PUBLISHED BY: Sierra Entertainment
DEVELOPED BY: Radical Entertainment
PLATFORM(S): Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance
GENRE: Action/Adventure, Beat-'em-up
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2007
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 1 to 2
After the failure that Crash Boom Bang!
was, Vivendi Games gave the Crash Bandicoot series to Radical Entertainment
forever. With this game, I think Radical compensated the fans for the failure
that Crash Tag Team Racing was (also developed by Radical). Crash's structure
is now changed... for the good! Here you go:
STORY – 9.5
In this game, Crash and his friends
moved to the second island of the Wumpa Islands archipelago, Whumpa Island,
as N. Gin opened a huge weapon factory on N. Sanity Island. Crash and Co.
are happy and peachy on their new island, when suddenly, Neo Cortex comes
back! He kidnaps Aku Aku and Coco Bandicoot, freezes Crunch Bandicoot,
and leaves. Crash is able to save Aku a little later. After both find Cortex,
they learn about his new evil plan: on Whumpa Island there is a temple
full of Mojo, the essence of life. Cortex plans to mine all the Mojo in
the temple to create a huge army of mutants called "Titans" and to power
up a gargantuan robot called the “Doominator” that he'll use to squash
all the Wumpa Islands, and then the world. Soon after, Crash and Cortex
get engaged in a battle, and after Cortex loses (although he is able to
run away with the Mojo and Coco Bandicoot), Uka Uka replaces him with Nina
Cortex. It's up to Crash to save the day again.
GAMEPLAY - 10!
The gameplay is completely different from what we used to see. Crash must follow his path collecting Mojo (which is tiny blue balls) to gain or improve his abilities. After rescuing Aku Aku, Crash can use him to block attacks of enemies, surf around (similarly to what he did to Cortex in Crash Twinsanity - nice game!), and to jack Cortex's Titans. What is jacking? It's a new ability Crash has with which he can control the mind of the Titans. And how you do this? Simple: punch, kick, and/or severely beat a Titan until it gets groggy, and then press the appropriate button to put Aku Aku in its head. There are also the Minions, who are minor enemies. Each Minion has some characteristics that resemble their master. Killing them all in a level grants you rewards. To complete a level properly, you must:
* Find the bonus room;
* Kill all the Minions (as aforementioned);
* Find and destroy 3 Spybots, weirdo
toilet-esque robots;
* Execute a certain number of combos.
As a final note, Crash has now a health
bar. Whenever Crash falls from a cliff or gets hit by an enemy, he loses
some stamina. When the bar is depleted, he loses a life. He can recover
his health by collecting the classic Wumpa Fruits. A golden kind of fruit
grants Crash a life.
GRAPHICS – 9.5
The graphics are quite nice, with cool pastel tones. The characters' layout changed drastically, which makes Titans lose some points. Some of these changes, however, are kinda nice. Look at it:
* Crash lost his gloves, but won cool
tattoos on his arm. In a tradition started in Crash Tag Team Racing, he
speaks through gibberish and blabbers, although everyone understands what
he says;
* Coco didn't change very much. The
only differences is her hair (now loose);
* Cortex is taller, and his head is
now round, like every normal human being;
* The only difference in N. Gin is
that the holes in his coat are stitched. His skin is still bluish, for
unknown reasons;
* Tiny Tiger is now a common tiger
instead of a Thylacine;
* Nina now looks like a human;
* Aku Aku has a gorilla-esque face,
while Uka Uka's more reptilian.
MUSIC – 9.5
The music is made by Marc Baril, Radical
Entertainment's in-house composer. Although the music is nice and suits
the environment, they could have asked Spiralmouth to play again... Everybody
loved Spiralmouth...
FUN FACTOR! - 1000!!!
The game is mega funny! The fun is
not obtained through over-characterization like in Crash Tag Team Racing,
but with real jokes. N. Gin's derangement gives some of this humor. The
pop culture references also contribute to it.
FINAL NOTE – 9.5
Every great game has its flaws, and
Titans is not an exception. The game is extremely hard to beat, even in
"Easy" mode. However, Radical learned from their mistakes and made a quite
nice game. Let's pray that Crash: Mind over Mutant will be as nice as this.
BE PREPARED FOR MY NEXT REVIEW:
Super Mario World
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