Crash Twinsanity

"Why the heck fix something that isn't broken!?"

When the first Crash Bandicoot game was released, I thought it was brilliant, and I still do. Actually, I think it's one of the best 3D platformers ever, due to it's simple gameplay and many colorful levels. The next three Crash games, not counting Crash Bash or the racing games, were basically the same deal, except for the warp rooms and some new features in each new game. OK, I guess. Even though I think the earliest Crash games are the best, they were all fun to play. Crash Twinsanity, though, is a completely different story...

Our hero, Crash, lives on Insanity island together with his sister Coco. What they don't know is that our dear evil scientist Cortex is also on the island, and he's planning to defeat Crash once and for all. After paralyzing Coco, he dresses up as her (which looks very funny indeed) and lures Crash into a trap. But once again, Crash wins, and they both fall into a cave, where Cortex finds a power crystal. The very unlikely duo must cooperate to escape the cavern. On the outside, they meet two space birds, whose identity I will not reveal. These are the main villains of Crash Twinsanity.

Sounds good enough, eh? The problem lies not in the story, but in all the other categories. Here goes:

Story: 7/10
Good enough. It's a little more interesting than the earlier games, which is a plus. Not perfect, but not bad at all either. Some twists would have been good though, and it seems a little TOO random sometimes.

Graphics: 4/10
It's not that the graphics themselves are bad. In fact, they are sorta good. The real problem here is the huge amount of graphical glitches and bad animations. The cutscenes range from fair to absolutely horrible, and you'll more than often notice objects that aren't supposed to be there at all. Talking about cutscenes, there are annoyingly many cutscenes in the game, and the only ones you can skip are the very very few ones that are actually interesting...

Sound: 9/10
This is in my opinion the category where Twinsanity scores best, especially due to the fantastic voice acting for Cortex. The others are not as good as his, but still good and enjoyable. The other sounds are your everyday smacks, bangs and booms that fit into a platformer.

Music: 1/10
The horror... This is the nearly worst game music I've heard ever. Period. Only games that would score lower here are some NES games, but they couldn't have much better music, so they're excused. To use this terrible piece of crap as game music though is inexcusable. I seriously don't know how to describe it, just... Find a way to download the music or something if you wanna know what I mean...

Controls: 4/10
I've always thought that the Crash Bandicoot controls were top notch. This changed completely in Twinsanity, due to the fully 3D environment. This makes it necessary to include a certain feature called camera... Sure, there are no camera issues when running through straight-forward caves and such, but in certain places, the camera can be totally messed up. The other controls are basically the same, except they made some moves worse, like the slide jump. Instead of just giving you some extra jump height, it will make you do a long forward jump with absolutely no control. In short, this category could have been sooo much better.

Gameplay: 1/10
Man, this is just screwed. There are 16 levels in all, and since 4 of these are mere hub levels, you can't really say there are more than 12. Not a lot, eh? To compensate for this, some of these 12 real levels are painfully long and boring. Not hard at all, just way too long. I'm sick and tired of the stupid idea of having a must-go-through tutorial, especially when the game can be completed in 3-5 hours, not counting the high amount of unskipable cutscenes. Of course, there are "secrets" spread around the levels also, even the hubs. In each level there are six diamonds that unlocks different things when collected. Artwork, movies, cartoons, that sort of stuff. Some of these are way too obvious, while others are extremely annoying. I won't forget about one in the third level that if you miss it, you'll have to complete the whole level, go through the first and second level AGAIN and then try to get it one more time! "Yay"! Controlling Cortex is incredibly boring. Controlling Nina is almost fun, just too bad you get to control her one and a half time. Controlling Crash and Cortex together is boring too. The only really interesting type of level is snowboarding, especially the second one. Even the music isn't as bad as it usually is. Other than that, you're just running from place to place, wiping out bosses on the way. Speaking of which, only one of the eight bosses are challenging (and no, it's not the last boss).

Replayability:
Bigger than you'd expect, actually. This game is so short, you'll probably play it again just because you have to kill more time.

Conclusion:
Horribly long levels with music about as funky as someone scraping a plate with a fork, together with messy camera and pathetic enemies. I think that's a good description of Crash Twinsanity.

Rent/Buy?
If you ABSOLUTELY have to, go rent it. Do whatever the heck you want. I'm just telling you my own personal opinion. Only real tip I can give you is: think before you buy this game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/05