Played It All Before, But It's A Tad More Snazzy (Crash Bandicoot - The Wrath of Cortex (PS2))

Member Name: GramiWay

Product:	Crash Bandicoot - The Wrath of Cortex (PS2)
Date:	11/08/09 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice graphics, different vehicles and level ideas

Disadvantages: Very difficult for intended audience, repetitive

Crash Bandicoot - The Wrath of Cortex [TWOC] is the sixth game featuring the orange marsupial in the hugely successful franchise. It was also the first game to be released on a platform other than the original Playstation. This review focuses on the PS2 release in Autumn 2001, though the following year also saw Crash venture onto the X Box and Game Cube for the first time.

Chronologically TWOC is the fourth Crash Bandicoot instalment, following on from Crash Bandicoot 3 - Warped three years previously. Travelers Tales also took over from Naughty Dog as developers of the game which meant that with this fact and the upgrade to the PS2 that the Crash world was about to get a bit of a makeover.

- Story -

After thawating Dr Cortex and the evil mask Uka Uka's plans for world domination at the end of the last game, Crash Bandicoot is finally taking a well earned break. However, his peaceful vaccation is about to be shattered as on a secret space station Uka Uka has gathered Cortex and some of the previous game's villains to berate them for their incompetence.
The group hatch their most villainous plan yet to destroy Crash and the world. Cortex reveals he has been working on a new super weapon but doesn't have enough power to bring it to life. At this, Uka Uka decides to summon the elemental, four dangerous masks specialising in earth, water, fire and air who were locked away due the threat they posed.

With the elementals and Cortex's new weapon [a muscular and nasty looking bandicoot named Crunch], Crash and Coco are forced to open a virtual hub and travel to locations throughout time and once more gather the crystals so they can reseal the elementals and end Cortex's latest scheme.

- Game Play -

Much of the game's action takes place in the virtual hub. This is an environment similar to the warp room lay out of Crash 3. There are five individual warp rooms and upon starting the game you can only gain access to one of them. After gathering all the crystals and defeating a boss round in that hub, the next one will open and so on.

Each hub contains five levels which are playable by either Crash or Coco. The levels are a lot more detailed and longer than before, with more boxes to face and much harder environments, particulary as you progress through the game which may alienate younger audiences. The object of each level is to collect the pink crystal either by battling through an environment filled with various foes, completing a task like destroying boats or by winning a race.

There is also a clear gem for every level which you can collect at the end provided you have broken all the crates in the level. Certain levels also have a second clear gem which can be obtained by completing various hidden sections. The five coloured gems can also be found this way. All in all
there are 46 gems to collect.

You can also obtain relics. These are won when you re-enter a level after obtaining the crystal and beat the set time for getting through the level. You can break the time crates during this frantic dash which freeze the clock for either 1,2 or 3 seconds. You can activate time trial mode by grabbing the floating clock located at the start of every level.

It's not essential to collect all the gems and relics as you can progress through the game and defeat Crunch and Cortex with the crystals alone. However, if you want to get 100% it's worth collecting everything you can get your hands on as well as exploring the game's secrets!

I was excited about playing as Coco, though to be honest, she was difficult to control. She's a lot slower than Crash and doesn't have the same move set as him, making her very limited. It was very hard to complete the time trial mode and various parts of her levels and she was so slow moving that your reaction time to various foes was seriously lowered. Fortunately she only appears in 6 levels out of the 30 available.

Amongst the vehicles available there is a mine cart, a plane, a jet pack, a jeep to escape a herd of rhinos and an odd mech suit. Coco has a scooter and a snow board which she uses to escape from a tsunami or a snow avalanche. There's the usual annoying under water levels whilst the characters also explore volcanos, the Arctic, an old abbandoned mine town and a medieval castle. You can also roll about in the Atlas ball [it looks like Crash has become a gerbil], in a very fast paced jungle environment.

Crash is armed with all of his usual moves and new powers can be obtained by defeating each hub's boss. The only new inclusion was the tip-toe technique which allows you to sneak across the notorious green Nitro crates undetected. This is very helpful in certain bonus stages but can only be done in a side scrolling environment. I thought the creators could've used this a lot more as it had good potential.

The levels are enjoyable but the dimwitted elemental masks were extremely annoying. Everytime you entered a new level, that hub's boss mask would pop up and shout a random insult or a badly constructed pun such as 'I'm going to burn you alive!' [the fire mask]. It wasn't funny, just annoying. That coupled with the silly 'LOADING...' screen that insisted on appearing each time you enter or exit a level, made for frustating game play at times.

- Graphics -

Like the other games TWOC is a platform game which uses a face on environment in its levels in which the levels are coming towards you. There are also various side scrolling elements moving in both directions or the infamous 'chase' levels in which Crash or Coco are trying to escape in this case a dragon or a tsunami for example. These levels involve the character moving towards the screen.

The graphics have been seriously upgraded and I wasn't too keen on the new look characters. Whilst they retain their usual attributes, Cortex and Coco in particular just don't seem to fit with their previous counterparts. Cortex looks a lot more muscular and It just doesn't feel as if the graphics really work that well in this instance. The levels however, have been massively altered. They seem so much more realistic especially the snow environments.

The music is also less irritating than other Crash games with some pretty decent soundtracks to various levels. A soothing element when you're re-doing the levels for the 10th time or such.

I was extremely pleased with the WOC. The massively rendered environments and difficulty of the levels finally produces a Crash game that is challenging. Whilst the format is pretty much the same to the past two games and may bore some, I found the number of different vehicles and slight different twist to certain elements in the game to be very intriguing and a welcomed success. I did feel that despite the game's 3+ rating, it was extremely difficult and there were so many controls and new inclusions that a lot of children would find it really hard to grasp the game play and to get through a lot of the levels, which is a shame as the other games were a lot more accessible for a wider audience.

I do admit that I am left with a strong urge to play TWOC's predecessors after this game because despite all of the game's strong points, it's just a generic formula being rehashed and tweaked with each game to continue ensnaring fans and their money.

Summary: Why bother when you can play the other 3?