NightOwl Game Reviews - Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - Beautiful, Well Done, Fun, and Frustrating................

in #gaming6 years ago

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Hey now everybody, hope you're all doing well, and welcome to my review of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy! Back in the mid 90's the original PlayStation reigned supreme, helping to usher in the new era of 3-d gaming. At the time it featured cutting edge graphics, and an incredible amount of excellent titles, turning it into a juggernaut that couldn't be stopped. Sony wanted to create a mascot for the system, something to directly compete with Mario and Sonic, and this led to the creation of Crash Bandicoot. A goofy, fun loving marsupial, in a colorful 3-d platforming game. I always enjoyed the Crash games, but they didn't really compare to the likes of Mario. Regardless, I still have fond, yet frustrating, memories of playing these when I was young, and now they've been remastered for modern consoles. So let me give you the rundown on this modern retro trilogy.

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The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a collection of the first three Crash games, completely remastered, and looking better than ever. These are platforming games, originally developed by the legendary Naughty Dog Studios, that offer a higher degree of challenge than your average game in this style. For $40 you get Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2 Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot Warped. Each of these three titles consists of a wide variety of levels, taking you on quite a journey. If you grew up playing these then you should be able to jump right in, and start making your way through whichever title you choose to begin with. But if this is your first time playing a Crash game, you might get a little overwhelmed by the difficulty in some stages.

The first game in particular is very unforgiving, even for someone like me who played it a lot when it first came out. Sure that was a long time ago, but I still play games almost every day, and I still got frustrated way too often. This is caused by the limitations of the hardware at the time of this game's original release. Back when this came out, in 1996, 3-d platformers were still stiff, and clunky. The level design is also limited, especially when compared to 2, and 3, making it sometimes feel like a chore. It's hard to time your jumps correctly, and there's very little room for error most of the time. You're either running left to right, or towards, or away from the camera, while trying to land on small moving platforms. The first game is still fun, but definitely the weakest of the three.

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In Cortex Strikes Back the developers started to branch out a little, adding some welcome changes, and tweaks to the formula. This time around there's more variety in the levels, and the controls feel slightly more fluid. Crash is a little easier to control, making precision jumps, and attacks, less frustrating, but as you make your way into the game's later levels it gets much more challenging. Even though this sequel is less ridged than the first one control wise, it still offers a high level of difficulty that can either make you want to keep trying, or turn you off altogether. There's less focus on waves of enemies this time though, and more emphasis on platforming, so whenever I died I felt like it was my fault, and not the result of poor level design. Plus you get to ride around on a cute little polar bear in some stages.

Finally we have the third game of this collection, and my personal favorite, Crash Bandicoot Warped. This one takes all the ideas of the previous two, refines them, and adds some completely different elements into the mix. I felt like I had the best control of my character during this playthrough, leading to far fewer mistakes, and deaths. You unlock more moves for Crash as you take out the games bosses, giving you even more control while platforming. Things like double jump, longer spin times, and falling slower, which opens up more options for you. They also added underwater stages, air stages, more levels where you ride on an animal, and even racing levels where Crash rides a motorcycle, or jet ski. Overall Warped had better controls, better environments, larger variety, and less frustration.

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The biggest improvement by far over the original versions of these games is definitely the visual overhaul that was done. The early days of 3-d gaming was not pretty, and didn't hold up very well over time. Seeing Crash, and all the colorful, varied environments, looking so shiny, smooth, and polished is really amazing. But the same wonky controls, difficult levels, and small margin of error still remain intact. If you already love these games then you're going to get exactly what you hoped for, with an amazing visual upgrade, and will probably be extremely happy. But if you're new to Crash, or weren't that big a fan to begin with, you might get discouraged by the frustrating way he handles sometimes. Basically, if you're up for a challenge than you will have a great time with this, but it's not for everybody. I'm going to give Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy a grade of...……………………


C +


Thank you for reading my review of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, I hope you enjoyed it!

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