What is Crash Bandicoot? It was a platformer where you spin through boxes, but then it turned into a brawler that received much controversy. There were also cart racers and a Mario party edition.

Now like I said, the brawlers received much mixed opinion, but many people who played the first 3 games can confirm the Crash games are amazing, with their unique characters and plots, tight controls and difficult jumps, as well as good use of power-ups. However there was one platformer much poorer than the rest, and it was known as Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Now compared to other games, be them from the same franchise or not, this game is pretty dang terrible. Well, I kinda beat the game, let’s delve into this.

Now we start off with a bit of loading, yeah, the game loads for like half a minute every time you enter a new area or cutscene. As for the intro, we get some of the best graphics the playstation has to offer! And by playstation I mean playstation. Not ps2… the graphics suck!!! I mean look at other games on the ps2 like sonic games and jack and daxter. The cutscenes looks like something an N64 could make! And I didn’t know for a long time what other games were like, until I saw Crash 3 gameplay I thought THIS game was the standard! Well the plot is ok I guess. All the bosses from the last game are being scolded by UkaUka, the evil tribal mask, for their inability to stop Crash. Cortex reveals that he has a secret weapon he didn’t want to use for various reasons, but in order to activate its power he needs more energy. UkaUka then adds his own idea to the mix, unleashing the masks known as the elementals. The elementals caused worldwide damage which led to the ice age, and had to be sealed away with power crystals. So UkaUka will combine the power of the masks with Cortex’s weapon for the sole reason to destroy Crash and open the way for world domination.

So yeah, 4 masks of earth, water, fire, and air, 5 crystals each… 25 crystals! Wut? (o _ o) IDEK. So Crash has to travel around the world to collect crystals and seal the masks away and with the 5 leftover crystals… I dunno, stop world hunger? There are many game mechanics including flying vehicles, ball rolling, swimming, and robot mechs. I’m usually up for mechs and stuff, but some mechanics are incredibly broken. Aiming to shoot objects is very dis-orientating, ball rolling has realistic physics, but the levels aren’t even made to give you lenience with this. See, I want a person to play the final levels of other crash games. Then, I want them to play level ONE of this game. Count the difference between nitros in both levels. So here’s the deal, nitro blocks are the worst hazard you can run into. You touch them, you die. Well guess what? THERE’S OVER 9000!!! No other crash game has these many nitros in a level. It’s a very cheap way to add difficulty, and to add onto that the controls suck too. Other games are known for tight controls that make you feel in control of your every action. If you die, you feel like it’s your fault, not due to some bull crap you couldn’t stop. Well roller levels later in the game force you to inch along as you maneuver past every nitro in the way, and driving or chasing sections become trial and error as you run into nitros you couldn’t see beforehand and have to memorize their locations. Now a lot of complaints seem minor, but once you add them all up, you realize how bad it becomes. For everyone’s sake, let’s go over a ton of nitpicks back to back.

Every enemy is a reskin of the same guy. They don’t tell us the controls of new game mechanics, we figure out on our own or read the manual. Coco is playable, but she’s even worse than Crash. A special race level on a minecart can be won by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Submarine levels are WAY too common, and they have few checkpoints and hazards you can never see coming until they charge into you. Levels are WAY too long. It’s required to beat the time trials on EVERY LEVEL. Every time you get a power-up the levels become WAY easier as they don’t compensate the fact you can double jump now or shoot fruit. The things that the bosses say in between levels is never memorable, and more often than not really brief or unthreatening. The bosses from the last game appear as racing opponents or hazards. AND WAY TOO MANY NITROS. I cannot stress enough how stupidly easy the game would be and to make it unbelievably hard they just add insta-kills all over the ham place.

Now there’s all this fuss on Cortex’s weapon, what is it? Well anyone whose played a game coming after this one knows it as… Crunch! Yeah, guess everything went downhill once Crunch showed up eh? Crunch in the game only wants one thing, to beat you to a pulp. As the game goes on and during the final fight though, you realize that Cortex is mind-controlling him, making him want to kill you. Guess he just can’t have mutant bandicoots listen to him right? So the 5 bosses are all variants of Crunch, first is RokKo Crunch. You ride around in the ball and try and hit all the small rocks, turning all of them blue. When all are blue you take a third of Crunch’s health and add another rock. If Crunch hits you or hits a red rock into you, you take damage. Second is WaWa Crunch, and it’s one of the hardest bosses I’ve ever faced. I mentioned in my Childhood Bosses thread I only recently beat him right? You basically memorize each attack and avoid them, then hit him 4 times, but if you get hit JUST ONCE you start all over. It eventually wears you down, you reach a peak and then get worse at it. Then there’s PyRo Crunch, you run from Crunch to get to a water-shooting robot suit and then catch up to him and hose him down. Again, one-hit restarts, but it’s much easier than before. The last elemental form is umm, air mask guy Crunch. Forgot his name, could be LoLo but I’m not sure. This one is actually pretty fun, you fly around in a plane shooting Crunch’s weak spots while avoiding his projectiles. Fairly easy and a good relief from other parts of the game. Then the final boss, you vs. all the elementals and Cortex. Crunch activates elemental attacks that are easy to memorize but soon become very long and random. When AkuAku holds Crunch down you must shoot him with your gun, breaking the mind control and getting him to punch Cortex into the stage for you to spin into him.

Now if you beat this for the first time you get a quick message that in order to REALLY win you need to get the 5 gems in the secret levels which you unlock by beating ALL the time trials. Then beat the final boss again and as anyone would expect, Crunch becomes Crash’s friend only to become a stereotypical jive speaking brute in later games. So now that the review of the game is done, here’s my recap and input.

Like I said, the graphics suck for a ps2 game. There was a remake on the Xbox, but it just fixed the lighting and retextured the bandicoots. 3
Now the music in some areas, be them unnoticeable, are actually pretty nice and catchy once you hear the soundtrack on youtube or something. 8
I gave up on this game for a few years when I couldn’t beat the 2nd boss, and I’m sure as heck not gonna unlock the secret levels, I just saw them on youtube and they’re remakes of other levels. 2
The whole world crisis, mega-weapon Bandicoot, elemental mask thing is pretty cool. Eh, take a 6.
The game has a lot of reasons to play it again, too many to ever want to do them. Break all the boxes in a level, do a death run with even MORE nitros, freaking time trials, 7 for sure.
The game is difficult, but in a very cheap way. With bad aim, camera angles, controls, and FREAKING NITRO BLOCKS, it’s not a good Megaman kind of difficulty, more like a Sonic 06 kind where you feel it’s all on the developers. 8

Now if you’re up for a game that tests your patience, this is for you. I’d sure as hell recommend a previous Crash title, but if this is what you get it’s good for beating the game once and then burning it or something. Hey, there’s always that one game, be it buggy, disappointing, or different, in a good franchise.

I actually have never heard of this title before, but you are really convincing me that it's a title that's not worth knowing. Other than some detracted statements that loss focus on the review itself, this is a pretty decent review and it effectively tells me that this is a bad game in your opinion.