Crash Twinsanity

"A major dissapointment in every area, this franchise id now DOA"

Up until now I have been a staunch supporter of the "Crash Bandicoot" series. Even his last outing was a great game, save for the unbelievably loooong load times. Now, however, the series should finally be laid to rest. This rendition is inferior in every way imaginable as you will soon see.

GRAPHICS: 5/10 There is nothing wrong with them, they are decent enough, except that every "Crash" game before this one has looked better, even the first one on PSone. If there had not been any other games in the series to compare it to, I'd probably rate it a 6 or 7, but there are, and this should look way better than it does.

MUSIC/SOUND: 3/10 What were they thinking? Every game in the series until now has had some of the best music and sounds in the gaming community. Now, what we get, is some unbelievably bad music that will haunt you with its mediocrity.

CAMERA/CONTROL: 9/10 Unfortunately, saying that this category is the best thing in the game does not bode well for any game. The controls are spot on, not complicated to pull off, with a solid camera that almost never gets in the way.

GAME PLAY: 5/10 The game play is fun and solid, but only if you have never played a crash game before. There is almost nothing new here, but a lot is definitely missing. First let's deal with the idea of teaming up with the villain. Fighting each other while rolling around may sound good, but in the end it is just like the super monkey ball levels in the last game. All the other "twin" moves have been done before in far better games. Now let's talk about what is missing. For one thing the difficulty. This game is far easier than any other. You always start with an Aku Aku mask, for one thing, and for another, when you die you just start at the last save spot with 5 more men. There are no more hidden bonus parts to each level, no need to find and break every crate for 100%, no need to collect gems other than to unlock movies and stills, and no need to repeat levels at all; in fact, you can't. This time the game is just one long level, no hub, and no way to repeat levels to get what you missed; so if you finish and just missed one gem because once you passed it you could not go back to get it, you are going to have to replay the entire game. Without any incentive to collect anything, you can pass the first level in about 30 seconds. Then there are the things you can do to make the game last longer but are totally point less, like planting an acorn to get a tree that will give you five fruit.

VALUE: 2/10 I have always spent over 40 hours on every previous gaming trying for 100%. Since going for 100% this time is rather pointless, you can finish in 5-10 hours. If you do go for everything, you'll need a walk through just to make sure you do not move past the point of no return and have to replay the whole game, and then it might take 15 hours at best.

FINAL COMMENTS: At this time of year a lot of games that do not make it go down in price very quickly, unfortunately, "Crash" games sell, so DO NOT buy this game, a rental would be sufficient for anyone. I'm sure that undeservedly high sales will prompt another sequel, but for once, I'll be passing it by, and you should do the same.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/04