Game:

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (2001)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 33:17

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I discuss how I feel about Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, including my favorites and least favorites out of the levels, bosses, and music.

The gameplay is a mixed bag. The standard platforming levels seem as good as ever, but there are too few of them; this game REALLY overdid it with the vehicles and other gimmicks, and most of those aren't fun to use. None of them are truly terrible, but very few of them are actually good. They get especially bad when going for collectibles; several levels that aren't that bad just to play through become much worse when you're trying for a gem or Relic, and some levels that are already a bit on the annoying side become a nightmare. The time trials, in particular, bring out the worst in most of the vehicles, and the secret levels that you unlock with the Relics are, to be honest, not that great. Also, climbing in this game is excruciatingly slow for no good reason, and a couple of the gem paths are just a nuisance. The bosses are also a bit underwhelming overall; while the only one that really got on my nerves was the first one (and then, for tedium rather than difficulty), they could have been a bit better. On the plus side, there are no levels that require backtracking, which I certainly can't complain about after some of the frustrations that the split-path levels in Crash 2 and 3 brought.

The story and characters also weren't used to their full potential, I feel. I mean, I wasn't expecting anything from the story, but I feel like the elemental masks could have been much more interesting than they were. Crunch's dialogue is fine, though some of it seems to be kind of out of order because the fire elemental had originally been fought last. There isn't much done with the recurring characters either; they show up in the intro, but Tiny Tiger, Dingodile, and N. Tropy are reduced to glorified turrets in the game, and N. Gin doesn't appear afterward at all. Coco also didn't do much.

Now, where this game shines the most is with its soundtrack. There is a lot of good music here; some standouts include a lot of the themes for the space, factory, medieval, and Atlasphere levels (except Eskimo Roll, funny enough...in addition to being one of the worst levels in the game, it doesn't even have as catchy music as the other Atlasphere levels), as well as the third boss theme. I've included snippets of my top 10 music tracks, but overall, the soundtrack is very good, probably the best of any Crash game.

Overall, I think this game is underrated. I still basically consider it the definitive Crash Bandicoot 4 (and they should have put the number in the title like they did with Crash 2), and I think it's pretty comparable to Crash 3 in terms of what is good and bad about it. It might not be as good as Crash 2 or the remade version of 1, but it's still better than any game in the series that came after it. With that, though, it's time to bring this Let's Play to a close. See you next game!

- imamelia, a.k.a. TheMartianGeek

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