Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage is an unassuming title. It makes you expect something like Crash, where the main antagonist from Spyro is the main bad guy; typical marketing scheme. However, this game is more than that. The fact that Crash and Spyro work together to defeat their arch enemies is an unsurprising plot, but the companion game, Spyro Orange, creates for interesting story interaction. Playing through Spyro's homeworld as Crash is an interesting experience. The graphics of this game are pretty amazing for the GBA. Though this game is a sandbox side-scroller, the game achieves an amazing level of three dimensions for the Game Boy Advance, as the platforms are all three-dimensional. Not much is lost in the conversion from the three dimensional games to this two-dimensional one. All the characters look much the same as they do in the three-dimensional ones, and the cutscenes look very advanced for the generation. The platforming sections are basically (artwise) the same format, but each world has its own background pattern, and style of platforms. The lava animations are pretty good for the time. The textures for Spyro’s homeworld are the most impressive, but the other textures live up to a good, albeit slight lower standard of quality. The sound quality of the game is pretty good, but the sound effects can be overly repetitive. The music is average quality for the system, and not especially well written. The game includes spoken sound effects, such as “Yow!”, but nothing in the way of narration, which, admittedly, is usual for the GBA. The gameplay of this game takes quite some getting used to, but once you have beaten the game, the platforming sections are pretty easy. The platforming sections include traps such as jumping lava (very lifelike, you can be sure), swinging axes, falling icicles, and lab assistants with flame throwers. I was a little disappointed at the unreactiveness of the enemies: They all worked on timers that told them to walk, fly, or whatever, and do an offensive move at some random point in their timer. For example, a cliched ultra large venus fly trap random snaps on a timer, a lab flame assistant turns on the flame thrower every so often just for fun, and the monsters walk in circles or fly up and down. The moving platforms, jump (up arrow) boxes, and plain (but sometimes short/ tiny) floating platforms can pose a challenge at times, teaching you to save at mini-games. Thankfully, the one-way trips posed by the breakable crates in the traditional three-dimensional Crash Bandicoot games are only present in the crate smash and crate step games. The mini-games range in difficulty from very easy to extremely hard, even within a level. The polar bear games take more practice than others, but are moderately leveled. The jetpack games are very easy, with little practice necessary. I beat the hardest level in arcade and achieved getting both the purple and silver levels. The helicopter games are really, really hard. They takes tons of patience. The sheep slaughter games are relatively easy, as long as you system is responsive, and you keep your eye out for black sheep. The bat flying/ rocket launcher game is pretty easy to beat, but getting all the boxes to achieve the necessary silver gem is a very hard chore. The weightlifting games are unnecessary to beat, but they are beatable up until the last one, which I could not beat while hitting the ‘A’ button with both index fingers alternatively. The crate smash and crate step games take some patience, but can be completed with some time. Freefalling is insanely easy early on, and pretty hard at the end, but beatable. The bosses aren’t very hard, they only represent slightly more advanced versions of the other mini-games, albeit with slightly different objectives. For example, the Tiny boss level was a variation on the tank game, the Nina boss level is a variation on the bear game, and the Ripto level is a variation on the bat game. A few of the boss levels are unique, like the Spyro level and the final boss. The Spyro battle is especially memorable, and I felt disappointed that it was not available in a harder version anywhere, though I think it’s cool to play on multiplayer.
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