When the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy was announced, many were excited. Crash was back in the spotlight after so many years of being the butt of jokes .A new generation was going to get to see just how important the original trilogy was, and with a great visual overhaul complimenting everything. After a year of exclusivity on the PlayStation, the remastered trilogy has now come to PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One, but how does it play on other systems?
Crash has an interesting history, considering he was the unofficial PlayStation mascot for a while and is now on other platforms. Playing through this on PC (For which a review code was provided) and then Switch ( Which was purchased), I noticed a few things. The games are often accused of aging poorly due to the controls, and the first game definitely had some awkward controls. However, this was around the same time Super Mario 64 came out and revolutionized the 3D platformer, and as such there wasn’t a set idea of how the genre should play yet. This is especially the case when both sequels (especially Warped) play much better and lack the roughness of the first entry.
Crash 2 and 3 are standout games overall, even if individual parts of them have not aged well, such as running into the camera ( like the first game) and some of the enemies, As I understand it, the collection is actually more difficult than the original release was due a slight frame delay throwing off the timing. Something definitely did seem off, as the platforming didn’t seem as natural as I was told it was in the original games. Is that a knock on the games? Not necessarily, since I do enjoy hard games a lot. What I didn’t like was that the perspective often caused issues. Timing a jump was already hard, but several jumps were mistimed because I kept thinking the platform I was jumping to was closer, only to miss it slightly. This also caused issues with collision detection, when enemies I clearly hit did not take damage while I always did. This cause no end of frustration, and made me want to quit a few times.
What kept me going through the games though, was a desire to see what made Crash so special. While I guess I will never fully appreciate how the games were at the time, I do see several positives here. The driving segments in Crash Bandicoot Warped are surprisingly well done for example. In fact, Warped took everything wrong with the previous entries and mostly jettisoned them ( apart from issues brought in by the collection). Even Cortex Strikes Back is a decent game overall and pretty enjoyable. It is the first entry that I feel has genuinely not aged well, and combined with a few technical quirks, is clearly the low point of the collection. Warped on the other hand is the high point, being a game that tried new things and did them well.
My final Thoughts: The collection is actually very much worth it for Warped alone, with Cortex Strikes Back as a decent bonus.
Disclaimer: A review code was provided