a more cartoony style, while more realistic games on the PS1 struggle a bit for sure. But the animations are all nicely done, and it's very smooth. If there's a PS1 game that probably didn't need a remake, graphically speaking, it's probably the Crash series (or Gran Turismo). Crash has great animations, and his death animations are hilarious, rewarding you for the trial and error mode of the gameplay.
The levels are fun and well designed, with an insane degree of difficulty. There are also plenty of levels to play. You definitely won't feel shortchanged by content. Each level has a nice theme to it, enemies are well designed and animated, and the challenge is real but fair. It has the trial and error approach to games popularized in Mega Man (there are definitely earlier examples, but this is the one that kept popping into my head), but this game is far more unfair about warning you of the danger.
This may seem like a weakness, but actually plays as a strength due to certain design choices. Extra lives are EVERYWHERE in this game, making it so that if you lose 10-15 lives on a single level, it's no big deal. You'll probably pick up 10 just completing the average level. There are infinite continues, and you can leave a level whenever you want to head back to earlier levels to farm lives. Since death is such a comical thing in the game, it doesn't feel overly bad to die, even in unfair ways. It does heighten your sense of triumph once you complete that really tricky section, though!
The music is excellent, with a wide range of tracks for each type of level. The sounds are also good, with nice explosions for the TNT boxes, Crash's "woah!" when he dies, nice spin noises for his attack, good bouncing sounds on the boxes, rewarding sounds when you get fruit or a mask, and a ton of other things.
The game gives a nice amount of replay value due to the gem collecting system. In order to get a gem in a level, you need to finish the level without dying once, while destroying every box. This is extremely hard, as just finishing a level without dying is very tough, and boxes are hidden everywhere in secret locations. If I was insane enough, I could go back and get probably 100s of hours just repeating the levels over and over, hunting for secrets and nailing the tricky sections to get every gem. But I've got things to do! Getting every gem will unlock the "true" ending of the game, but it's more trouble than it's worth, in my opinion. If you REALLY like Crash though, there's plenty of content here for you!
The game isn't all nostalgia fueled warm fuzzies, though. The game has pretty poor controls at times, although the existence of the dozens of extra lives ameliorates this problem quite a bit. The hitboxes are unclear, the jumps are imprecise, and the visual design of the sidescrolling levels makes this even worse. In some areas, you'll be moving left to right instead of up and down, and the 3D graphics make it pretty difficult to tell how deep you are in the screen at times, making it tough to make tricky jumps. Sometimes finishing a section can feel more "lucky" than skilled, which is frustrating.
The bosses of the game are pretty disappointing. The end boss in particular is very easy, which is frustrating. I beat him on the second try, which is just pathetic. When they are challenging, it's simply due to the fact that there are no clear signs as to how to beat them, nor are there any established rules for how boss fights operate. This is in keeping with the trial and error nature of the gameplay, but it takes it a bit too far.
The other weakness of the game is the one that is harped on by more people than any other: the save system. Saving the game requires that you find all three bonus boxes in a level and complete the bonus level, which will give you a password, or allow you to save to a memory card. You cannot, however, circle back around to a level, complete the bonus again, and save again. Once you use that save, it's gone forever. This resulted in some stressful times in which I had beaten about 5 levels without finding a save point, and just hoping that the next level would have a save system. This wasn't too awful for me, since the levels are fairly short, but I can imagine that if you were trying to go back through and get every gem, this would make the game absolutely abysmal. Since the system makes it so that you have a limited number of saves, 100% this game would necessitate doing it in a fairly short time, or leaving your Playstation on, which can't be easy on the laser. It didn't feel crippling to me, but I can definitely see how it could be a problem for completionists.
All in all, Crash Bandicoot is a nice game. It's fun, and builds the blocks for Crash Bandicoot 2, which I'll review next. It's not Super Mario 64 levels of 3D platformer greatness, but it takes a stab at creating a new platforming mascot, and makes for a memorable, if somewhat flawed, experience. I'll give it an 8.0/10.
Next up is Crash Bandicoot 2!
-TRO
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