Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex review

I still laugh at the woah-meme don't @ me

During my autumn break I visited my dear cousin for five days. We both basically grew up with Crash Bandicoot and we still enjoy playing the games (CTR is the best one out there). One game we hadn't played yet was Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. So, our goal was to beat the game together in five days (only collecting all the crystals and beating the bosses) - and we succeeded!

Did we like the game, though? No!

The game was released in 2001 for Playstation 2 - so it should look better than any of the Playstation 1's Crash games, right? No. It looks hideous. An awful, rubbery mess with little to no emotion in all the character's faces. I guess we could blame the company that made this, which is not Bandicoot's original maker Naughty Dog. It's still funny how the PS1 versions are way more lively and expressive than this next generation's models. 

But the gameplay should be better compared to the original trilogy? No. It's awful too. The game is rather unforgiving and doesn't tell you what to do - it lets you figure out everything by yourself after learning from +20 deaths. The nitro crates explode much more easily comparing to the old games and the controls overall feel weird (I don't even know how I would describe them - slippery? Slimy? Way too sensitive?).

How about the level designs? Boring. It seems that they really did try to make something new and exciting levels but mostly they were rather easy or just annoying. We didn't mind the easiness but some people would maybe need more challenge (which the time trials and diamond challenges may give). Some of the enemies on the levels weren't a threat at all which was a bit ridiculous. The boss battles seemed to lack imagination, as well - having always the same character Crunch Bandicoot battling you, only with different powers each time.

This is both me and my cousin when it was our time to try out that annoying boss for the 40th time

I also need to point out that the ending is very, very, very disappointing and doesn't satisfy you after such a annoying experience. We didn't waste our time to get the 100% ending so we just watched it on YouTube - and let me say that a minute and 40 seconds of lame "extra content" would make more angry than satisfied after such accomplishments. 

So was there anything good about this game? To be honest I had to really, really forcefully dig up something positive from this. The ball stages were fresh and kinda fun to play. I was also happy to finally see Coco being playable in platform levels. I actually liked Crunch's design, it's very 2000's and I love that. Also, Mark Hamill voiced one of the characters which is very cool! Other than that, not many other positive things to say about it.

If you're really into Crash then I could recommend you to play it but I won't. Stay with the original games or the N Trilogy or try the newest Crash Bandicoot 4. The Wrath of Cortex might've been revolutionary for the 90's kids for having a new Crash game released for the PS2 back in 2001, but now it's so outdated that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

This is me playing Crash (I wish...).