Trash, Crash or Bash? (Crash Bash (PS))

Member Name: fluffypup

Product:	Crash Bash (PS)
Date:	08/12/00 (285 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Multiple player or team player is great; no split screen action; and another good Crash Bandicoot game with the same familar faces!

Disadvantages: Repetitive game play and not as highly polished as CTR or Crash 3

Crash Bash is the fifth outing of the Crash Bandicoot series of games for the Playstation. It’s the same old story of good versus evil. The story follows a challenge between Uka Uka (evil mask) and Aku Aku (good mask) who use the old familiar characters from previous Crash games as their pawns. Aku recruits the loveable but stupid Crash Bandicoot and Coco (Crash’s bit of stuff), whilst Uka bandies around the ‘baddies’ with the likes of N.Cortex, N.Bryo, Dingodile, Gorillaroo, and Tiny Tiger et al to do his dirty work.

Crash Bash follows the same winning format as Crash Team Racing but instead of races there are individual games or challenges. Crash Bash has 3 modes of play: Adventure (1-2 players), Battle (1-4 players) and Tournament (1-4 players). The great thing is that 2 players can take part in the Adventure game! It not only makes a good team game, but also gives you a good excuse to blame someone else when it all goes horribly wrong! Also your mate or family member won’t get bored whilst you are playing and vice versa. Another advantage of Crash Bash team play is that the entire action takes place on the whole screen rather than in split screen views – although you will need a multi-tap for 3 & 4 players, but that will definitely be on our Xmas list!

In the adventure mode, Crash Bash comprises of games a series of games across 4 different Warp Levels. Each warp level has the usual baddie blocking access for the following warp level. The further you progress the harder the game becomes. Your progression in adventure unblocks games in the tournament and battle modes.

The Crash Bash includes the following type of games: ballistixs, polar push, pogo, crash wars, tank wars, crash dash, balloon bash, medieval mayhem (haven’t reach this game yet) plus the end of warp level bosses. You start off with 5 games on the first warp level. An extra game is added per warp level of progression e.g. 6,7 then
8. Each game has 3 or 4 rewards – trophy, gem, crystal or relic. The more rewards the more you are allowed to progress.

‘Ballistixs’ follows a table hockey theme (good for the guys at Dooyoo!). The players are set out in a north, south, east & west configuration defending their respective goals. The aim of the game is to push, deflect, bounce, manoeuvre or force the balls into your opponents’ goal rather than yours. It’s both addictive and frustrating! The added bonuses are the force fields, electromagnets, and deflector options! It’s really fun and can get quite tricky, especially when you have up to 6-8 balls racing around the screen!

‘Polar Push’ pits the wits of the 4 characters in a festive fumble and nudge on ice. Each character is on little polar bear and has to push their opponents off the iceberg! Last bandicoot standing wins! It may sound simple but with added weapons such as the ½ ton weight, shrink & enlarge rays, lighting bolts, tilting icebergs plus bombs all add to the fun and frustration. The lightening bolts and weight have a count down timer before they come into play, so it’s also a game of ‘tag’ on who can keep or get rid off them.

Pogo is like the title suggests each character is on a pogo stick. The aim is to pogo around the playing board lighting up and banking your colour of squares. Again, it may sound simple, or even boring, but with four players pinching your colour squares plus the use of missiles, lightening bolts, poisonous mushrooms, Ripper Roo, TNT and ‘speedy’ boots can make this game exciting and very annoying! Just when you go to bank 30 squares somebody (usually my playing partner nicks you bank box or lands on a poisonous mushroom which ends the game). Highest score individual or team score wins the game and gets the reward.

Crash wars is a 4-character melee or skirmish, with the last player or team standing wins t
he game. You can kick, spin, throw boxes and use special weapons (8 way missiles, homing missiles & lightening bolts) against your opponents. You have the usual wampa fruit to replenish some lost energy.

Tank wars is similar to crash wars except all character are zooming around in tanks with revolving turrets. This time you only have 3 mines and your gun to kill off the evil enemies, usually against the clock! The tanks are quite amusing. The music is what you would label as ‘typically Yankee tank war’ music that I found quite amusing.

Crash Dash is similar to the previous Crash game (Crash Team Racing). You have to complete in a race driving by zooming around in your hover car. The first person or team to win a certain number of laps wins! This is the weakest of the games. The controls of the vehicle are weak. The size of the track and vehicles are very small indeed!

Balloon bash is found on warp level 4. It is another melee but this time the characters have to jump and burst their own colour of balloons on a revolving platform. Cunning weapons like vacuum cleaners attract all your colour balloons towards you. Popping black balloons turn everyone’s balloons your colour. If you pop anyone else’s balloons they explode in your face leaving you temporary paralysed. The winner or winning team is the one with most balloons popped at the end.

The end of game boss levels include: chucking bombs and crates at Papu whilst dodging and killing the evil mini fake Crashes; using rocket launchers against the mad bad polar bear in his sub whilst evading his evil rocket launching robo-polar bears (evil yapping terminator-esque polar bears); all out frontal assault on Ripper Roo fort with tanks; and whipping N.Cortex’s bottom in the final level (haven’t reach him yet!).

The battle and tournament modes of game play allow 1-4 players to tackle the above games, either individually or in sets of teams. Ea
ch mode has an easy, medium or hard level setting. The difference between the two modes is that battles comprise of only one game. Tournaments are fought across four games. The games are as above.

What’s Crash Bash like? Personally, I think it’s a great team game with three great modes of play. I found it more fun to play as a team rather than playing individually or versus one another. The option of playing as a team is first class and totally superb! Playing the adventure as a team of two is fun and exciting. It’s far better than playing an individual single player game, unlike the other Crash games. It’s an ideal game for parties, friends or mates to play all together. Unless you are Bill No-mates! There are no split screens either which enhances the game play! I love the ballistixs type games (fast & furious), my fiancée loves the pogo game (fun and comical) and my stepdaughter loves the polar push games (what she’s good at). We all hate each other’s favourite games, although pogo is quite good but very frustrating!

The individual games are mostly okay although crash dash is seriously pants with a capital Y (-fronts). It’s all squashed up in a small arena. The novelty of each game soon wears off. You have to complete each game per warp level 3-4 times to win all the necessary rewards (crystal, trophy, gem and/or relic). Each warp level has a variation of the same game! By level 4 you’ve played the original 4 games 12 times each!

Crash Bash isn’t as highly polished as Crash Team Racing or Crash 3! Maybe I was expecting too much? This apparent lack in standards (some of the individual games were pants – game play and visually, repetitive, no visual display of rewards per game & all characters have the same performance unlike CTR) is probably due to Eurocam taking over from Naughty Dog on the development of the game. Why change developers Sony Entertainment? I assume that Microso
ft have poached them to develop games for the forthcoming X-box.

Crash Bash is a good continuation of the Bandicoot series of games for the Playstation. It excels on the team mode making ideal playing with a friend or family member. If you love Crash buy it! Otherwise look elsewhere (I’m a great Crash fan!) because you may find the repetitive game play or hate one or two of the game. As a team or multi-player game I would give it 4/5, as a single player game playing 2/5 and 3/5 average overall unfortunately!

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