Crash Bandicoot

Here's a neet little adventure game that's sure to keep you busy for hours. It's Crash Bandicoot in all his glory. Crash is the mascot that helped to make the Playstation the most popular gaming system on the planet.

It's not a true 3D game, as one would expect, rather it is path driven, but still in 3D. The developers choose to do this because they felt it would give a better player interaction to the environment (At least that's what I think, I read this in another magazine). I still think a fully 3D Crash would be awesome, but anyway it probably doesn't matter much because the game sure is fun!

Graphically speaking, this is one of the best games to come out on the Playstation. The character animations, special effects, light sourcing, ect.. all are done to near perfection. A great deal of work went into this game to ensure it would able to live up to being Sony's mascot. Which is a very prestegious title indeed.

Level design is equally impressive. At times your running from a giant bolder that is racing down a hill toward you, and sometimes you are riding a giant runaway boar trying to avoid the baddies in the level. In each of the senerios (There are many more too), there is always a sence of urgency because danger lurks at every turn. It gives you that rare feeling of "I gotta try that again", that you don't find in many games.

Crash is a little harder then your average adventure game. If you have very young gamers in your household, I suggest you rent it first. As an example, my 5 year old completed Mario 64 rather easilly, but with Crash he becomes frustrated kinda quickly. I'm not saying it's impossible for kids to play, because he is getting better at it. I'm just saying that it doesn't have that all around ease of play factor that Mario 64 seems to have.

One thing that has frustrated me is the fact that you must complete save point levels to save your game. This is totally unique, and I give the designers full credit for adding something new, but I personally don't like it. I guess I'm partial to the PC save. Which is to press F2 at anytime, knowing you'll restart exactly where you decided to save. In Crash, you not only need to complete several scenes to save, but you also have to make it through the save level. It makes you have to complete levels again and again. I sometimes like to redo levels, and this is especially true in Crash, but I don't like being forced into it. OK for some, but not for me.

Overall, Crash is a pretty darn good game! Is is better then Mario 64, or Nights (two games that it will most undoubtably be compared to)? Well, that's hard to say. All are different so it's really hard to compare. Each is a true winner is it's own right. For the record my personal fave is Mario 64. This is more of my personal opinion, then fact though. My suggestion is this, buy all three if you own all three systems. If not, buy the game that works in your machine. You can't go wrong with any of them.

RATINGS
GRAPHICS 98%
SOUND 96%
GAMEPLAY 91%
ORIGINALITY 95%
REPLAY VALUE 95%
OVERALL 95%