Crash of the Titans

This is where the crash bandicoot franchise officially went off the rails, or least that's what diehard fans will tell you given how it had the most different art direction and gameplay elements from the franchise. I personally don't think it's bad at all even if I'm aware of its shortcomings from the humour to its gameplay.

Here we have crashes entry into the beat em up style of gameplay, although don’t expect this to be on the levels of devil may cry or streets of rage as the combat here is shockingly simple compared to those games. It’s basically hand to hand combat with the ability to spin attack as you progress through the game, this is odd as crash was never known for hand-to-hand combat prior to this game (that was more coco’s playstyle) but here we are watching him punch and kick enemies like he's in street fighter or something. I guess this was meant to compliment the platforming that this game has as the levels are laid out in a way that’s a call-back to the ps1 games with the different landscapes for him to explore. I will say that this was the best-looking game in the series prior to the remakes of the original trilogy made a decade later, however these environments are rather bland when it comes to their level design likely to not make the platforming too complicated to clash with the combat in the game. There's also the ability to "jack" enemies which does switch up the controls when facing waves of enemies, although it's clear the game only wants you to use these enemies to clear out the large waves of other enemies given the limited movement they each have in combat and especially when it comes to travel as none of them can jump let alone traverse large areas of the levels.

That's about all I have to say about the gameplay, however we also have the story and overall humour to talk about as they too divide fans to this day. The story is interesting to an extent given how Nina is now the main antagonist of the game given how everyone realises how useless cortex is as a villain and decide to give her a chance to shine. The issue here is that aside from who the mastermind is, there's no difference to how the story unfolds as you still have to fight off the underlings of the main baddies before foiling their plans. Then there's the characterisation which seems to be a distinction of what tag team racing did two years prior. Coco, crunch, cortex, Nina and Ngin are all the same characters here as they were there (spoiled brat, Mr t, neurotic pansy, emo stereotype and offensive gay stereotype respectively) but then there's what they did to aku aku, uka uka and tiny which us sure to piss off the fans of those characters. Aku aku is basically the grim reaper from Billy and Mandy (even having the same voice actor following Mel Winkler’s retirement) uka uka is more if an annoying grump with a passionless voice to match. And as for tiny? I guess he's mike Tyson now which would really been fine if he was up against crunch and his Mr t impersonation, but instead is just there to allow the developer to flaunt their knowledge of athletes of colour from the 80s. As for the humour, it has the same issue as tag team racing where the jokes only work due to how horrible everyone is as a person in the game, there's also a ton of dated 00s slang that serve as a reminder of how cringe millennial slang was at the time (oh no’s being a prime example of this.) It’s like if BioShock was filed to the brim with dialogue referencing fortnight with how out of place this is.

It's a mixed bag of a game that does have enough merit to be occasionally worthwhile, there's a decent challenge here and it's not a huge departure from the previous instalments, just enough of one that it would be considered plagiarising if it were called anything else.

As i said in the title, theres nothing really absurdly wrong with the game, the game is really fine, i like the graphics, scenery, the songs, the menu, you can have a lot of fun in this game, i understand the people that say that, this is not a crash game and bla bla bla, but this dont change the fact that its a really descent game

it has a good idea, it does it pretty well, but this isn't crash, if this was an another game maybe it would've been acceptable

the 2 player mode is kinda fun though

Crash Bandicoot was a brilliant platforming series and had a very distinctive style. In a Crash Bandicoot game, you expect lots of crates to smash, secret gems to find, lots of Wumpa fruit to collect, and many enemies to kill by spin attacks or a well-timed jump. All this is virtually non existent in this game which is strange given that the DS version was close to the usual Crash formula.

In this version, the levels are very linear and there are no secret areas and the stripped-down, simplistic nature means that it's quite hard to call it a platforming game; it's more of a hack and slash game. The combat mechanic sees Crash taking on a small mutant until he stuns it, in which case he can jump on it and take control in a concept known as 'jacking'. Once the mutant is jacked, he can use this to attack and take on stronger mutants and work his way up the hierarchy.

Usually the game helps you out by only spawning weaker monsters, and as soon as you jack one; stronger ones appear. Also, once you engage a mutant in combat, the other ones tend to back off which is necessary given that the mutants can usually take Crash's health down rapidly. However, they don't always back off which means throughout the game, you will suffer cheap deaths time and time again.

Annoyingly, when you run out of lives, you have to restart the level with only 3. Extra lives can be earned by collecting mojo which also unlocks stronger combo moves and a larger health bar. On the DS version, you could choose what perk to upgrade, but you do not have a choice on this version.

There are 20 levels in total and I found that the game didn't capture my attention enough to do more than 3 levels without a break, but the game was completed within 5 days. On a positive note, the game has good humorous dialogue, although Crash fails to show even a hint of intelligence.

If the game was more similar to the DS version, you would have been in for a treat, but the game feels like a waste of potential and was a large disappointment.