Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex Preview

By Miguel Lopez, GameSpotPosted Aug 3, 2001 5:36 pm PT

We take a detailed look at the first non-Naughty Dog-developed Crash game.

Throughout its five-year history, the Crash Bandicoot series has remained surprisingly true to its roots. So far as the platformers in the series are concerned, the formula established by the first has remained untouched: As the spastic marsupial, you'll venture through 30 odd, similarly spastically designed levels, avoiding obstacles, spin-killing enemies, and collecting ton upon ton of fruit. In the latest game in the series--the upcoming Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex--the song remains largely the same. But as anyone who's been following the game knows, the game is now in the hands of Traveller's Tales. So, has the UK-based developer done anything radical to Sony's once quasimascot?

Greetings, old friend.

If the latest build of the game is any indication, not really. Fans of the series will take comfort in the fact that Traveller's Tales seems to hold the game's tried-and-true formula in very high regard. If we use the current build as a blueprint for what's to come, we can expect a very familiar layout: Crash will journey throughout five worlds, engaging in the sort of linear, almost classical platform-style gameplay we've come to associate with him. There will be crystals to collect, to be sure (one was hidden in a demo stage we played), and possibly other types of key-type items, which you'll use to unlock levels previously locked. The levels themselves, if the current build is any indication, will come in two varieties: some that pay homage to classic platform gameplay, and others that are defined by self-contained vehicle-based sequences. There were two examples of the latter in the version we've been playing: one involved Crash flying around in an ultralight airplane, blasting enemies and tornado generators, while the other had him inside of an American Gladiators-style groundball. The mechanics of both were different enough from those of the standard levels, though not enough for you to feel jarred or jammed in. The one biggest change in this fourth Crash game, though, is the addition of the bandicoot's sister, Coco, as a genuine playable character that has her own levels to boot.

Opportunities for death abound.

But the most welcome addition to the game, without a doubt, is the level of polish that Traveller's Tales has put into the game. Crash has never looked better, and his performance on the PS2 hardware is nothing short of silky. The game's levels are huge and well populated, abounding with graphical effects. Crash is wonderfully animated--nearly on the level, ironically enough, of Jak from Jak and Daxter. The frame rate, meanwhile, seems to be moving at a solid 60 frames per second, with the only hiccup occurring in the game's effects-heavy flight stage.

In short, the game seems well on its way to achieving the sort of technical polish that its 32-bit stepcousins enjoyed on the PlayStation. Some kinks exist, however; the game's mechanics feel a bit loose at times, resulting in a bit too many undeserved deaths. Also, there's a good deal of a guessing game that involves determining which attacks work against which enemies--something that, hopefully, will be ironed out before the game goes gold. In any event, we spent a good deal of time exploring the demo. Read on for impressions of what we saw.

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jakeboudville
Posted Oct 7, 2006 11:09 pm PT

pretty cool
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