Ya, it's about time I played a Crash Bandicoot game. The first Crash Bandicoot game came out in 1996, but at the time I was too busy with so many other games to get into this series. The 90s had some amazing games and with me just being in high school at the time, I didn't have the money to buy a bunch of games, so I never got into this series.
I have been on the fence about getting this game since it came out, but I read several reviews on it and they were all extremely positive and said that this is the best one out of all the Crash games.
The first thing I noticed when watching different gameplay videos and trailers was how amazing this game looks. It is so full of color and really cool animations.
This game is a platformer at heart, but one of the things that really intrigued me with the gameplay is the many different styles of platforming that it does. It goes far beyond the traditional 2D side scrolling platformer, but does not go full 3D like how Super Mario 64 did.
From the levels I have played so far, there is a certain pathway that you follow along as you are playing until you reach the end of the level. So you don't have to worry about getting lose in some large open world. It reminds me a lot of the Donkey Kong games that can out on Super Nintendo.
The game's story is pretty funny so far. You are trying to stop some mad scientist dude and his goons. They broke out of some prison by creating a tear in time and space and traveling through it.
By creating that tear in space and time, they have awoken some magic mask things that you collect and get help from.
One of the things that I like about this game is the different things you can collect in each level. It reminds me a lot of the Super Mario series where you collect the coins and other hidden objects in the levels to get a "perfect" score on them.
By collecting all the different peach things, breaking boxes, finding hidden objects or even beating the levels without dying a certain number of times, you collect these diamond things that can be used to unlock different skins and other items for making gameplay even more fun.
I really like when games do this because it incentivizes you to go back and replay certain levels to collect those items. There are so many games like this with no incentive to do good on the different levels.
The map between levels is really cool looking and it reminds me of Super Mario World on the SNES. There are so many different aspects of this game that remind me of so many awesome games from my youth, and I think that helps to draw you in and fall in love with the game even more.
Overall, I am excited to play this game and see how the story unfolds. In the first hour or so I played it, there have been some pretty cool monsters and characters.
I am looking forward to having a break from killing the devil's spawn in Doom and beating up people with a huge dildo bat in Saints Row. This game is one that you can pick up and play for a couple hours or so when you need a break from the more serious types of video games.
My only complaint so far is that the jumping and platforming aspect can take a bit of getting used to because it is a bit hard to know where you are going to be landing. From what I have read, they did add a shadow underneath Crash as he jumps so you can get a better idea of where you are going to land. I guess this is a recent addition, which would make the previous games a bit frustrating.
Even though this game is really colorful and cute, there is a nice bit of difficulty to it without it being overly difficult. There are too many platformers out there that have an insane degree of difficulty to them where is you don't time your jumps perfectly and jump to certain spots in the game, you die nonstop. This game is at least a lot more forgiving than those games. That is why I never got into the Super Mario Maker games. Too many people want to make the most difficult levels possible and that stuff is not fun for me at all. I don't have hours upon hours to waste trying to jump from a ledge to another one.
Are you a fan of the Crash Bandicoot series? If so, I would recommend picking this game up. It is on sale right now on the Xbox store if you are a Xbox Game Pass member. I think it was only like $38 or so, which isn't too bad for a game.
