Sony’s answer to Super Mario is fun and pretty, but ultimately repetitive.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment about Crash Bandicoot is the gameplay itself. Sure, it’s fun at first, and continues to be fun for a while. You’ve even got old school side-scrolling action thrown into the mix, with successful results. But in the end, the gameplay boils down to a simple affair of jumping, jumping and jumping some more. When all this jumping happens to take place in painfully linear levels with little variation, the excitement soon wears off. Graphically though, Crash is another matter entirely. It’s beautiful and colorful visuals are impeccable and fit the style of the game perfectly. It may lack the smoothness and grandeur of Mario’s new world, but instead is infused with better artistic design and textures.
Crash Bandicoot features a sound world in tune with the rest of the game. It’s colorful, with strong hints of Australian aboriginal and Tiki tunes and other kooky sound effects. Sony set out to create a “Mario-killer” with Crash Bandicoot. While the game is certainly fun, it doesn’t quite manage to best the fat plumber, mainly because of some poor gameplay choices. Still, for anyone looking for a fun 3D action adventure game, you could do a lot worse than Crash Bandicoot.