Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is a game Kirsty
bought as part of the N-Sane Trilogy when she first had the PS4. I play Crash
every now and again, usually as some sort of intermission between long-form
RPGs and open world games! Regular readers may remember I beat the first Crash
Bandicoot nearly two years ago, and after coming back to Crash Bandicoot 2 I
reached the end of that a few weeks ago. Here’s what I found:
 |
| Watch out for that plant... |
Crash Bandicoot is abducted by Dr Neo Cortex and instructed
to retrieve 25 crystals for him so that Cortex can harness their power to stop
a cataclysm caused by an up-coming alignment of planets. Crash must traverse 25
levels in search of these crystals, and hand them over to Dr Cortex. However,
all is not as it seems, as Crash’s sister Coco warns him against Cortex and his
former assistant, Dr Nitrus Brio, contacts Crash with an alternate plan… which path
will Crash choose?
The Mascot Platformer was declining in popularity during the
mid-late 90s but given that Crash was flying that flag for Sony’s PlayStation,
it shared a remarkable number of the same tropes as Super Mario or Sonic the
Hedgehog. The groundwork was set in the first Crash game – the characters, the
villains, the basic gameplay loop – and Crash 2 was more of the same but
expanded upon in ways that made the game better. In addition to everything he
could do in the previous game, Crash also acquired a power slide and crawl move,
which came in useful for certain puzzling sections of the game. Late in the
game, Crash acquires a jetpack, which is a little fiddly to use but shakes the
gameplay up a bit. And the post-game content contributes to the end as well –
the “alternate plan” I referenced earlier involves getting all the gems – much harder
than the crystals – which affects how the game ends when you defeat the final level.
 |
As a tribute to my Dad's recollection of a
Monty Python sketch, I called these hedgehogs:
"Spiny Norman." |
Most of the levels in Crash 2 are designed with the 2.5D
sensibility that worked well for the Crash Bandicoot series at the time. You run
from one side of the level to the other, smashing all the crates, spinning, or
dodging the enemies, picking up the crystals – they’re always in the path of
the level and are impossible to miss – and defeating the bosses once every five
levels or so, which are quite a bit easier than the first game. The levels require
some quite precise platforming, and while there’s nothing as irritating as the
bridge levels from the first game, there are certain sections where jumping on
platforms that are ahead of you require some trial and error! The levels where
you ride an animal for extra speed make a welcome return, as do the levels where
you’re running away from a much larger obstacle – a giant polar bear or rock!
The latter are hard because you are running into the screen in this case, and
it’s very difficult to see where you’re going. It wobbles on the line between satisfyingly
challenging and frustratingly hard, so while getting to the end of the game is
far from impossible, I find that Crash is better enjoyed in small bursts.
Having reached the end of the game, I have no desire to go back and find all
the gems – I haven’t got anywhere near as much investment in this as Spyro!
 |
| Keep Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Rollin... |
The game is presented well; the graphics are fine, and the
sound is good. The voice acting is in line with the larger-than-life cartoon
characters of the 90s and works as well as it needs to. The plot is a little thin
– it is obvious that a “betrayal” twist is on its way – but that’s hardly the
point of a Crash Bandicoot game!
I enjoy Crash Bandicoot as a distraction from longer and
more serious games, as I described above. But the frustrating difficulty makes
it hard to enjoy as much as some other games I’ve been playing. Crash 2 is
definitely better than its predecessor, and remains a good game, but for me,
never quite reaches the levels of being a great game. I’ve enjoyed it – but that’s
all I did.
Final Score: 3/5: Worth a look.
No comments:
Post a Comment