Crash: Mind Over Mutant

This is the sequel to the divisive crash of the titans, while there have been some improvements here, they're largely cancelled out by the missteps this game took in bringing crash into the beat em up community.

There's not much to say about what this game does wrong, check out what I wrote for Crash of the Titans if you want an in-depth description of why these two games are hated but to summarise, the humour is extremely juvenile and only works due to how much the characters have all been flanderised, the combat is extremely basic with no improvements made here and the level design is bland and basic even though the graphics are amazing. Moving on to the positives, the mutans have much better move sets this time around which allows them to not only platform like crash does (albeit not as much due to not being as nimble) but also solve puzzles unique to each of them such as feeding water or operating a switch telepathically. The world is now an open sandbox rather than being stage to stage like in the previous game, this allows for exploration which leads to some collectibles that unlock bonuses and even powerups in certain cases. Cortex is once again the main villain here and is finally done with being a neurotic pushover and is now full of himself, this leads to hilarious interactions between him and the rest of the cast which is one of the few times the humour rises above cheap 00s references and toilet jokes. The other occasions coming whenever nbrio is on screen as his character is now an egotistical know it all that frequently breaks the fourth wall which surprisingly doesn't get old as his dialogue is largely meta commentary which I'm usually not a fan of (thank marvel for that.) I also love some of the cutscenes, the ones with cortex, Ngin and nbrio being the best as cortex shines in the south park parody, Ngin finally comes off as a decent gay stereotype in his cutscenes that isn’t as offensive as his previous portrayals from post naughty dog and nbrio is a delight in every cutscene he's in.

It's a pretty formulaic open world beat em up, but one with plenty of good humour (amongst all the juvenile crap) as well as a functioning campaign to play through.