Rotating sawblades are particularly annoying with this, because they will hurt Crash before he can even get close to them, and sometimes he'll just get stuck in them and suffer damage until you lose.

You can't even skip or quit these segments.Īnother thing that doesn't help making the game more enjoyable is all the bugs and the poor collision detection. You can try to break all the crates floating in the water, but you don't get anything useful out of it, so essentially, you just have to wait until time runs out to proceed. These are not only dull, but also completely pointless. To get to each new island, Crash must surf his way to it in pseudo-3D segments. It's also awkward that levels lock on certain checkpoints, meaning you sometimes can't backtrack if you want to. Because of this and the cramped screen, it's sometimes easy to get lost. This might seem like a fun idea at first, but most of the paths end up being dead ends filled with nothing but enemies or useless collectibles.

The first flaw in the level design is that there are lots of multiple paths. The game has 5 islands, each with its own badly designed levels. Not that you'd be forced to, what with enemies showing up everywhere and a notorious bug allowing you to replenish your creature's health by unjacking and jacking it again.īefore approaching a new island, you will be trapped in an unskippable 3D segment until time runs out. Each enemy has its own separate health bar and is better than Crash in every single way, so unless you absolutely must, never play as Crash. Bosses can also be jacked once you hit them enough times, but this isn't exactly useful, since the point in boss fights is to beat up your enemy. Each enemy has basic pummeling moves and a special attack. Like in the other versions, you can jack (take control of) your enemies once you beat them up, which is a requirement for getting past certain segments. Literally, because there's no way to block enemy attacks. Oh, and if you think the best defense is a good offense, then this game is for you. You can combine it with directions for slightly different attacks, but the difference is minimal and it does nothing to make the overabundance more bearable. Like in the other versions, combat is a major element in the game, and you do it all by mashing the B button repeatedly throughout the entire game. Crash feels awkward to control because he's slow and jumps much lower than usual (thankfully you do get the double jump early on). Upon playing the game, you'll quickly realize why it wasn't such a good idea to make the characters bigger than usual: now the screen feels cramped and you have a more limited perception of your surroundings, which becomes very annoying when you're trying to figure out where to go. The backgrounds look alright, although a bit generic and uninspired. The characters have smooth animation and they look less fuzzy than in previous games for the system, which can be mostly attributed to their considerably larger size. The usual platforming takes a backseat to melee combat.Īs usual for a Crash Bandicoot title on the Game Boy Advance, this is a side-scroller with pre-rendered graphics.

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