[6/18/08] Crash Bandicoot

[Devia Eleven]

 

Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developed by: Naughty Dog Software

Genre: Platformer

Number of Players: 1

Release Date:

US: September 3, 1996

Japan: Released

Europe: Released

Australia: Released

Emulators: PSX, ePSXE, PCSX

 

In August of 1996, Crash Bandicoot was released for the PlayStation and was developed by Naughty Dog. This game officially set the bar for linear platformers everywhere. Crash Bandicoot was the first 3 dimensional platformer that was released for the PlayStation. Crash Bandicoot himself was also labeled as the unofficial mascot for the PlayStation, and the game was released around the time when Super Mario 64 was released, which was a non linear platformer. The game mainly involves a titular silent protagonist that goes by the name of Crash. This animal character has really set a trend for the following decade, where developers made platforming games, and gimmickly (not a word), named each main character with the same first letter with whatever animal the character was, (i.e. GEX, THE GECKO). Dr. Neo Cortex has gone wild with world domination. He has developed an Evolvo Ray, which can transform peaceful animals into mutant-like, superhuman creatures. During this experiment, a small bandicoot named Crash was hit with the ray along with other creatures. Dr. Neo Cortex planned to make Crash the leader of the army of superhuman creature soldiers. Unfortunately for Cortex, Crash escapes the mind control of his and jumps out of a window of the database lab, and Crash then lands on N.Sanity Beach.

 

 

From here, which is the first stage of the game, Crash gets up from his fall and stands on the shore of N.Sanity Beach. The gameplay involves jumping, spinning, and running. There are basically only three things that Crash can do. He can jump, run, and spin. The spin’s purpose is to attack an enemy; this is his second method of attacking. This is also an action button, which needs to be used to make certain objects function. There are boxes all around on each stage, they all can consist of, extra lives, peaches, Aku Aku masks, bonus pieces, TNT, bouncing, and thunder bolts. Collecting 100 peaches gives you 1 life. At 0 lives left, 0 actually counts as one life. The Aku Aku mask is an ancient tribal mask that contains the spirit of an old witch doctor. When this mask is obtained, Crash wears it and it grants him one free hit. In this game, getting attacked once will kill you, but with the power of the Aku Aku mask, it will take the hit for you.

 

 

Collecting 3 masks will fuse all 3 of them together, and when this happens Crash wears the mask and it grants him invincibility, and also the ability to kill all enemies on contact. This only lasts for a short while, but when the time is over you still have 2 maks already fused together. So as long as you can manage to not get attacked with 2 masks in possession, you will only have to collect 1 mask to receive invincibility. The TNT boxes explode if you jump on top of them, after you jump of them it will then count down to 0 from 3. Anything in its vicinity will explode along with it, so it is a wise choice to separate your self from it when it is triggered. Any crate can be destroyed by spinning into it, or jumping on top of it. Jumping does pretty much everything in this game; it destroys organisms, crates, and gets you to where you need to go. Some crates have yellow arrows on them, and jumping on them will make you bounce higher than you can jump. Some crates also have yellow thunder bolts on them, and if they are jumped on, they fill in empty transparent spaces that are supposed to be crates. In some levels, there will be white outlines of crates that are supposed to be in those spaces, and can only be filled in by trigger the thunderbolt box.

 

 

Every stage in the game has some boxes that contain bonus pieces. There will always be three bonus pieces in each stage, collecting all three will take you to the bonus stage. In each bonus stage, you play on a side scrolling stage, but all 3 dimensional physics apply. Pressing down will make you run off of the side scroller, because the entire stage takes place on one strip of land. You cannot duck; instead you will fall off of the side scrolling platform. The bonus levels get harder over time, your main goal is to reach the very end, and some boxes are placed in hard to reach places, and trying to destroy them is risky, because if you die you cannot come back unless you collect another piece. Completing the bonus stage will allow you to save your game, this is the only way that you can save your game, and this is the reason why bonus stages are important. They also help you gain many extra lives, and these lives are a priority.

 

 

This game has an excruciating sense of platforming. The further a player gets in the game, the more advanced the platorming will become. There are moving platforms, death pits, repeating sequences that you will need to time, and enemies. Sometimes enemies are purposely placed in the exact spot you would land if you jumped from a platform to another. Some enemies become problematic and annoying; because they halt your level progression. There are also cliche type things like blowing fire, etc. Timing is very important in this game, and if you don’t time correctly, expect your extra lives to decrease rapidly. Along with this, checkpoints need to be hit, sometimes in stages, you will feel as if you have been playing the stage for a long while, and you haven’t even encountered a checkpoint as of yet. Luckily, if you have to start from the beginning, you can remember where certain enemies are, and you will be able to anticipate bottomless pits and can learn from your mistakes so you will be able to overcome certain obstacles which were impossible to avoid previously. I cannot forget the levels where you have to keep moving because if you stop, a tremendously sized boulder will run over you. These types of levels are reversed as to where you cannot see what’s coming ahead, these levels are arduous because you have to react under pressure, it’s hard to perfectly land on a moving platform that you cannot see while running full speed away from a rolling boulder that’s right behind you, filled with ecstatic kinetic energy. The bosses can be difficult as well but these become easy over repetition, the more times you see the bosses’ movements and attacks, the easier it is to develop a worthy strategy.

 

 

The sound in this game really comes from humorous type cartoons, where certain dangerous attack sounds are replaced with cartoonish sounds. The entire game sounds as if it has been made strictly for kids, or either the sound effects did not have much effort put into them. The music consists of various tribal sounds and instruments. Some music are even composed by innocent ambience type sounds of birds chirping and lions growling, and one man banging on a drum. They are quite creative, and the music is consistent with that genre. Some even contains tribal type singing, where whatever language they are speaking is unrecognizable.

 

The environment of stages in the beginning of the game mainly quadrate of ancient type artifacts and carvings. Some even resemble ancient African symbols of artwork. The main artwork which was done on the Aku Aku mask, is similar to the intricate designs that are put into the environment. With what the PlayStation is basically capable of, not much is to be expected from the graphics, they are decent and not often times paid attention to. Other elements in the game cause the graphics to be overlooked.

 

With not much more to be desired, this game is just completely decent and not much else. With it being basically the first linear 3 dimensional platformer, you can’t really complain much. The game’s concept is simple, and this simplistic game is kind of hard to be critiqued critically. I wouldn’t recommend playing it at this time, but if you are looking for a game that’s pretty straightforward and linear, you should probably check this one out.

 

Gameplay: 7

Sound: 7

Graphics: 7

Presentation: 7.5

Story: 6

 

Overall: 6.9 (D)

[Agozer]

Nice too see someone reviewing old classics once in a while. I agree that the game is really frustrating at time (more so than what would be considered "healthy"), and the presentation is a bit lackluster; this can be forgiven, considering Crash was one of the PSX's early starters.