At the end of every level Crash breathes a sigh of relief before being pummelled by the boxes he didn't break in the level he's just finished. A neat allegory for how this game made me feel a lot of the time; i.e punished. A lot of these levels were a pain to get through, and merit a sigh of relief once completed, but there's always more levels waiting on the other end of the end portal, ready to pummel you once again. However, when the game gets torturous it at least has the merit of taking place in some nice-looking locales, because this is an impressive looking game for 1996, and I still think a lot (especially the environmental stuff in the levels) holds up well today.

They took the Half-Life car, fitted it with a new engine, gave it a new coat of paint and, I don’t know, added some sub-woofers? Anyway, they did a good job of modernising the Half Life experience, something that has its advantages and drawbacks. Some elements get remixed, and some new additions are made, which I especially appreciated when playing through Xen, again. I could never get comfortable with the shotgun due to its long reload times, but maybe that’s because I’ve been spoiled by Blood’s shotgun.

Shooty bang bang game, but with speed. Much fun to be had cleaning heaven of living licourice sludge while head bopping tunes play over the mind speakers. Also has a dude cosplaying as Mephistopheles by saying that “all things must perish” and then trying to bring that about as life death goals.

I finished this years ago, so a lot of what I remember is hazy. I should also try going through it again at some point.

My experience with the game only extends to the vanilla survival mode, which is only scratching the surface of what this game has to offer. To be more specific, my experience with Minecraft is me restarting multiple survival worlds over the years, without having ever seen the end screen. It's as if I took a photo of Pandora's Box, without actually opening it or anything, so I don't really know what I'm talking about => IGNORE ME.