Overall 7 Graphics 5 Sound 8.3 Addictive 5 Story 5 Depth 7.8 Difficulty 7.5
3.4
Wrath of Cortex.....not so great Zircron Swift
Crash Bandicoot was a splendid, enticing and very well made platformer for its time. Making three superb main games with a fantastic racing game that rivaled and, dare I say topped Diddy-King Racing and Mario Kart 64 (with a so-so mini-game PSX game that deserves at least some credit....some), it was a wonder what they were going to do when the groundbreaking PS2 came out. The best selling console of all time (even in 2013) had pretty much everything. It handled DVD playing in a simple manner, great controls that were practically untouched from its predecessor, a sleek design and amazing graphics that pushed and went over what everyone was expecting, it was clear that a Crash Bandicoot game on this beast of a console would only do the same to it's elder kin.
What made the hype even more so, was that the publishers were none-other than Konami, video game legends that created Contra, Castlevanis, Life Force, Metal Gear, that....dance move thing where you had to actually dance (dancemania?)....and several others that have made video game history because of this company. Whatever Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex had in store, not only would it be big, but it would be ultimately magnificent to say the least.
So why, why why why why WHY, did this game suck more than a bicycle pump going through a vacuum? It was terrible, worse than Crash Bash in the sense the game was just poorly made. Crash Bash was a jerk by nature, but this thing, it's like it had no understanding of what a platformer was. I'm here to put justice to this disgrace of a game bearing the Bandicoot name. To have the name Konami on the front implied it was created by such, but in actual fact Traveler's Tales are to blame for this monstrosity. It was just distributed by a great company to make it sell better.
It can't be that bad right? No, don't get me started....oh wait, I am writing a review, silly me. Let me start with the opening to the main menu. The first thing you notice is that it's bland, empty and unenthusiastic. It's so boring and cheaply made. You can just see that little no no effort was put into this. The literally zero background music (unless if you count space station beeping as "music"), the unentertaining voice reading out the text and publishers, the animation in general and the low profile of sound effects, which might I just add were in pretty much ALL the Crash Bandicoot games beforehand (save the first one, which was
still entertaining than this poor intro), makes the game seem like it's not worth playing. You know, maybe that was the intention. The developers were so horrified with their results they cut out the awesome intro and
replaced it with this pile of garbage to give the signal that they should save their souls and get a refund. But does anyone listen? ...Or they just generally sucked at this point, which the latter seems more likely.
Next thing is a real nitpick, but you can only choose 7 characters. You can't put "Bandicoot" as a name because you can only enter in "Bandicoo". I guess you could always put Crash in as a name if you want something easy (aside from "aaaaaaa"), but for those that like to use Bandicoot, when it's in the name of the game, can't. It's a small thing, but it irritates me. You can add 8 characters in Crash Nitro Kart, so I see no excuse.
So once you enter your name, you are greeted with a cut scene dictating the story ahead of you. The absolute first thing that I notice here is that the frame rate is far too smooth. I know it's silly, a smooth frame rate is a good thing, it makes you feel less irritated in a game and it doesn't have jaggy movements that makes you want to rip out your hair. But seriously, this frame rate is far too smooth. It's like they're making special commands do all the work. Look around and tell me, do those sparks coming out of the wire seem natural? Do those waves feel like actual waves? Does that spin attack have any "kick" or feel that makes it seem powerful? Having done some animation myself (I admit poorly, but still), I know about how using one feature, from start to finish can create a magnificently smooth movement, but when you need to add some dynamic 'pow' in there, smooth one-end-to-another isn't going to work, you need to cute some frames out to give the illusion that it's moving faster, so those sparks feel like they jumped out of no-where and could hurt you.
It needs to amaze you and activate you and think it's all real. Here, you can clearly see it's a computer game, with stuff made by a computer. There is not realistic feel to this game graphically. It's surprising, I don't normally say how graphics are important, but here every action and animation reminds you that you are not in this fantasy world, but in your bedroom holding a controller making the orange character move and win. A great video game makes you forget you are using a controller, and that you are actually playing a game, but that you are the game. It's unfortunate that this game spoils it by being lazy with the graphics, and using too much of the "fancy" stuff that the PS2 made possible, putting no professionalism into it whatsoever. This is armature work at best.
Right, the story. Well apparently Cortex and his hencemen are part of some company (that we've never heard of before, nor even a name) where they have to increase evil activity in the universe. It sounds like it was their job all alone, yeah, yet
another thing that seems to be the case yet has no evidence it appeared in earlier games, just like Crash Bandicoot 3, Warped, where Uka-Uka was apparently behind all the evil plans in the first and second game (according to the instruction booklet) and Cortex was just another minion,
even though Uka-Uka was only freed in the third game and made no appearance in the first two games WHATSOEVER. Hmmmmmmm! Stuff like this makes me so angry!
So apparently Dr. Cortex was working on some sort of super weapon to crush Crash and his comrades, but lacked a power source to finish it off. Uka-Uka then proposes that they use the Elementals as that power source to get this secret weapon up and at them. Then Cortex says something like "prepare to feel my wrath, Bandicoot" Hahahaha, subtle! Real subtle. Maybe you should make that the name of the game. The scene then cuts to Crash and Coco water skiing, where just like that, natural disasters start happening. Apparently it was really easy to wake up the Elementals, it's a shame we didn't see a scene of this to where they slept or anything, that would have been really interesting and expanded the Banicoot world. Aku-Aku goes over to see what his evil twin brother is up to, and well, finds out that the Elementals have awoken. Seems kinda pointless, since with Uka-Uka saying he will get the Elementals and since natural disasters are linked to NATURE AND THE ELEMENTS it seems that the scene with Aku-Aku and Uka-Uka was just a filler, giving almost no character development for the masks. The only thing about this scene is that they appear on that weird ancient floating machine island that seems o be around since Crash Bash. What is it with these things? Also, Aku-Aku and Uka-Ukas voice seemed to have dropped a lot and I could barely hear their conversation during this scene. Smooth. Real good editing skills there.
So the cut scene drags on even more where Aku-Aku goes back and tells them each mask requires 5 crystals to put them back in their hibernation state. Why 5 crystals? Why that number? Why crystals? Why are they the same purple ones? Why can't it be something different to collect this time? Spyro the dragon had three different games where you collected three different things. Dragons, orbs (And talismans technically), and eggs respectfully to the first three games. These guys are just being lazy, not thinking up a good concept to get something else for a change. I guess don't fix what isn't broken. Coco just so happens to have a virtual reality machine that can help them track down the crystals. Wow, how convenient. After that you get some dialogue from Cortex and his newest creation Crunch, who is your stereotypical, hot headed tough-guy that wants to take on the Bandicoot at every interval, but Cotrex keeps telling him he will have his time. Dude, you created Crunch
specifically to take down Crash! Why are you holding him back from his purpose? Just let him go ahead do his thing before he collects useful power-ups and Aku-Aku masks.
The formula for this game is simple as the third game from the PSX series. You have a huge hub world connecting to five different smaller worlds which are very easy to transverse between each other. Each world has five levels and a boss level, each boss giving a power-up that should help you on your journey to collect the crystals. You can also break all the creates in the level to get a gem, which will contribute to a secret ending (which is kinda lame, because when you defeat the game, Uka-Uka only goes "But wait, the gem! Victory can still be ours!" meaning that after all that, you still have to complete the game 100% to get the proper ending. This wouldn't be so bad if it was done in a subtle way, which is wasn't.) and relics, which contribute to secret levels which let you get more gems. The hub world for this game is so boring. Again, it's all artificial and constantly reminds you that you are in a video game. No-one wants to feel that, they want to feel the action of being in a fantasy world, or to experience a story as if they are actually a part of it.
As you pick a level, you have to go through this obnoxious loading screen. Remember how Crash is orange with blue shorts? The blue complements the orange, making it pop out, so what did they decide to do? Make the loading screen full of red, orange and blue colours. It's stupid, it's an eyesore to look at, and Crash blends in rather well to the background, which is bad, because the hero is meant to stand out, not be covered by similar colours.
The first level is an ice level, despite the theme being "jungle" or "nature". The ice levels are normally left till later in the game, and there's a reason for it. You have to get used to the controls before you can throw in slippery ice which throws everything out of proportion. There are also poor platforms on this first level as well, meaning you can die quite a lot as well. Not only this, but there is a death platform as well. A death platform is a game mechanism that if you an make it to this point and not die, you can go on it and go to a different section of the level and get a gem, in this game it's always a coloured gem. Quite a lot for the first level, it's quite over-powering. Normally I'll leave it for at least the forth level for any of this, and the second world for the ice levels. I suppose you could just go to a different level, say level 3, as it's non-linear in that sense, but post people like to go from 1-30 in that order so they don't get confused with level hopping and having to explore the hub for levels they haven't completed.
There are quite a few new game types in this game actually, unfortunately they are all rather bad. There's a terrible re-incarnation of the jet-pack levels of Crash Bandicoot 2, boring airplane levels, a car level that has the worst steering and is a pain to get the gem on, tricky and slow paced ball levels where you're inside a ball, and the worst of all, the submarine levels, where you are under water in a submarine, where the slightest touch of anything will cause you to explode and die. Yes this includes fish, even though you are in a metal case with plexiglass which can withstand amazing amounts of pressure from the water above. These levels truly are the devil's work. I have spent several lives on just one of these, which are unforgiving, poor frustrating and they actually make me depressed to play them. I feel trapped, inclosed, lonely and powerless in this metal tank. annoyingly enough, the water effects actually mask the unrealistic graphics of this game, and have actually emerged me more than other levels, and that makes me so terrified. A game should not make you feel like this when it is supposed to be fun and harmless. Getting relics on these levels are not fun at all. They are the opposite of fun. It's like grating you hand through a cheese grater only to find that you have grated it the wrong way, so you get you hand back as if nothing happened to it, and you grate it again, and again and again, until you get it just right, then you get to loose you hand permanently. These are what make a terribly level design.
One thing that is kinda nice is that some levels have a light-grey gem, which are obtainable through different means other than cracking crates open. It's a shame the two ways to get these two gems are a pain, and both in snow levels. There are too many snow levels in this game, too many. Speaking of which, the coloured gem platforms look horrible. They are cheaply made polygon-shaped, with the colours filled with no care for shading, textures or edge enhancement. It looks like a plastic toy. The first one you're likely to run into, the blue coloured gem challenge, is not fun because of the depth perception. If the game was in 3D, then it wouldn't be such a problem, but mos of the jumps you have to make are mainly guesses of distance, and that's not entirely clear because of how the level section is angled. One mistake and you're dead, completely unfair given the situation.
The power-ups are almost useless as well. They are only used for specific parts of the game, after that they can be just forgotten about. In the second and third game they used these power-ups more often, giving them an important role in the game. The power-ups include a tip-toe ability, just hold L2 to tiptoe over nitro boxes. This is a really bad idea for a power-up, because it greatly slows down the pace of the game. This is only used in bonus rounds, and if it was used in normal levels, you would be wide open to enemy attacks, giving you the choice to either take the hit and lose an Aku-Aku mask, jump as a reaction from the attack and explode by hitting the nitro boxes, or jump out of the way and lose an Aku-Aku mask, with the possibility of death. At least they thought about this, but it's very possible to jump the gaps here without using the power-up. The spin attack that makes you hover in the air is only used once (and there were other places where this could have been used well, but couldn't because the monkey bar mechanism got in the way of it) and the bazooka is hardly used until the final boss.
The lack of AI in enemies in this game is really shocking. Most of the enemies use an arch which goes over your character. You can just walk by then and sit there, watching them throw potions and what-not at you till the cows come home, with no sense of aiming for you. This makes the game too easy for when you encounter actual enemies. But, in the ball levels, it's even worse. You know Tiny, Dingodile and N. Tropy? Bosses of the third game that provided a decent challenge and a sense of accomplishment upon defeating? Well they're regular enemies now in these ball levels. Tiny just moves left and right to stop you passing though, with no sense to "CRUSH TINY BANDICOOT" even with him so close, so trapped in a ball. All it would take is to pick him up and throw him away, there job done, but nope, he does nothong about it like a lower level simpleton.
Dingodile fires his flame thrower thingy in the same spot over and over, even though you are in his sight. Just need to aim carefully and he could make the bandicoot run wild, but nah, he just follows the traits of normal enemies. N. Tropy, surely you must provide a decent challenge right? You were awesome to fight in Warped, such an atmosphere, such music, such a scene. But here we see the mighty time twister just fire his magical time dart in the same spot over and over, in which Crash can easily avoid, even though this guy could aim more carefully and take him out. how could you do this to such amazing bosses? These once proud, decently rich characters are now downgraded to the simplest form of enemy AI. This is an insult. These are freaking bosses for Pete sake" And you come here and make them normal enemies?
The music isn't too bad, it had it's charm, but it's just not the same. It's missing something, something important. It's bearable, but it feels like it's connecting its music too much to the level design. I have said before such as in Super Turrican that this really adds to the levels feel and enjoyment, but here it just feels like they used too many sound effects in the music instead of actual instruments. The weird sound effects also don't help compliment the music as well, despite the sound effects being almost identical to the previous games. The re-tune of the classical Crash Bandicoot theme is also pretty nice. It adds a new mix to the beat and it doesn't make my ears bleed. I can offer kudos here.
The bosses are also poorly made. These bosses are not really fun. The first one consists of using the ball thing and hitting rocks before Crunch does to defeat him, while the second one is even more poorly made because it's very repetitive and easy to die in, which is a recipe for wanting to speed things up and get it done as quickly as possible, which results in more mistakes, which results in dying more frequently. It's a boring boss that can leave you at a stalemate for some time.
Overall, I give this a 3.4/10 at best. It's a really disappointing Crash Bandicoot game, where everything just seems wrong. The level designs are wrong, boring and frustrating, the graphics are confusing in some places, cheap, and unrealistic, which is surprising since it's made for the PS2, which makes it an even more poor job, with a terribly conceived story and difficulty curve. if you're a huge Crash Bandicoot fan, then it might be best if you leave this one. If you want to play it, but it really isn't anything like the first three classics from the PSX.
Graphics 4 Sound 8 Addictive 4 Story 3 Depth 7 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 10-28-13
Review Replies: 4
4.3
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex The Dealeo Nincompoco
What is Crash Bandicoot? It was a platformer where you spin through boxes, but then it turned into a brawler that received much controversy. There were also cart racers and a Mario party edition. :P
Now like I said, the brawlers received much mixed opinion, but many people who played the first 3 games can confirm the Crash games are amazing, with their unique characters and plots, tight controls and difficult jumps, as well as good use of power-ups. However there was one platformer much poorer than the rest, and it was known as Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Now compared to other games, be them from the same franchise or not, this game is pretty dang terrible. Well, I kinda beat the game, let’s delve into this.
Now we start off with a bit of loading, yeah, the game loads for like half a minute every time you enter a new area or cutscene. As for the intro, we get some of the best graphics the playstation has to offer! And by playstation I mean playstation. Not ps2… the graphics suck!!! I mean look at other games on the ps2 like sonic games and jack and daxter. The cutscenes looks like something an N64 could make! And I didn’t know for a long time what other games were like, until I saw Crash 3 gameplay I thought THIS game was the standard! Well the plot is ok I guess. All the bosses from the last game are being scolded by UkaUka, the evil tribal mask, for their inability to stop Crash. Cortex reveals that he has a secret weapon he didn’t want to use for various reasons, but in order to activate its power he needs more energy. UkaUka then adds his own idea to the mix, unleashing the masks known as the elementals. The elementals caused worldwide damage which led to the ice age, and had to be sealed away with power crystals. So UkaUka will combine the power of the masks with Cortex’s weapon for the sole reason to destroy Crash and open the way for world domination.
So yeah, 4 masks of earth, water, fire, and air, 5 crystals each… 25 crystals! Wut? (o _ o) IDEK. So Crash has to travel around the world to collect crystals and seal the masks away and with the 5 leftover crystals… I dunno, stop world hunger? There are many game mechanics including flying vehicles, ball rolling, swimming, and robot mechs. I’m usually up for mechs and stuff, but some mechanics are incredibly broken. Aiming to shoot objects is very dis-orientating, ball rolling has realistic physics, but the levels aren’t even made to give you lenience with this. See, I want a person to play the final levels of other crash games. Then, I want them to play level ONE of this game. Count the difference between nitros in both levels. So here’s the deal, nitro blocks are the worst hazard you can run into. You touch them, you die. Well guess what? THERE’S OVER 9000!!! No other crash game has these many nitros in a level. It’s a very cheap way to add difficulty, and to add onto that the controls suck too. Other games are known for tight controls that make you feel in control of your every action. If you die, you feel like it’s your fault, not due to some bull crap you couldn’t stop. Well roller levels later in the game force you to inch along as you maneuver past every nitro in the way, and driving or chasing sections become trial and error as you run into nitros you couldn’t see beforehand and have to memorize their locations. Now a lot of complaints seem minor, but once you add them all up, you realize how bad it becomes. For everyone’s sake, let’s go over a ton of nitpicks back to back.
Every enemy is a reskin of the same guy. They don’t tell us the controls of new game mechanics, we figure out on our own or read the manual. Coco is playable, but she’s even worse than Crash. A special race level on a minecart can be won by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Submarine levels are WAY too common, and they have few checkpoints and hazards you can never see coming until they charge into you. Levels are WAY too long. It’s required to beat the time trials on EVERY LEVEL. Every time you get a power-up the levels become WAY easier as they don’t compensate the fact you can double jump now or shoot fruit. The things that the bosses say in between levels is never memorable, and more often than not really brief or unthreatening. The bosses from the last game appear as racing opponents or hazards. AND WAY TOO MANY NITROS. I cannot stress enough how stupidly easy the game would be and to make it unbelievably hard they just add insta-kills all over the ham place.
Now there’s all this fuss on Cortex’s weapon, what is it? Well anyone whose played a game coming after this one knows it as… Crunch! Yeah, guess everything went downhill once Crunch showed up eh? Crunch in the game only wants one thing, to beat you to a pulp. As the game goes on and during the final fight though, you realize that Cortex is mind-controlling him, making him want to kill you. Guess he just can’t have mutant bandicoots listen to him right? So the 5 bosses are all variants of Crunch, first is RokKo Crunch. You ride around in the ball and try and hit all the small rocks, turning all of them blue. When all are blue you take a third of Crunch’s health and add another rock. If Crunch hits you or hits a red rock into you, you take damage. Second is WaWa Crunch, and it’s one of the hardest bosses I’ve ever faced. I mentioned in my Childhood Bosses thread I only recently beat him right? You basically memorize each attack and avoid them, then hit him 4 times, but if you get hit JUST ONCE you start all over. It eventually wears you down, you reach a peak and then get worse at it. Then there’s PyRo Crunch, you run from Crunch to get to a water-shooting robot suit and then catch up to him and hose him down. Again, one-hit restarts, but it’s much easier than before. The last elemental form is umm, air mask guy Crunch. Forgot his name, could be LoLo but I’m not sure. This one is actually pretty fun, you fly around in a plane shooting Crunch’s weak spots while avoiding his projectiles. Fairly easy and a good relief from other parts of the game. Then the final boss, you vs. all the elementals and Cortex. Crunch activates elemental attacks that are easy to memorize but soon become very long and random. When AkuAku holds Crunch down you must shoot him with your gun, breaking the mind control and getting him to punch Cortex into the stage for you to spin into him.
Now if you beat this for the first time you get a quick message that in order to REALLY win you need to get the 5 gems in the secret levels which you unlock by beating ALL the time trials. Then beat the final boss again and as anyone would expect, Crunch becomes Crash’s friend only to become a stereotypical jive speaking brute in later games. So now that the review of the game is done, here’s my recap and input.
Like I said, the graphics suck for a ps2 game. There was a remake on the Xbox, but it just fixed the lighting and retextured the bandicoots. 3
Now the music in some areas, be them unnoticeable, are actually pretty nice and catchy once you hear the soundtrack on youtube or something. 8
I gave up on this game for a few years when I couldn’t beat the 2nd boss, and I’m sure as heck not gonna unlock the secret levels, I just saw them on youtube and they’re remakes of other levels. 2
The whole world crisis, mega-weapon Bandicoot, elemental mask thing is pretty cool. Eh, take a 6.
The game has a lot of reasons to play it again, too many to ever want to do them. Break all the boxes in a level, do a death run with even MORE nitros, freaking time trials, 7 for sure.
The game is difficult, but in a very cheap way. With bad aim, camera angles, controls, and FREAKING NITRO BLOCKS, it’s not a good Megaman kind of difficulty, more like a Sonic 06 kind where you feel it’s all on the developers. 8
Now if you’re up for a game that tests your patience, this is for you. I’d sure as hell recommend a previous Crash title, but if this is what you get it’s good for beating the game once and then burning it or something. Hey, there’s always that one game, be it buggy, disappointing, or different, in a good franchise.
Graphics 3 Sound 8 Addictive 2 Story 6 Depth 7 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 4.8/5
Submitted: 07-02-14
Review Replies: 1
5
Crash Bandicoot? More like Crap Bandicoot (Wrath of Cortex) TheFadedWarrior
It is October the 29th, 2001. The Playstation 2 is thriving, the GameCube just got released, and the original XBOX arrives in just 17 days. Needless to say, the video game industry is about to enter one of its greatest ages. Famous for its excellent games on the original Playstation, the Crash Bandicoot franchise is expected to be a big part of this new era of high-quality 3D games. The PS1 had Crash Bandicoot, Cortex Strikes Back, and Warped, which were all praised but critics and gamers alike. When it was announced that a fourth mainstream Crash game was going to be released on PS2 (as well as GameCube and eventually XBOX), titled Wrath of Cortex, fans got excited. However, Wrath of Cortex was the first Crash game to not be developed by Naughty Dog, and it shows. The project was sent to Traveller's Tales for whatever reason. Up until that point, TT was pretty much only known for Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast, which were both... pretty terrible, let's be honest. So why Konami gave TT developing rights, I do not know. Let's see TT's take on Crash Bandicoot.
Graphics - 3
The graphics for Wrath of Cortex were disappointingly bad, even for an early title. Final Fantasy X came out 4 months before and looks beautiful. The art style of Crash Bandicoot games is cartoony and playful. There are lots of bright colors, and textures are very smooth. In Wrath of Cortex, these "smooth" textures just look low-budget. Weirdly enough the crates have pretty good wooden textures and particles, but overall the models in this game are quite poor. There's also a very annoying problem with depth in this game because of the crappy lighting, so I'm always looking for Crash's shadow to see where I'm landing. The backgrounds of each level are also literally just 2D images that spin around to face you. The XBOX release in 2002
did fix the lighting and
update some textures, but it's still not fantastic by any means.
Examples: [url]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bWXgnp0ZHhg/maxresdefault.jpg[/url] and [url]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xofZeHvP9sM/maxresdefault.jpg[/url]
Sound - 7
The best part of this game is the tunes, but even those can be ruined by a few problems. Problem number one, the soundfont only has like 5 instruments. Okay, hyperbole there, but each song has the exact same "boingy" feel to it. Problem number two, the PS2 release has a looping problem. In the original release, when the song ends there is a solid 3 second period of silence before it starts again from the very beginning. In the Greatest Hits re-release, this problem is somewhat fixed by having the songs loop immediately, but this loop is still quite jarring.
In any case, most of the songs actually sound pretty good. Something I really appreciate is that every single level has its own music. In terms of depth, they didn't short anyone out. The official OST has 42 songs, 36 of which are full-length. You can find the full OST here (my favorites are 2, 17, 20, 27, and 28): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Vf2Yh33As
Gameplay/Addictiveness - 5
If you're a young child like I was when I first played, you'll love this game. It's a cute platformer with bright colors and fun tunes. However, as I've grown older and recently picked this game up again, I've realized this game is really not that great. Many of the levels have poor design and rely on cheap tactics and silly hitboxes to kill you. The game is
extremely linear, which is normal for the Crash series, but you can't even jump over railings or on side platforms half the time. There are also definitely some moments that force you to take it slow, which greatly disrupts the flow of gameplay. Yet another issue that may turn you away is the loading times in this game. The original PS2 version and I believe the GameCube version average out at over 45 seconds to load each level. That's 45 seconds of boredom. The Greatest Hits and Black Label versions bump it down to about 12 seconds though, which is long but not awful.
However, it's not all that bad, as there are a lot of collectables so it can be fairly addictive if you're into that. Also, one of the goals of the game is to break every crate in each level, so the game is also sort of a treasure hunt (and sometimes puzzle game when you gotta navigate those Nitro boxes). There's also a lot of vehicles in levels that add some variety. There are a fair amount of complaints about many of the vehicles for being forced on you with their crappy controls, but there's some pretty fun airplane levels. There's also 3 very enjoyable Atlasphere levels, which are basically Monkey Ball clones. **** the submarine levels though, those are everything that could go wrong in a platformer.
Story - 2
This is quite possibly the worst and most cliche story I've ever seen in a video game, not to mention the voice acting and writing is atrocious. Basically, Doctor Neo Cortex wants to take over the world so he cloned Crash and made him into a huge muscular weirdo named Crunch. Crush wants to help Cortex achieve his goal of world domination, so they are collecting the 4 elemental tiki masks to have unstoppable power. Nothing special at all here, just your classic "I want to rule the world so I made a supermutant" trope. I can't find examples of the voice acting, but let's just say the lines are really cheesy and the accents are very stereotypical.
Depth - 7
This game features 30 full levels and 5 boss fights. While it was the most levels in a Crash game at the time, it doesn't take particularly long to "beat" the game. However, of course, the true ending requires you to get every gem and relic. Each level has 1 or 2 gems (usually one for crates and one for a bonus path) and 1 relic. You get the relic by completing time trials under a certain time. Some of the platinum relics will take you a very, very long time to get. I have some speedrunner blood in me, but holy heck these can be annoying. Anyways, the replayability gives the game a lot more depth, but I'd still say you can 100% the game in maybe 25 hours.
Difficulty - 7
Getting through each level is a breeze. I got pretty bored just going through each level, and I had reached 99 lives by the end of world 2/6. That being said, this game can be quite frustrating sometimes. Like I said earlier, there is a big problem with depth perception in this game because of the lighting. There are countless times where I have missed precise jumps because I didn't know where I was falling. You pretty much always have to watch for your shadow. Additionally, Nitro boxes (which explode and damage you if you touch them) have stupid hitboxes, and there are a few that I honestly do not think you can get past without taking damage. The boss battles are also usually cheap and very difficult.
The difficulty in your first playthrough feels artificial and entirely the developers' fault. However, when you play through again to get the gems and relics, that's when the real game begins (and when it starts to get fun). There are some secret routes that unlock if you get through a level without dying, and those are usually real difficulty that relies entirely on your skill. The time trials can also be incredibly difficult and you might end up missing a relic by a single frame. Overall, the game is easy peasy unless you're a completionist.
Overall - 5
Overall, Crash Bandicoot - The Wrath of Cortex is a game filled with flaws that are balanced out by its fun endgame and catchy tunes. The graphics suck, the story is textbook cliche, and the gameplay is nothing special. The difficulty feels artificial, but there's some good challenges awaiting you if you choose to fully complete the game. Ultimately, it's not a bad game but not a good game either. I recommend it if you're looking for a simple game or are fan of Crash Bandicoot's format, but don't expect it to be near as good as the first 3.
Graphics 3 Sound 7 Addictive 5 Story 2 Depth 7 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 4.5/5
Submitted: 07-20-18
Review Replies: 2
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