(Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/16/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Crash Bandicoot: Warped
Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: SCEI
Genre(s): 3D Platformer
Platforms: PS1
Release Date: November 4, 1998
Judging from Warped’s premise, we’re already verging closer into the realm of ridiculousness. Another seamless segway between subsequent Crash Bandicoot entries sees our recurring main antagonist, Dr. Neo Cortex, yet again immediately plunging into a stroke of incidental fortune. Somehow, the crumbling collision of Cortex’s fallen space station has miraculously landed on the concealed burial site of Uka-Uka, Aku-Aku’s evil twin who sealed his bizarro kin away from civilization to keep him from wreaking havoc. Now that his entombment has been breached, he collaborates with Cortex on yet another escapade to gather all of the world’s crystals. One giant obstacle in achieving this goal is that Crash already has all of the crystals in his possession from the last title in the series, but this minor stipulation means nothing to the malevolent Uka Uka. Using a connection to an evil genius who dwarfs Cortex in intellect named Dr. N. Tropy, Cortex and his new detached, sinister partner in crime use a time machine to collect the crystals in their earliest incarnations. Feeling that there has been a disturbance in the force, Aku Aku frantically gathers Crash and Coco and leads them to the “Time Twisting Machine” to chase down his brother and Cortex and double their crystal collection. Not only is the plot wonderfully daft, but it holds the highest stakes for a Crash Bandicoot plot premise so far.
If the contextual hints of the plot were too subtle, the “warped” subtitle of Crash 3’s official title refers to a timewarp. The levels of the third Crash Bandicoot game are a cavalcade of areas that exploit the vast range of possibilities that come with a time travel theme. Essentially, how I’d describe it is Crash acting as a feral Carmen Sandiego, traveling throughout the space-time continuum and placing himself in the foreground of a plethora of notable time periods and the general geographical areas of where they are historically associated. However, Cortex’s goons with the goggles are already mucking up the historical timeline with their presence, so Crash running about doesn’t stick out like a sore, orange thumb quite as jarringly. Much of the silliness the game exudes comes from seeing the franchise’s familiar properties mixed with the supposedly tampered times across history. The dungeons and dragons fantasy tropes associated with medieval times are intermingled with Cortex’s henchmen larping as knights, ogres, and frog princes, and the overall presentation is reminiscent of something farcical like Shrek. Crash will scour the middle east to run along the sandy rooftops of the earliest human civilizations and go spelunking through the dimly lit catacombs of their pharoah’s voluminous resting places. All the while, the geeky lab guys will be donning burkas while attempting to pelt Crash with molotov cocktails. The prehistoric areas situated around the perimeter of a volcano are littered with the gargantuan lizards endemic to this antediluvian age, but Cortex’s men still roam around in the waters waiting to pull him into the drink. Besides the amusing adulteration of these periods with Crash Bandicoot elements, the array of level themes on display are both the most varied and eye-popping we’ve seen across the trilogy. Still, the levels overall still suffer from the same erratic theme inconsistencies as they did in the previous game. Plenty of medieval levels are featured outside the designated area where the warp pad’s backdrop is a series of wooden contraptions to signify that particular period, and the same goes for the theme for every subsequent wrap area afterwards. For some reason, all of the levels involving a futuristic metropolis are allocated to the final one with the appropriate backdrop. I realize this is a pedantic nitpick, but why do they bother offering a theme for the five levels when they keep refusing to uphold it?
I suppose for Crash 3’s case of not committing to the theme of a warp room is to make room for the assorted levels that do not involve the tried and true platform hopping that defines Crash Bandicoot’s core gameplay. Crash 3’s instances of sprucing up the series formula as a third entry is almost entitled to do is providing consistent deviations from the gameplay that the developer’s apparently thought we’ve grown tired of playing. Both previous Crash games had their token riding levels on a warthog and little Polar through humid jungles and between arctic mountains respectively, and Crash 3 also includes two instances of this type of rushing level on an animal not equipped with brakes. The developers felt like relegating Coco entirely to the background to chide her brother for being stupid from time to time was unfitting for a prominent secondary character, so they’ve tasked her with performing these kinds of levels to relieve Crash of the workload. On the back of her new little tiger friend, Pura, Coco storms across the perimeter of the Great Wall of China as it's being built, and the epic scale of the setting mixed with the multi-tracked design immediately makes it my favorite iteration of these kinds of levels. Coco also covers the two levels where she rides a jet ski around a rippling obstacle course filled to the brim with bombs to dodge. As for the titular character, Crash covers plenty of the non-platforming fare that Crash 3 provides in spades. A few instances involve motorcycle races on the cracked highway roads somewhere in the arid American west, with Crash wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses like he’s Dennis Hopper's character from Easy Rider. He’s not as cool-looking in this attire as he thinks. Crash also ascends to the sky to engage in bouts of dogfighting, with the bogey pilots shooting Crash as distractions from the objective of blasting the bigger planes out of the sky. The new scuba levels played entirely on a 2D axis incorporate a torpedo launcher that quickens Crash’s speed like a vehicle, but it’s entirely ancillary to Crash darting around vicious sea creatures and the electrical pipes in these watery trenches. I don’t find any of these breaks from the regular Crash Bandicoot programming to be tedious, nor are they mechanically flawed in any sort. Still, I’d rather the developers had conjured up another strand of platforming levels that fits the time travel theme more concretely. A Victorian era theme where Crash bats off Cortex’s goons wearing bowler hats in misty London back alleys, perhaps?
I’ll give the non-platforming oriented levels in Crash 3 some leeway because they are nothing but occasional distractions that are removed enough to exist on their own merits. However, another annoying facet of a third entry’s flowery features are ones that inflate the core gameplay that results in them ironically deflating it. Unfortunately, Crash 3 has infected the franchise’s core gameplay with this sort of practice. One might say that Crash is a simple character, and I’m not referring to his unimpressive cognitive ability. His uncomplicated arrangement of physical dexterity is perfectly apt for his platforming prowess, so every moment to moment maneuver needs to be calculated accurately. The second game decided to supplement Crash’s movement with a slide move, crawling, and body slam because his range of movement was perhaps too stringent, but it didn’t compromise the level of platforming skill needed from the player to be successful and keep the game engaging. Crash 3 augments Crash’s move pool with power ups that all accentuate his range of physicality extensively. Now, Crash can perform a double jump, spin for much longer, and add more oomph to his body slam to the point where it can bust open those grated crates. The moves added in Crash 2 were enough to hone Crash’s physicality to a degree of agreeability, but all of these extra capabilities almost course correct almost every mistake the player could possibly make. I piled on an exorbitant amount of lives in Crash 3 without ever exhausting them, and this is a game in the same series where I felt it necessary to save my game level by level in fear of probable failure. Did I mention that one of these upgrades is a wumpa fruit launcher that Crash can carefully aim at any enemy from a distance? I can’t think of a more egregious pace breaker in a fast-acting platformer that ensures the player never has to deal with any danger in the slightest.
The developer’s assertion for these upgrades is that they are given as incremental rewards for every milestone the player completes, which is clearing each level per area of the warp room hub. Oh, and defeating a boss that caps off the series of five levels so the player can progress onward to the next selection. Unlike the dichotomy usually seen between the difficulty of the levels and the ease of the bosses, I guess there is a complimentary synergy now that both are of relative ease. However, I’ve always given Crash’s bosses clemency because of the personality each boss exudes with plenty of creative distinctiveness between them, and the ones here are no exception. However, I’m a bit saddened that the returning Tiny Tiger is the only one that revels in the time travel plot device, becoming a Roman gladiator who challenges Crash to a duel in a crowded, roaring arena. Cortex’s rocket-plated N. Brio replacement., N. Gin, takes his second fight out of the confines of a space station out to the wrathful and boundless reaches of space, where Coco takes the stand to blast off the weaponized ligaments of N. Gin’s mech in what is my favorite boss fight of the trilogy. I also have to give commendations to the newcomer Dingodile, whose unpredictability in using his flamethrower genuinely threw me off a handful of times. The anti-father time of N. Trophy is an underutilized boss, for I believe the facilitator of the plot’s main conflict should be given higher precedence than the third boss of five. I suppose Uka Uka is still the most menacing of the bunch, but how does one go about fighting a mask? The developers have decided to end the short reign of terror from the penultimate foe by integrating a partnered duel with both Cortex and his new negative influence. While Crash dodges Cortex’s laser fire, Aku Aku is duking it out with his evil twin in the foreground, and the ferocity of their fighting at least makes for an overwhelming obstacle to contend with for a satisfying final battle.
Of course, the Crash series has always provided extra curricular content to accelerate the difficulty if the base requirements aren’t meeting the desired level of challenge. Breaking every crate to collect the gems still remains as a lofty completionist goal, but another stipulation is introduced in Crash 3 that locks the game’s true ending where Cortex and Uka Uka are sucked back into timeless oblivion with the time twisted machine and are humiliatingly infantilized. The last upgrade Crash receives upon defeating Cortex and Uka Uka are a peculiar pair of tennis shoes whose winged soles allow Crash to sprint on the field with the unmitigated velocity of Jesse Owens. Like the olympic runner, Crash mustn't stagger if he covets the gold, which can be achieved through the new time relics. Upon revisiting a level, a conspicuous yellow clock will be floating near the entrance, and colliding with it will begin a time trial where Crash must light a fire under his ass and run like the wind to the level’s end. He must also complete the level without dying, so there’s another factor that magnifies the challenge. Depending on how long the player takes to reach the goal will coincide with the color of relic they receive, which ranges from platinum for an outstanding achievement to an unsatisfactory blue that doesn’t even represent any position of real-life athletic accolades. To better ensure one’s triumphant success, normal crates will be transformed into yellow boxes with single digit numbers on them that signify how long the tricking clock will be frozen for when the player smashes them. Out of every aspect Crash 3 implements, the time trials are a stroke of brilliance that should invigorate the player even if they aren’t concerned with the completionist bonus of which they are affiliated.
Crash Bandicoot: Warped exemplifies all of the irritating aspects that usually come with a third entry to a series that it should serve as the textbook definition of the common trend. It’s far more extravagant with its plot and level designs like a third entry tends to be, but I welcomed this inevitability with open arms because my idea of Crash is a comical romp that should be outrageous. However, I’m still completely turned off when it commits to another habit of third entries, which is turning the once demanding gameplay we’ve come to anticipate into a process of holding the player’s hand with all of the quality-of-life features. Sure, the gems and the newly introduced time relics will put hair on any player’s chests, but I feel as if the challenge of the base game and that of the completionist route are so unbalanced that the game does little to prepare the player for the additional content. All the while, I’m sorry to say that slightly amusing me with Crash gallivanting through history doesn’t qualify as a laugh riot I had hoped for. I’m sorry for being such a fussy bitch, Crash Bandicoot.
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