Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure

"Crash jumps from PSX... to GBA!"

Crash Bandicoot: The HUGE Adventure is basically a remake of Crash Bandicoot 2 or 3. The levels are a bit different, the bosses are in a different order, but the basic concept remains: go kick the crap out of Cortex before he takes over the world!

Story - Crash, Coco, and Aku Aku are kickin' back when Cortex and Uka Uka randomly decide to shrink the world. Okay. The world is now the size of a grapefruit, and everything on it is incredibly small. Time for Crash to get off his lazy rear, dig up the crystals, and save the world (again)! The story isn't anything new, it's just that Cortex has a different plan this time.
Rating: 6

Gameplay - The game has its ups and downs of difficulty. Some levels you can fly through blindfolded, while others will have you tearing your hair out. The controls are pretty simple; at first I thought it would be annoying since there were less buttons than a PSX controller. It's really not though. Anyway, you start off in your warp room/portal with five levels accessible in the beginning. After retrieving a crystal from each level, you go and kick the crap out of a boss and move onto the next one. The difference here is that there are only 20 crystals - meaning only 20 levels, 4 bosses, and 4 powers. They kicked out the Wumpa Fruit Cannon this time, which totally sucks. You can still get a gem from each level. Some levels have two gems, some levels have a gem and a colored gem. Most just have one gem. After completing a level, you can also go back and do a Time Trial mode to earn relics, but it's pretty hard without the power you earn from the last boss - even with that, it's hard! One more thing; you just run from left to right now. It's not bad at all though.
Rating:8

Audio/Video - Well, it's a GBA. You can't expect a stellar performance in the graphic department, but the graphics are pretty decent. All you need is a well-lit room and you're all set. The music is good, and you won't have any trouble hearing it.
Rating: 8

Replayability - You can probably squeeze a few play-throughs out of this before it gets boring. After a few months, you can come back to it.
Rating: 6

Buy or rent? - Definitely buy it. You can grab it for $29.99, and it's worth it. If you want to just try it out, go rent it, and you can probably beat it before you have to return it. But it's definitely worth it to buy it.

Story Rating: 6
Gameplay Rating:8
Audio/Video Rating:8
Replayability Rating: 6
Overall Rating: 8 (not averaged)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/18/02, Updated 05/18/02