Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - (Crash Bandicoot) - Review

“Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy”

Review by: David Strickland

Over the past few years, 3D platformers have taken a huge leap forward with today’s technology, and have had way more improvements than what they used to have back then. Many people know what to expect when picking up a Mario title such as Super Mario Galaxy, a fun wacky adventure in space, using the Wii’s motion controls to somewhat of their best abilities, picking up a Sonic title such as Sonic Lost World and exploring the various levels that make up the world of The Lost Hex. What I’m trying to get across is that for many popular 3D platforming adventure games, pretty much have taken a turn on how people perceive the world that they’re playing in, and one of these changes that have been heavily made is how they use gravity in the games, and pretty much just going all out with how the levels look, and how they feel. Now for many of us today, hearing the words “A brand-new Crash Bandicoot game is coming out!” you’d think that they were lying, but then you search it up only to see that, they weren’t lying and that actually, the Bandicoot really is coming back, your head fills with excitement, the thought of a new Crash game that is actually a Crash game, and not some horrid game to follow-up the events of Crash of the Titans, and Crash Mind Over Mutant (If you have these games, burn them, seriously. They aren’t worth the $5 you just spent on them.) After the past eight years of going into hiding, rumors that Crash is dead, you can set those rumors aside, because the N. Sane Trilogy is really as insane as you thought it would be!

Stepping back into my hardcore research that I did for Crash over the past few years, exploring what the game’s used to be and what beta elements they still held, it’s an interesting thing to look at and definitely, I recommend checking it out. Originally Crash would have been named “Willy Wombat” which is a close relative of the Tasmanian Devil, but due to legal issues that Naughty Dog (the original developers) came across while developing the game, they came across the animal known as a Bandicoot, and then came up with the name “Crash” for what he did, which was crashing into boxes. So that’s a short little history about how Crash became known as a Bandicoot, there’s a lot to the history of Crash that’s really interesting but would take up the entire review to get into detail about it, you’re not here for the history of Crash Bandicoot in one go, you’re here for the “N. Sane Trilogy” so let’s move on to that.

The Definition of a great Remaster

Originally, as I had said, the game was developed by Naughty Dog, they developed the first three Crash games that are remastered from the ground up for this title, after the first three were developed Naughty Dog had to give up the rights to another company, and from then Crash started to find himself in some pretty tight situations with it going from company to company. The “N. Sane Trilogy” was developed by Vicarious Visions, a company that developed the Gameboy Advance Crash titles, such as “Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure," “Crash Bandicoot 2 N-Tranced", and the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro crossover that really didn’t need to exist… But that aside Vicarious Visions did a good job developing the Gameboy Advance titles, and I somewhat enjoyed them for what I’ve played of them. So having Vicarious Visions as the developers of the “N. Sane Trilogy” was a relief as this was a company that worked with Crash already, and wasn’t a company that didn’t know who or what Crash was. Jumping into the game gave me the nostalgic feeling I was just dying to have, and it brought tears to my eyes. Upon getting past the startup screen, you were brought to the screen where it laid out the first three games ready to be played. For me, my first Crash game happened to be “Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped” and from there is where I began to fall in love with the series of Crash, but I will admit that I never touched the first one because I was a wuss and knew I sucked horribly at it, but with this remaster, I had to give it a shot, and tried my best to  complete all three games as I’ve never done so before with the original games, let’s get into the first game “Crash Bandicoot.”

WARNING: SPOILERS REGARDING STORY ARE UP AHEAD!

Crash Bandicoot

Starting the first game of the remastered trilogy, the flow of everything felt so right and felt amazingly redone, comparing the old cutscene with new and redone cutscene shows a HUGE difference in how far we’ve come through the years with game development, and really captured the aspect of what it was going for. Listening to the reimagined music of Neo Cortex’s theme brought chills to my spine, and really set the stage to show how ambitious and dark he really was, preparing an army of mutant animals to take over the world, and reign superior. Only to find out resulting from a technical error, everything goes haywire, and the mutated Bandicoot known as Crash escapes, while Cortex has a plan to get him back by holding the love of Crash’s life, Tawna Bandicoot hostage.

Finally getting into the first level of the game, “N. Sanity Beach” is where the game starts off, with a classical fourth-wall break as Crash turns to the player and gives them the thumbs up, believing that you’ll do a good job, this level being the introduction to the rest of the really serves as one of the easiest levels throughout the game, and probably the only level that can be claimed as “Easy” You’re introduced to almost everything that the game consists of while traversing through the “Wumpa Islands” you can see your destination in the far distance growing greater as you come closer to it, “Cortex’s Castle.” Progressing through the game, the levels become more challenging, you also get introduced to many kinds of levels, such as hog riding (yes you read that right) hog riding through native villages to avoid obstacles, levels where you run towards the camera from the impending doom of being crushed by a boulder, levels with a dark atmosphere in which you need to use the mask Aku Aku to light the way, many different, plus plenty of more levels to keep you entertained! As much as I love playing through the game, sometimes I do have to put it down for a bit to recollect my mental state and then push on forwards, as for the bosses, they are pretty simple and very easy to get the hang of, though the smallest little slip up can still cause you to lose as for most of the bosses are time-based.

Though this is a remastered version of the first game, in addition, they added a cool feature that I just adore, the ability to play as Crash’s sister Coco who was introduced in the first game, is now playable, and can be played through most of every level except for levels that actually required Crash, an example would be the level Hog Wild, a hog riding stage in which you need Crash to ride the hog. Collectibles are also a common thing for all levels, each level features a collectible, which is either of the following; a gem, colored gem, or a key. Each item has a specific purpose, gems are obtained by breaking all the boxes in the level, plus the bonus round (including, Neo Cortex, and N. Brio bonus levels), to get into these bonus rounds you must collect all three tokens that go to each bonus round, the Tawna bonus stages consist of just a basic platforming challenge, not too hard, the N. Brio bonus stages consist of a more harder and challenging platform challenge, tossing TNT into the mix as well as rewarding the player with extra lives, and finally the Neo Cortex bonus stages is the most challenging of the three, and getting to the end rewards you with a key to unlock one of the secret levels I mentioned earlier. most levels can’t be completed unless you’ve unlocked a specific path by collecting one of the five colored gems throughout the game. To collect these colored gems you have to complete a level without dying, and I’ll be honest with you, I gave up after collecting the first two colored gems, every other colored gem, I just completely gave up on trying to get. The keys are what you need to unlock two secret levels which also include a gem. After obtaining all these items, instead of going super bandicoot and unlocking a last secret boss to fight while flying through space (Which I guess would’ve been cool? I don’t know) You get to unlock the secret 100% ending, which is pretty cool because you can skip out the final boss fight and boom, you did it, though I find it very weird that the secret ending isn’t the canon ending… But I’m not going to question it.

Conclusion

Crash Bandicoot, I honestly never thought I’d see the day my favorite Bandicoot return. Though I never really played the first game of the series, I can for sure say that taking on this challenge was one of the most entertaining, and frustrating, most nostalgic adventure I’ve had in awhile. If you’re just getting into the series I’d highly recommend buying the “N. Sane Trilogy” as for a price of just $40 for a game packed in with three full games, with much replayability and outstanding quality, it beats the everyday average price for a new game being around $60. The only problem I’d really like to complain about in this title which goes for all three games is one that many people have stated, although it recreates and stays true to the original, the controls can be a little bit off setting. The developers have stated that the controls are slightly different and have changed to make the game a little bit more challenging, it’s still an annoyance to see Crash land on the edge of a smooth, flat platform and instantly sliding off falling to his death for no reason. Most deaths are caused by you, but some deaths can be completely cheap because of the change of controls.