Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot celebrated his 20th
anniversary earlier this year. That sounds impressive at first, until you
remember he hasn’t had any new games in 8 years, and has therefore spent most
of his second decade in retirement. Happily, that is finally changing to
commemorate the occasion, with cameo appearances in Uncharted 4 and Skylanders
Imaginators (accompanied by Dr Cortex, Aku Aku and even Fake Crash in the
latter), and Playstation 4 remakes of the first three games to come next year.
I chose to celebrate by going back to the original to see how it holds up
today.
Dr Cortex is a scientist, a mental aberration;
he’s totally fixated on global domination! He aims to achieve this goal by
capturing the animal populace of the archipelago of Australian islands he has
taken as his base of operations, and subjecting them to rapid evolution via the
Evolvo Ray to form his own private army, hence the creation of out marsupial
hero. However, Crash is immediately thrown out for not being evil enough,
leaving it up to him to stop Cortex’s plot and rescue his female bandicoot
companion Tawna, even if she vanishes from the sequels. Talk about ungrateful!
That’s the extent of the plot, which is restricted to a blurb in the manual and
an easily missed cutscene that is seen by leaving the game idle on the title
screen, but it’s not particularly important. More than anything, it’s an excuse
to justify going through the levels, rather than anything with more depth or
meaning behind it, and in that respect it does the job.
What this approach does succeed in doing
is give the game a sense of going on a great quest. After escaping Cortex Castle,
Crash washes up on the beach of N Sanity Island. From there, he starts working
his way back to Cortex Castle, and each level represents him getting one step
closer to his goal. As Crash progresses, the levels become more dangerous and
artificial. The lush jungles of N Sanity Island give way to temple ruins and
abandoned bridges of ancient civilisations on Wumpa Island, which are in turn
replaced by Cortex’s industrialised castle and laboratory. There may not be
much plot in terms of exposition or events, but there is a lot more just from
the levels themselves and even the level select map. The game operates on a
show, don’t tell policy and it’s quite a novel way of presenting a game’s
story. This is something the sequels lost both in letting you choose from 5
levels at a time, and also in having a selection of level themes that connect
to the overall game, but don’t offer a sense of progression to each other.
In each level Crash must get from one
end to the other, navigating pits and hazards, and using his spin attack to
break boxes and defeat enemies. Crash’s only abilities to achieve this are a
jump and spin attack, which means the game can be picked up and understood
instantly, and everything you need to do is intuitive. The boxes are a good
inclusion, as they fill up the levels, giving you something to do while going
through each level, and trying to break them all is compulsive. There are
different kinds of boxes that each serve a particular purpose, and these are similarly
intuitive, including regular boxes, bouncy boxes to use for extra height, TNT
boxes that will kill Crash if spun into and can only be opened safely by
jumping on and getting to a safe distance, and so on. As well as being satisfying
to break, the layout of the boxes also provides mini puzzles throughout the
levels, trying to figure out how to break them all to maximise the content
payout and without dying or rendering some boxes unobtainable. The puzzles are
particularly prevalent in the bonus levels, which offer prizes such as the
ability to save your progress, a horde of extra lives or keys to unlock secret
levels. To avoid repetition or monotony, there are occasional levels that offer
alternative challenges such as boulder chases, a ride on the back of a warthog,
or using masks to light up a pitch black castle.
On the other hand, there are some flaws
with the game. A lot of things about this game were changed in the sequels, and
most of these changes were for the better, so their absence here is missed. Crash’s
newer abilities like the belly flop, slide and double jump speed up Crash’s
movements and make him more agile with more movement options, so their absence
here makes Crash feel more heavy and limited. Crash’s heaviness is also applied
to his existing abilities, most notably in that spinning in the air sometimes
carries his momentum slightly after he lands, but sometimes doesn’t. In some cases,
this can result in jumping onto a small platform and spinning to break a box on
there or to spin away an airborne enemy, then have the momentum carry Crash off
the edge despite your attempts to counter it.
Other changes include gems being
significantly harder to get in this game than the sequels. Gems are obtained by
finishing a level and breaking every box. In this first game, there is the
additional condition that this must be done without dying, as the boxes respawn
if Crash dies. In the sequels, broken boxes stay broken after each checkpoint
is reached, and the amount of boxes obtained and in the level is counted at the
in the second game, and as Crash progresses in the third. In this game, Crash
is instead shown at the end of a level how many boxes were missed, so there’s
less of an idea how many boxes there are. The bonus levels are also oddly done,
with the need to collect three tokens to access them, and these also being the
only way to save your progress. The sequels made these more straightforward with
just a platform to jump on and access the bonus level, and letting you save at
any time.
The difficulty starts off simple enough,
but it starts to get harder towards the end of the first island, and keeps
increasing from there, being pretty hard by the end. There are occasional
difficulty spikes in some levels, most notably Sunset Vista and Slippery Climb,
which are interesting in that Sunset Vista is the longest level and one of the
hardest, but it was originally going to be even longer and harder. Slippery
Climb is the hardest level in the game, and there was going to be an even
harder version named Stormy Ascent that was fully finished, but was cut for
being too difficult. The linear progression can get you stuck particularly
later on as the difficulty gets ratcheted up, and the system from the sequels
lets you choose from five levels, so that if you get stuck, at least there are
four other levels to choose from, and backtracking to earlier levels is easier
because of the layout, whereas in this game, Crash has to backtrack all across
the islands to replay a level. The bosses are significantly easier, with only
the final battle against Cortex himself offering a challenge. There are two
bosses in particular that have safe zones where Crash can stay without the boss
hitting them until they become vulnerable, at which point Crash can hit them
then go back to his safe zone.
Stormy Ascent remains accessible via hacking and it looks like we dodged a bullet. Maybe it could be a secret level or downloadable content in the remake?
I remembered this first game being
significantly weaker than the sequels and not holding up very well as a result,
but my memory had been playing tricks on me, as the game is a lot better than I
remember it being. It is certainly not as good as the sequels, but it’s
definitely still worth a go.
Graphics: 7 They hold up surprisingly well, although they’re more jagged and
subdued than the sequels.
Sounds: 6 Amateur hour voice acting. Music is more in the form of
background ambience than tracks you’ll be humming when not playing, though
there are exceptions (Hog Wild, please stand up.)
Gameplay: 7 Intuitive pick up and play fun, if rather simple.
Lifespan: 6 The same length as usual, though you could get stuck thanks to
the linear progression.
Overall: The original Crash Bandicoot is
really showing its age today, and it’s definitely the weakest of the original
trilogy, but despite that, it holds up better than my memories of it would
suggest. 7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment