#n-trance

Hey look! It's everyone's favourite boyband!

if anyone's interested in a bunch of Crash Character refs for drawing or whatever, I’ve uploaded them in a Dropbox you can find -> here

As excited I as I am for the new Crash Bandicoot game that was recently announced, I can’t helped but be confused at the digs against the Crash games released between Warped and the N-Sane Trilogy. 

I’m not necessarily referring to the joke in the trailer that has Crash and Coco say they only faced off against Dr. Cortex three times. The other Crash games made jokes that poked fun at the franchise as well. Although the joke and the way it’s presented in the trailer does seem to have a bit more, shall we say, “implied resentment” to it compared to something like “The Wrath of Cortex didn’t do as well as we hoped”.

I’m talking about how Crash fans seem to be celebrating that all Crash games after Warped are seemingly erased from canon, in a manner similar to the Munchkins singing “Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead!”.

It seems that, as far as the majority of Crash fans are concerned, every Crash game that was made post PS1 is a disgrace to the franchise. And in all fairness, I think the hatred towards some of these games is kind of overblown.

For me personally I enjoy games like Wrath of Cortex, Twinsanity, and the Gameboy Crash games just fine. Are they 10/10 masterpieces? No. But they are more than decent when taken on their own terms.

The disdain for Wrath of Cortex (WoC) from Crash fans is particularly confusing to me because unlike some other Crash games like Twinsanity and the Mutant series, WoC didn’t drastically change the formula in a way that would alienate certain longtime fans. 

There’s nothing inherently awful about WoC. The only major flaws with WoC are long load times, and some frustrating time relic trial stipulations (though almost every Crash game that features relics has this issue as well). Even then these issues don’t outright ruin the game, for me at least.

I know some people don’t like the vehicle segments in WoC, but outside of the submarine with a hitbox that’s too large for levels it’s featured in, I mostly enjoyed them, especially the Atlasphere.

Really WoC’s biggest crime is trying too hard to be like Crash 3 Warped, only for the final game to be not as good as it’s progenitor. Even then, as I said in my post about Paper Mario Color Splash, just because a game isn't as good as another game, that doesn’t mean the former game is inherently bad.

I understand if WoC was a disappointment to some of you but to say that the game is bad is like the Mega Man fanbase saying Mega Man 4 is terrible because it’s like Mega Man 2 and 3 only not as good. 

I’m just saying maybe some of the hatred from fans is a tad overblown considering what the game actually is. That goes for some of the other Crash games as well. Sure there are some mediocre Crash games and some that are just plain bad, But the era of Crash Bandicoot from 2001-2017 is not the wasteland of low quality titles that some fans make it out to be.

It does seem like the makers of Crash 4 It’s About Time seem to somewhat agree with me as it appears that there are some elements of the upcoming game that look like they were inspired by WoC.