Bash Crash would’ve made more sense. Or not.
The story mode is set up similar to your typical Crash Bandicoot game – it features Crash and his buddies versus Cortex and his henchmen, and progresses in a similar fashion. You’ll go to a warp room, fight a boss, and then repeat. Exactly nothing’s new here, aside from the fact that you’re playing against others in party-style games, opposed to your typical Crash Bandicoot action. You can either play solo or cooperatively with a friend. Both ways are a lot of fun (especially the latter), but I wish you were able to switch the second player on and off. Even though it has all been done before, this single player set up is much better suited for one person than Mario Party. There is actually a point to playing it solo.
The games are actually mindless fun for a while. Just like Mario Party the games are relatively simple and have exactly no learning curve, meaning anyone can pick it up and have fun. Included is a battle game in which you attack your opponents by throwing crates scattered throughout the arena at them (one of my favorites), tank wars, an interesting take on pong, races, challenges that involve coloring tiles on a pogo stick (or springs on the bottom of their shoes if you’re using the enormous Tiny or Koala Kong), and others. There are also a few boss battles that are also quite enjoyable, such as a showdown with a giant bear on a polar bear, a crate war with the obese Papu Papu, and a tank war with two Komodo Dragons, who are hidden inside a heavily-armed fortress that you first must infiltrate. For an action/puzzle game, this is one entertaining story mode.
But there just aren’t enough “unique” games. There are nearly thirty available, but maybe ten different ones. Most games are no more than a rehash of an older one. For example, one game requires you to ram other players off of a sheet of ice with a polar bear, and another has the same exact premise, except this time the ice wobbles. This lack of games makes the “party” features worthless. Most people aren’t going to want to play through all four crate levels, or all four tank levels, or all four dash (AKA racing) stages. You’ll just want to pick your favorite one from each batch, which leaves you with very few options.
Even the story mode gets repetitive about halfway through. It’s still fairly fun, but not as fun playing something for the fourth time as it was originally playing it. Even though the party features are worthless, Crash Bash is still a good game. It obviously doesn’t even come close to topping Mario Party, but that’s ok, because it doesn’t try to. It’s a single player action/puzzle game with multiplayer/party options. Mario Party might be the definite party game, but to this day no other game has surpassed Crash Bash’s story mode. It succeeds at what it tries to do, and that’s all that matters.