I started planning this video when Crash 4 was first announced... it took me a while to finally make it. Let me know what games you'd like to see me talk about next!
Lego Star Wars, I think there is a lot to talk about considering all the other lego games and their mechanics (for example Lego Star Wars The Clone Wars and it's Base Building which was only used in that game)
I know 90% of why this game was panned. The level design only made up about 10%. What made people dislike the game so much were the original PS2 load times. This shit took like two minutes to load ONE level and took a minute nearly just to save. That is a LOT of downtime, especially for a kid with a set amount of game time back when I got this game in the early 00s. I'm sure that would be very frustrating to get this game day one and have to wait over 15 minutes in waiting times just to play 5 levels or so
Yeah those early ps2 games had really poor systems for saving and loading. I remember the worst was Rayman 2 Revolution. You had to manually save every single time you went to a new location/level it was so frustrating
@@AlrightThere I dunno some of them were pretty good, the jak and daxter and ratchet and clank games had autosaves, It was very much up to the competence of the developer. I hate when they made your multiplayer unlocks bound to the memory card so the 2nd player wouldnt be able to use any of the stuff youve unlocked. you would have to beat the game on another memory card and put it in the P2 port. I was broke and not keen to put my pocket change into an extra memory card.
5:34 it's actually possible to get the red gem in Crash 2 without entering the hidden level. It's difficult but you can get it from below by sliding, jumping, spinning and then a belly flop for some extra height
OK but to be devils advocate, I was genuinely awful at games as a kid. I was never able to beat most of the games I played or even make it more than a few levels in. But I was still able to at least make it to the final world in Wrath of Cortex as a stupid kid. If you start catering your game design to people who are somehow worse than THAT at games I think you're doing everyone a disservice.
Proper subtitles on youtube are so rare these days, thanks for going above and beyond! Wanted you to know I appreciate the effort it takes to put them in when most viewers won't use them anyway.
According to analytics, about 28% of my audience watches with subtitles turned on - it seems silly not to have proper subtitles considering how many people use them and how little time it takes to clean up the automatic captions TH-cam gives you.
@@PenguinInPyjamas I mean what else you can do, that means majority of the audience are definitely that good on English...i for myself have to use the captions (and as a YTber myself, I used it if I made videos that I think it needs to have one) since I'm not a native speaker.
@@bshays21 yea me to I appreciate anyone who takes the effort and time to make proper subtitles, which I freaking love without them. How am I gonna be able to watch TH-cam while eating subtitles
Don't forget the insane loading time for this game! I played this as a kid on ps2 and I remember joking about how long he was falling for every time you chose a level
The original PS2 version was thankfully the only version which had this issue. Gamecube, Xbox and the Platinum/Greatest Hits version on PS2 had much snappier load times.
@@PSNSackboy7789 Asides from the exclusive titles (which you obviously couldn't get anywhere else), the vast majority of third party games were at their worst on the PS2. The Gamecube and Xbox were the way to go most of the time lol
Funny how they specifically made the walkable nitro crates sit still instead of randomly jumping. Both showing that nitro crates are simply not made for this, and that any other nitro crate cant possibly be walked on because it might jump right as you touch it.
Well.. kinda? Nitro crates don't jump if they're suspended in the air, they only jump when they're touching the ground. I believe that was always the case in the original games too, at least it is in the N. Sane Trilogy, and is a bit strange when you notice how idle they are. Now I think about it that power up might have just been a joke about how uncanny floating idle Nitro crates appear.
My big problem with this game was the art and animations, it somehow looks worse than the ps1 games, like, even in the first game crash looks a lot more alive. Not even the gems look good despite being one of the easiest things to model.
The Naughty Dog trilogy used some really innovative technology to get the characters and levels looking so good on a PS1. Andy Gavin has a series of posts that talk about making Crash Bandicoot - they're a good read: all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
Honestly don’t get why Gamecube was the one to go solid while PlayStation 2 had semi transparent like Warped. It’s still weird that the load times between the two are DRASTICALLY different.
@@CyanLater Basically the original PS2 version had leftover data from a minigame that played during the loading screen, that ended up quickly deleted due to fears of copyright enfringement (Namco supposedly pulled a N Brio and held claim over loading screen minigames due to inventing them :P). It was done so eleventh hour however that leftover data made the loading screens chug, something they only managed to fix by the time of the ports and the Greatest Hits/Platinum rerelease, which has much shorter load times.
When you said "it sold well", my mind just drifted to that joke in twinsanity: "The check bounced? Well, to be honest, Wrath of Cortex didnt do so well as we hoped so-"
As a childhood owner of only this Crash game, I can tell you the worst part about it - the loading times. As a kid I would load up a level and then walk away from my console and find something to keep me busy for the next few minutes because the load times were so long I couldn’t just sit through them. It’s the only game I remember ever having this problem on any system I played.
Whoa yeah. After re-playing the first trilogy for the 4th time or so I realized I also still own The Wrath of Cortex and I couldn't stand the loading times. I have never played any game with loading times even close to that and it was even more unbearable in a time of open world games.
If they really didn't want to bring back the Speed Shoes until the fake ending, I think a better power-up than Sneak Shoes would be for Crash to have an air-dash ability similar to what Pixar's Bolt did, so you could double jump, and then "woosh" forward and land somewhere the Death Tornado couldn't reach; it's kind of like a "triple jump" in a way.
"It's a death by thousand paper cuts scenario, it's only when you start looking at the totality of these problems do you start to see the issue" -Cybershell
When i was a kid, I never really knew what the tippy-toe power up was suppose to do since i didn't read the instructions. Anytime i encountered rows of Nitro crates, i either double jump over them or take the hit and take advantage of the invincibility frames to remain invulnerable till i reach a safe platform.. 😅
I kind of feel like most players, especially veterans would naturally have done that anyway since for the previous 3 games, that's what you were supposed to do when you saw a line of Nitros. Ironically they took this element into Smash 4 with Ka-puna's bonus stages where she could slow down time enough to allow you to bounce on Nitros and escape them before they explode.... but.... I'll be honest I REALLY prefer them as obstacles you're not meant to touch...and even then I think I prefer tiptoeing over them over making them boppable but require ultra precision. Those masks only made the game HARDER (except the death tornado mask...the only one that was an actual power up and didn't turn the game into a puzzle/timing challenge like it wasn't difficult enough).
I've played WoC when I was a kid too and while I don't remember most of the game (heck, nothing past the 2nd/3rd world), in defense of the tip-toeing power-up, it COULD still be used for precision. What I'm going to say is purely hypothetical, so it may not be accurate to what you may find in WoC. Let's say you have a room of nitro crates and the ceiling has a hazard that could just kill you, and this is assuming that you're not *supposed* to jump, but instead are limited to REALLY small hops. Sure, you could clear out this room by making very small jumps and avoid nitros, but this would be a case where IF there's enough space, tip-toeing is a more viable and precise option. And mind you again, I haven't played this game in YEARS, so I have no idea if something that I described is in the game. The video does show a part of a level that you HAVE TO tip-toe across, but the scenario I proposed is one where the power-up is more viable, but not 100% necessary for the room. Then again, from what I remember of this game, there aren't many occasions to tip-toe between nitro crates, so what do I know :/
In my opinion the lack of explanation in wrath of cortex made the game more fun. I remember feeling accomplished as a kid when i found out how to beat a new level on my own.
The originals didn't explain anything either. You are just presented with a wall of crates you can't get past until you break them. It is teaching without teaching.
I was hoping for a Twinsanity remake to be released this year as tribute to the game being 20 years old, and improving the levels and lore. But sadly, Crash 4 not selling well might've put that on the shelf. Just imagine Caddy voicing the skunk going BACK AND FORTH and HE CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE for 20 YEARS!
I also liked the mutant games too. They're kind of easy to sh8t on, but I did enjoy them for trying something new. Alas they do suffer from a similar issue to Twinsanity for a casual player. the stages being WAY too long between checkpoints, but Twinsanity shifting to a more comical direction with the story telling really showed it's potential in the Mutant games which have some of the funniest cutscenes (and well animated in Mind over Mutant, even got Anime Crash at the end.) Plus the Mutants had cool designs. I guess it's safe to say though that the original trilogy just set the bar so high (even by modern standards) that the other games really can't be compared favorably, but they're not bad at all.
Man, I loved playing this game with my dad when he got the chance as a kid, there were SO many funny moments that became good memories. There were some flaws, but my child brain didn't notice them at the time. It was the best of the Crash games to me back then, I actually grew up playing Crash. Wish they'd remake this one like they did the others. Very good analysis video!
I always thought this game aswell as the two GBA crash games would've made a good second remake trilogy. Especially since Vicarious Visions did two of those games already and WOC would require small adjustments to be more in line with the feel of 2 and 3. I'd have even paid for it if it was just DLC ngl 😭
As a wrath of cortex speedrunner, the floaty jumps are the WORST parts of any run. Especially when your trying to get wr times, the jump physics can ruin any run in an instant.
That's still kinda bad. Considering that there was games after crash 1, that had coco in. Its still a regression of gameplay and leads to poor comparison between the characters.
@@arionell Agreed, somewhat. It's very odd to complain that it "plays into the stereotype that girls are somehow weaker than boys" (which is true, physically speaking, but not relevant for video games) instead of complaining about the fact that making a different playable character by taking away movement options is incredibly lazy. This is a *gameplay* review, gameplay should be front and center.
Arctic Antics was a rather demanding first level, wasn't it, especially due to being an infamous ice physics level. I guess I never noticed since I played the earlier games first. Maybe it was moved to the start later for some reason.
Twinsanity is pretty cool though, at least from what I remember. No idea if game design wise it wasn't as good as the first trilogy, but I thought it was super fun with a more focused plot and interesting redesigns, for example, while first trilogy Cortex was menacing, I just loved the twinsanity comedy take, specially on him!
As a kid I never thought this was overwhelming or too hard for an introductory level. This was my first crash game and I really enjoyed it. I played it when I was like 6 well after it came out tho.
The most disappointing thing about WoC was all the stuff previews mentioned that ended up not being in the game. I remember reading an issue of EGM, learning about stuff like mini-bosses, elemental-themed crates, and puzzle segments. It was supposed to be an upgrade over Warped (developed by Konami, no less), but ended up being more of the same with a bunch of technical issues.
I didn't know it was supposed to have all of that! Sounds like they pushed an unfinished game... Traveler's Tales was the developer I believe. Before they got into all the Lego games and renamed to TT games.
6:23 actually in the ps1 versions of Crash 2 and 3 when you spin the nitro exclamation crate it just makes the nitros not exist rather than exploding, this was changed in the N Sane versions to make them explode.
Honestly, i have to say that soundtrack on Crash The Wrath of Cortex is the best thing in the game, there are a couple of great masterpieces. Nice vid btw 🙌🏻
It may be not the best crash game or not even one of the best but I personally have nostalgia with It and love for some reason, and one of its strengths is its incredible soundtrack. Good video man.
I would say Crash 4 takes a lot of the major issues of 2 and Wrath (Replaying large segments) and makes it worse by hiding Crates in positions where you physically can not see them. Or replaying levels with a filter. Combined with trial and error rail sections you're better off sticking with the old games. It takes the worst aspects of past Crash games and makes them worse.
Same here. I actually have almost, if not all Crash games myself, yet I have been playing the original Warped mainly all these years… no, I have not completed It’s about time, nor Mind over mutant and Crash of the Titans, actually, those two I tried and hated them immediately. I think Twinsanity was the only one I found so bad it was funny… 🤣 I think ”it’s about time” I get the Twinsanity out from storage if I can find it and replay! Had a demo waaaay back in the day and purchased it later…
It's not dimension-hopping in Warped, it's time-warping. The title for It's About Time is tongue-in-cheek about how it's been a long time since there was a proper Crash game. No, the kart and party games are NOT proper Crash games.
I was gifted this game as a kid. The second boss introduced me to the concept of bad depth visualization & that was enough reason for me to hate the game. Never make players jump over 2D hazards that move toward them in an over-the-shoulder perspective in an otherwise 3D game. An 11-year-old will call you stupid for it.
That gem path shown at 8:49 was the hardest thing in the game for me. I died dozens of times over the course of an hour trying to complete that path. Seriously, I've had an easier time playing FromSoftware games.
In fairness, Fromsoft games have a completely different skillset from platformers, 3D or otherwise. It makes perfectly fine sense to be better at one than the other.
The whole video is just pointless excuses because he has nostalgia for the original crash trilogy growing up even though 3 was shit and he cries his eyes out when he remembers there's other games in the series@@nicholasseitler4997
Honestly suprised that these vids are not getting much views. I feel that they are expertly made and are on the level where they should be getting hundreds of thousands
Eh I mean they are quite impressive for a new creator but I wouldn't necessarily go that far, it is clear they are picked up by the algorithm and I think this creator could probably start to make it big if they uploaded more frequently.
9:28 "...it plays right into the stereotype that girls are somehow weaker than boys". Not that it should affect gameplay, but they are. It's true most of the time.
This was actually one of the first games I remember playing, I always needed help killing the water boss and until the point I could manage it on my own I would just delete my save and start from the beginning again. Now after playing the other games in the series and watching this I can see precisely why this game is seen as disappointing. Love the videos and I know you'll get a big break eventually, the pot of greed vid is only the beginning :P I also am really excited about the variety, ringing the bell for whatever comes next
The tiptoe power up even becomes obsolete as soon as you start unlocking the double jump, death tornado and even the wumpa Bazooka to… What they should have done with the tiptoe ability (or sneak shoes as it’s sometimes called) was include stealth levels or enemies that were either invincible or had a very specific weak spot that you had to work round to get to without being spotted…
The tiptoe would have been halfway useful if it let you sneak AROUND the crates rather than just on top, especially since you got in early in the game before those power ups. Basically a fun way to cheese around one of the biggest obstacles at the cost of speed.
What you probably missed by playing on an emulator are the horrifically long loading times before and AFTER every level like on the original PS2 back in 2001. I think the game was pretty fun, but that completely destroyed it for me.
For what its worth, the Greatest hits release, aswell as the eventual Gamecube and Xbox ports, fixed that issue. Though it's funny to think about it, I had a Jampack disc with a demo of this game that also experienced the load time issues present in the final release 😂 it was LONG engraved into the game apparently 💀💀💀
I really enjoyed this video, good work! I’m glad that someone else has pointed out the wonkiness of Wrath’s camera; it really did help to contribute to a noticeably mediocre gameplay experience when combined with the floaty jump physics, relatively slow movement speed, subpar run animation, and overly wide/sparse level design. Like, even as a kid I was well aware of how inferior Wrath was to the originals in almost every respect. Like…even the visuals were somehow worse lol
Thanks for watching! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Naughty Dog did some really clever stuff to get the original Crash trilogy to look so good - Andy Gavin's "Making Crash Bandicoot" posts are well worth a read if that sort of thing interests you: all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
I'm a 90s kid who grew up with the first 4 crash bandicoot games made by naughty dog on ps1 (not forgetting the excellent crash team racing). I was so disappointed by The Wrath of Cortex, it was a poor knock-off version of crash 3 with repetitive and boring levels, irritating music and terrible sound effects. A complete insult to the naughty dog crash bandicoot games.
9:18 I like how they handled coco, obviously she isn't as powerful as crash because she isn't the main character. It felt like she was handling the side ops which is interesting. I view it as that they are challenging you by making you play with the crash 1 moveset. This is especially great for the no death route in the china level where they give you an actual fun platforming challenge.
6:57 I'm pretty sure that the reason behind using only nitros at bonus levels is because nitro crates (when exploded by green steel box) doesn't break the nearby boxes, because the box only sends the command to break them, but doesn't load the entire level at the same time You can notice it on levels where wumpa fruits are near nitros, the nitro explodes but the wumpa doesn't flies
They could make it work by sending the same "break boxes" command to any non-nitro boxes in the bonus levels. This does introduce the possibility that players will get confused and think they have to go into the bonus level to break the non-nitro boxes though, so leaving them all nitro is still better to avoid confusion.
@@ColdNorth0628 It's a very flawed game but I feel like that's part of the charm. As a kid I didn't care whatsoever about how janky it could be. I genuinely loved that games. But honestly I loved Wrath of Cortex as well
9:32 Well it is correct, they're physically weaker than boys, doesn't mean they can't be strong and thats what the Sterotype misses. Women don't need to be stronger than men to be strong as they weren't biologically designed to deal with as physical challenges, so considering them lesser for it is dumb because like they weren't inatley made to excel there so why are you basing their value on that? anyway Basically Coco should've been unique to crash as she is a character like him, Maybe she's faster but spends less time on movements so has less distance, taking into the unientional Gender Sterotype as again yes Women are biologically different from, that uniqueness is what helps them and us come together to overcome challenges. Her Bazooka could be a gerade launcher instead, could assist with her stopping long range opponents as unlike crash, she can use it while Moving to make up for how she would rely more on her movemnetum to be kept than crash's standard consistent speed. Making her viable But not the same as she's a different person, However also show how capable she is in her unique traits.
Hot Take: Every single Crash game, including the original three, has exactly all of the same issues you have just brought up with this game and are also efforts in frustration.
I remember how difficult the original 3 games were. Especially the first 2. It was that bad on the 2nd game that my parents had to get a strategy guide for the game when I was 4 years old. 15 years later I gathered all gems and crystals with a 99% completion rate frustrated that I couldnt get to 100%. I can appreciate Cortex strikes back. Compared to the issues that you have pointed out the Wrath of Cortex felt too...easy. It's not a bad game. It's just that the other games gave me a better challenge. 1st game getting all bonus codes and completion level codes. 2nd game, getting 100% completion rate. 3rd game getting all platinum relics. There's not really anything special going for the Wrath of Cortex besides the level 3 ball level. One of the only few levels I'll replay any day.
9:35 It's not a stereotype, it's an objective fact, but in a video game you could give Coco something. Cream the Rabbit's first game was in Sonic Advance 2 and Cream was easy mode in that game. She was almost as fast as Sonic, could fly like Tails, and had a homing attack that made even the final boss a breeze. The difference between the two games is that Crash Bandicoot started being defined by difficulty on a gameplay level where Sonic Advance 2 ultimately wants you to breeze through the level and if playing Sonic made that task too hard you could play as Cream after unlocking her in the first boss zone. Coco isn't in the game as an easy mode for Crash Bandicoot, instead it's more challenge for a player to accomplish the same task but with less.
Great video, dude. Also, the same title issue of Crash 3 and Crash 4 can apply to CTR and CNK. One where cart racers challenge each other, so only the best one could challenge Nitros Oxide, to save the Earth - called Crash Team Racing. When other, where two teams got taken by Emperor Velo, to entertain his citizens with racing show, while those two teams challenged for faith of the Earth - called Crash Nitro Kart.
Hate to say to this buuuuut it's clearly on you not the games fall you can't be able to pay attention and that's when the games fun regardless how you feel about them and it's not really the game's problems if it were then why are they still bringing back gems and relics because now the challenging to get them and rewarding if they make it too easy it'll be just boring and besides the optional so you have to get all of them there's a crash fan it's clearly up to you if you want to get them all give me personally i got all of them don't know issues except for crash 1 that one was really hard to get them all but i took practice so they're sort of not that hard to get as for crash 3 and 4 uhhhhhhh no 4 i can understand buuuuuuut crash 3 and CTR not really especially 3 because that game is really easy especially with the gems which makes sense because i mean you have to worry about getting without saving and there's and lack hidden places to find the gems only but few and unless you get the color gems and the relics then yeah crash 3 is a really fun game when you come to collecting stuff i change your thos about them since the collectibles in all crash games are divided but you have to remember they're not going to always make them easy to get with some fine with because i make it too easy like wrath it was just boring and not the rewarding
I had recently been working on a playthrough for Wrath of Cortex, the wonky physics and overzealous camera angles alone have made that experience far more infuriating than it ever needed to be. It is quite surreal to think that Traveller's Tales had most of the template down for Crash Bandicoot, and even had a remarkably smooth looking engine for its jump to PlayStation 2, but all of their own quirky design choices get in the way of making it feel like a truly compelling follow-up to Warped.
The red gem path in banzai bonsai was literally the last thing i did in my first playthrough of the game. It felt so weird to get a power up on one random location in the game. Feels like they had the original five and kicked one out for a new one because they were forced to and just threw it in at a random location that had any challenge because it was still in the game and not that important. All the places where you need to use the sneaking power up feel forced and easily avoidable. As soon as you get the tornado spin and double jump combo you can skip every single instance where you could use sneaking.
Unlike the original trilogy, this one had numerous issues and was simply not fun to play. Infinite loading screens, poor controls, overly difficult levels, shallow level designs, goofy graphics, and, finally, a silly storyline.
I remember as a child being pretty disappointed with wrath of cortex but of course as a child I couldn't process or articulate why. It's decades later but this puts everything into context.
I just finished my first play through of this game and now that I’m done I don’t even want to go back to 100%. It’s not hard to 100%, but the frustration and annoyance that I would get from having to redo levels are figure things outto no avail because the game doesn’t tell me is not worth the stress. I’d have more fun trying to hundred percent twin sanity and I have.
This was my first crash game growing up and I never realized how annoying somethings were because I was young but when I replayed the game a little later. I realized something's are stupid in the game.
9:32 It's also bad since they didn't give her any new abilities in return :( Why force player to play as Crash with less abilities instead of playing Coco with her own set of abilities?
My guess is that so the levels are a hark back to Crash 1's gameplay design with more focus on precision platforming that the extra abilities dumbed down.
Coco walked so much slower than Crash. but the main problem of this game is the post game, the fact that you are required to collect all the relics (which is literally impossible in the water and "ball" levels) which unlock a new level area that is so ridiculous difficult it makes you never want to replay the game because you know its impossible to compete. and replay is the main factor for video game success, you want people to comeback and play again or tell their friends to play too. but here you have levels so difficult that players actually feel their souls ripped out of their bodys and put into a blender.
So, about the red gem in Snow Go: They fixed this in the remasters, but on the original PSX version of Crash 2, you could actually land in the metal jump crate and do a slide jump + spin + belly flop to be able to reach the gem without having to do the secret level. I've never looked up if anyone else knew about this, but I could always do it consistently. They did place the red gem a bit farther up on the n-sane trilogy to compensate, and honestly, good call lol. Obviously a new player wouldn't ever know about it at first glance but yeah, just pointing out, it can be done like that lmao
I'm gonna say the point of secrets of Crash 2 is to explore something unusual. The Red gem sticking out like that indicates there's a secret somewhere in the game, and it do exist if you noticed a discrepancies on Bear Down (It's intentionally made hard to miss), Which lead you to Secret Portal 1. This incentive you to go explore and found something that's sticking out like a sore thumb, which the Dev expect you to find really quickly on Air Crash with a neatly placed box and a random platform in the middle of nowhere with no enemy nor box placed. Thus lead you to Secret Portal 2, which is Snow Go. And the ride continues with hints such as dropping on the center of the map or having a chunk of land sticking out on an usually impossible hole to jump, so they expect you to go explore and finding something out of the ordinary. The only extremely random thing that they did are the Fake Nitros on Bee-Having, which is wtf? They only did this on Crash 2 since Crash 1 doesn't have any and Crash 3 are locked behind Relics
It's honestly kind of incredible the game is as decent as it is considering its extremely short development time (pushed out in little over 6 months by the Publisher). Twinsanity was likewise forced out far before being ready or polished in any aspect. Sometimes I wonder how they would have turned out if Traveler's Tales was given more time
6:24 are we sure about that? The crate in The Eel Deal in the middle of 4 Nitros doesn't get broken by the detonator. Crash Bandicoot 2 motto is "if it's not on screen, it gets de-loaded": the detonator doesn't actually blow up the deloaded Nitro crates, bc thay are, in fact, deloaded. It just deletes them. Those 8 crates adjacent to the nitros wouldn't get touched by the detonator That's why in (9) Crash Crush you cannot slide-spin too far ahead of the boulder, you have to wait for it to blow the nitros, otherwise they don't get counted and you'll miss the Gem for the Wrath of Cortex yes, even Level 1 shows it doesn't work anymore like it does in CB2, as the crates after the blue gem (8:12) get blown up by the nitros using the detonator at the main exit. Otherwise you couldn't get the gem :)
Ooh 19:19 is a hot take, I personally enjoyed Twinsanity the most out of any Crash game (even if it was a buggy mess). I won't argue about the other 2 though
The strangest thing was back then, games journalism had no language to describe what was wrong and couldn't identify these problems. Even gamers who were mostly kids then (lets be honest) couldn't describe it either. It just "felt" wrong. Identifying what game design works well and what doesn't is a monumental difference in the quality of a game but nobody seemed to care about it back then, long as the graphics looked better it got a better review score. We took our classic games that played amazing because of good game design for granted. It's strange that bad design seems to be all over modern games today which makes it easier to expose, but it was harder to talk about in the past.
@@JustaRandomDude1812 No directly. He added the Twinsanity cover at the end while expressing: "it hold up better that the other offerings of the time. Let's just say the golden age of Crash Bandicoot was definitely over"
I'm surprised Traveller's Tales even got enough work to survive long enough to discover the LEGO mines, when they only made like 2 good games before the LEGO stuff. Like who tf at Universal looked at the guys who made Rascal for PS1 and was like "yo we gotta get these guys to make a Crash game!"
As the last living Wrath Of Cortex defender; This game has issues, but I think it's still kinda underrated. The OT is still solid, I think the N Sane trilogy is actually a vast improvement, hot take, but Wrath of Cortex, Tag Team Racing and Twinsanity are games I think are cool and interesting enough that just throwing them out of canon was a mistake.
I think you took the coco thing way too close to heart, I've seen this happen with other characters in other franchises who get gimped and it happens to guys too, shit just happens Nvm, finished the video, dunking on Twinsanity invalidates any opinion you have
Gotta say though, one thing Wrath of Cortax has on point is the music. I could listen to Arctic Antics on loop forever. Such a bop! And the Warp room theme, while not as good as 2' (the original 2...the Insane Trilogy kind of nerfed the song a bit with the sound mixing emphasizing the wrong elements of the song) is still a nice step up from 3 having a more lively beat that fits the nature of the plot and stages you'll be going through.
Only complaint is the lack of recurring leitmotifs except the Warped theme (and even the remixes of that just repeat certain riffs over and over instead of the full song). I kinda prefer Bash and Crash 4's attempts to emulate Josh Mancell's style while maintaining the recurring themes, though Wrath of Cortex is quite fun as its own beast, similar to Twinsanity's acapella. Especially love Tsunami, Cortex Vortex, and Ice Station Bandicoot. Very atmospheric (fun fact: the same guys did the OST for Muppet Racemania and the original Toy Story video game). It was always an off put that the music didn't loop properly though. Only the XBox version fixed that bug.
"It plays right into the stereotype that girls are somehow weaker than boys" Well, I mean they are. Weaker levels of testosterone leading to weaker bone density, musculature and overall strength. It's not always the case, but in the vast majority of cases it is.
Also really. Coco is smarter than Crash by miles. It makes sense to even it out by making Coco weaker so Crash still adds a strength to the team, just the gameplay execution isn't really creative with it. Crash 4 had Coco and Tawna both smarter AND more physically sound than Crash and that just played into ANOTHER stereotype, that 'girls are better than boys in EVERYTHING'. :P
@@e-122psi3 Yeah. No one ever brings it up when it's the other way around and frankly I never cared. I don't even think the "Women are smarter than men" thing is statistically true either but it's also not something I would care about even if it were true. People nowadays tend to hear those things and register them as an insult to an entire gender rather than thinking "Well if that's the case then I'll be the exception". Everyone acts like you're boxing them in rather than just stating reality.
I remember playing this at my friend's house as a kid back when I didn't have a ps2, before I paid attention to developers etc and I immediately realised something was seriously off about this game. We immediately pivoted back to playing Tekken Tag that day
Really surprised by this video. Some really great analysis on game design and how small difference add up to knock a game down. Well done. You deserve a lot more attention for your content. Subbed.
That flying tornado boss had me raging as a kid, playing it for hours until I finally beat it and I don't even know if I ever found out about the separate hit boxes.
Dr. Cortex captures innocent Australian animals, uses Evolv-o-ray on them to turn them into super-strong humanoid (mostly) mutants, then brainwashes them to become his evil servants. The last part is a work in progress. Some mutants become intelligent, like Pinstripe Potoroo or Crunch, others stay dumb, like Crash or Ripper Roo. In the final showdown, Crash's bazooka and Aku Aku's voodoo magic helped bring Crunch to his senses, then he probably got angry at Dr. Cortex for abusing him, hence Crunch's fist to Cortex's face.
I grew up with this game and a copy of the first crash bandicoot on ps1. Replaying them years later and experiencing 2 and 3 for the first time leaves me with the extremely unpopular opinion that I would rather play wrath of cortex over the most frustrating game, crash 1.
This was the first Crash game I got as a kid, and I never knew about the no-death platforms taking you to the gems. I thought there was something later in the game that unlocked them like the yellow and red switch platforms in Mario, but never really liked the game enough to get very far. Which is crazy to me because I was 100%ing other games on the platform at the same age.
One thing about wrath of cortext I hate is from that point on the writing of the games went from, snarky clever 4th wall breaking humour to outright self hatred disguised as self awareness, I miss when crash un-ironically took its self somewhat seriously and not at the same time, crash 1 to 3 has an amazing balance of this.
What are you talking about? Wrath of cortex cutscenes are simple and funny, nothing complicated, you're making it into something it isn't sound like you have issues.
This was the first crash game I played, and while it's special for that reason, I also get a headache just watching this footage lol. So many times I just wanted to rage because of how annoying these levels are. I always blamed myself for whenever I died and just not being skilled enough, but it's really just a lot of bullshit most of the time and bad level design and gameplay mechanics. Platforming with the camera is awful especially when it comes to tight platforming on boxes over pits, and I always dreaded the water levels because of the submarine and how easy it was to die. Definitely a game that isn't easy to go back to. If I had known/played the original PS1 games as a kid, I probably would dislike this game even more tbh.
I started planning this video when Crash 4 was first announced... it took me a while to finally make it.
Let me know what games you'd like to see me talk about next!
Wow thats indeed a very long time, but it turned out well
Lego Star Wars, I think there is a lot to talk about considering all the other lego games and their mechanics (for example Lego Star Wars The Clone Wars and it's Base Building which was only used in that game)
Your pot of greed vid was incredible. As an MTG fan, I'd love to see vids about Magic. The Steven U vid was great too, cheers!
Play that game along time ago I hardly remember it
Crash 4
I know 90% of why this game was panned. The level design only made up about 10%. What made people dislike the game so much were the original PS2 load times. This shit took like two minutes to load ONE level and took a minute nearly just to save. That is a LOT of downtime, especially for a kid with a set amount of game time back when I got this game in the early 00s. I'm sure that would be very frustrating to get this game day one and have to wait over 15 minutes in waiting times just to play 5 levels or so
Yeah those early ps2 games had really poor systems for saving and loading. I remember the worst was Rayman 2 Revolution. You had to manually save every single time you went to a new location/level it was so frustrating
@@AlrightThere I dunno some of them were pretty good, the jak and daxter and ratchet and clank games had autosaves, It was very much up to the competence of the developer.
I hate when they made your multiplayer unlocks bound to the memory card so the 2nd player wouldnt be able to use any of the stuff youve unlocked. you would have to beat the game on another memory card and put it in the P2 port. I was broke and not keen to put my pocket change into an extra memory card.
@@H4NGM4NDVD yeah I remember that!
Do the game's default OPL settings help with the load times? My PS2 doesn't read CDs
I played on xbox and I don't remember the load times being bad at all but I was a small child at the time so I could be wrong
5:34 it's actually possible to get the red gem in Crash 2 without entering the hidden level. It's difficult but you can get it from below by sliding, jumping, spinning and then a belly flop for some extra height
Not me posting the exact same comment because i didnt bother to check if anybody else said the same hahaha
Never realized how clever the game design was in the first games for beginners
This sort of stuff is why I love TH-cam, people can explain things that if implemented correctly people don't even register.
Really good design is often easy to not notice.
That´s how clever game design it was
OK but to be devils advocate, I was genuinely awful at games as a kid. I was never able to beat most of the games I played or even make it more than a few levels in. But I was still able to at least make it to the final world in Wrath of Cortex as a stupid kid. If you start catering your game design to people who are somehow worse than THAT at games I think you're doing everyone a disservice.
As the saying, "Good design is often invisible. Bad one often stands out."
Proper subtitles on youtube are so rare these days, thanks for going above and beyond! Wanted you to know I appreciate the effort it takes to put them in when most viewers won't use them anyway.
According to analytics, about 28% of my audience watches with subtitles turned on - it seems silly not to have proper subtitles considering how many people use them and how little time it takes to clean up the automatic captions TH-cam gives you.
@@PenguinInPyjamas I mean what else you can do, that means majority of the audience are definitely that good on English...i for myself have to use the captions (and as a YTber myself, I used it if I made videos that I think it needs to have one) since I'm not a native speaker.
Yes same I use subtitles for everything. I just don't hear everything people are saying at all.
@@bshays21 yea me to I appreciate anyone who takes the effort and time to make proper subtitles, which I freaking love without them. How am I gonna be able to watch TH-cam while eating subtitles
@@PenguinInPyjamaspeople like you make the world a better place
Don't forget the insane loading time for this game! I played this as a kid on ps2 and I remember joking about how long he was falling for every time you chose a level
Agreed. The loading time alone sucked the fun out of the game for me and I didn't even get to the first boss before walking away.
the loading time is the ps2's fault especially if it is a phat ps2
The original PS2 version was thankfully the only version which had this issue. Gamecube, Xbox and the Platinum/Greatest Hits version on PS2 had much snappier load times.
@@iCABALi oh my God, hearing that makes me wish I had gotten this game on gamecube as a kid instead LOL
@@PSNSackboy7789 Asides from the exclusive titles (which you obviously couldn't get anywhere else), the vast majority of third party games were at their worst on the PS2. The Gamecube and Xbox were the way to go most of the time lol
Funny how they specifically made the walkable nitro crates sit still instead of randomly jumping. Both showing that nitro crates are simply not made for this, and that any other nitro crate cant possibly be walked on because it might jump right as you touch it.
That's an interesting little detail I didn't catch! Good eye!
Well.. kinda? Nitro crates don't jump if they're suspended in the air, they only jump when they're touching the ground. I believe that was always the case in the original games too, at least it is in the N. Sane Trilogy, and is a bit strange when you notice how idle they are. Now I think about it that power up might have just been a joke about how uncanny floating idle Nitro crates appear.
I remember being so disappointed and bored using it when I was a teenager.
Normal Nitros can't even be walked on if they don't jump. It's only the specifically programmed ones
My big problem with this game was the art and animations, it somehow looks worse than the ps1 games, like, even in the first game crash looks a lot more alive. Not even the gems look good despite being one of the easiest things to model.
The Naughty Dog trilogy used some really innovative technology to get the characters and levels looking so good on a PS1.
Andy Gavin has a series of posts that talk about making Crash Bandicoot - they're a good read: all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
Yeah the only good looking levels are those where crash is inside ball thingy
Honestly don’t get why Gamecube was the one to go solid while PlayStation 2 had semi transparent like Warped. It’s still weird that the load times between the two are DRASTICALLY different.
@@CyanLater Basically the original PS2 version had leftover data from a minigame that played during the loading screen, that ended up quickly deleted due to fears of copyright enfringement (Namco supposedly pulled a N Brio and held claim over loading screen minigames due to inventing them :P). It was done so eleventh hour however that leftover data made the loading screens chug, something they only managed to fix by the time of the ports and the Greatest Hits/Platinum rerelease, which has much shorter load times.
@@JspoonG Those levels are a slap in the face
When you said "it sold well", my mind just drifted to that joke in twinsanity: "The check bounced? Well, to be honest, Wrath of Cortex didnt do so well as we hoped so-"
"Fish?"
@@CertainlyCaroI smell burnt penguin from here
I assume he meant critically, not sales wise
Maybe they expected more. A little pretentious for what they delivered.
@@ramongiovaneIs it really that pretentious if they ended up making fun of their own shortcomings in a future game?
As a childhood owner of only this Crash game, I can tell you the worst part about it - the loading times. As a kid I would load up a level and then walk away from my console and find something to keep me busy for the next few minutes because the load times were so long I couldn’t just sit through them. It’s the only game I remember ever having this problem on any system I played.
I can tell you another game that has the same loading problem, Sonic 06. But that's a jar you don't want to open.
@@RenShinomiya121 Hahah, I’ve always loved Sonic but somehow I managed to miss that one growing up, I almost count myself lucky for that :P
@@RenShinomiya121 im sure you don't have to say it, everyone knows about sonic 06 let it goooo let it goooo
On GameCube I never had this issue actually. Definitely remember the loading times being atrocious when I played on my friend’s PS2
Whoa yeah. After re-playing the first trilogy for the 4th time or so I realized I also still own The Wrath of Cortex and I couldn't stand the loading times. I have never played any game with loading times even close to that and it was even more unbearable in a time of open world games.
If they really didn't want to bring back the Speed Shoes until the fake ending, I think a better power-up than Sneak Shoes would be for Crash to have an air-dash ability similar to what Pixar's Bolt did, so you could double jump, and then "woosh" forward and land somewhere the Death Tornado couldn't reach; it's kind of like a "triple jump" in a way.
"It's a death by thousand paper cuts scenario, it's only when you start looking at the totality of these problems do you start to see the issue" -Cybershell
One thing to mention about the red gem in 2 is that you could actually MISS and have to redo the hard level all over again.
When i was a kid, I never really knew what the tippy-toe power up was suppose to do since i didn't read the instructions. Anytime i encountered rows of Nitro crates, i either double jump over them or take the hit and take advantage of the invincibility frames to remain invulnerable till i reach a safe platform.. 😅
Same😂😂😂
I kind of feel like most players, especially veterans would naturally have done that anyway since for the previous 3 games, that's what you were supposed to do when you saw a line of Nitros. Ironically they took this element into Smash 4 with Ka-puna's bonus stages where she could slow down time enough to allow you to bounce on Nitros and escape them before they explode.... but.... I'll be honest I REALLY prefer them as obstacles you're not meant to touch...and even then I think I prefer tiptoeing over them over making them boppable but require ultra precision. Those masks only made the game HARDER (except the death tornado mask...the only one that was an actual power up and didn't turn the game into a puzzle/timing challenge like it wasn't difficult enough).
@@MarioMastarthe mask made the game all the more enjoyable and fun they add sm variety to the gameplay
I've played WoC when I was a kid too and while I don't remember most of the game (heck, nothing past the 2nd/3rd world), in defense of the tip-toeing power-up, it COULD still be used for precision.
What I'm going to say is purely hypothetical, so it may not be accurate to what you may find in WoC.
Let's say you have a room of nitro crates and the ceiling has a hazard that could just kill you, and this is assuming that you're not *supposed* to jump, but instead are limited to REALLY small hops. Sure, you could clear out this room by making very small jumps and avoid nitros, but this would be a case where IF there's enough space, tip-toeing is a more viable and precise option.
And mind you again, I haven't played this game in YEARS, so I have no idea if something that I described is in the game. The video does show a part of a level that you HAVE TO tip-toe across, but the scenario I proposed is one where the power-up is more viable, but not 100% necessary for the room.
Then again, from what I remember of this game, there aren't many occasions to tip-toe between nitro crates, so what do I know :/
0:59 this guy really pulled out the Star Wars trilogy joke in this day and age.
Eh it still works
It's timeless
In my opinion the lack of explanation in wrath of cortex made the game more fun. I remember feeling accomplished as a kid when i found out how to beat a new level on my own.
Could just be the nostalgia talking. This was like my favorite game ever when i was young.
Yeah. A lot of these complaints sound like a git gud problem. XD
The originals didn't explain anything either. You are just presented with a wall of crates you can't get past until you break them. It is teaching without teaching.
@@alan62036 except I don't think this is what the developers actually intended. In Fromsoft, the obtuseness is intentionally baked in.
19:18 - Hey, you take that back. _Twinsanity_ is freaking *amazing!*
_Even if it_ is _only_ half _of a game…_
Honestly curious how it would've turned out if they had the time and budget to finish it.
plus the game gave us the dark horse of Crash characters that is Evil Coco in the game's galleries.
I was hoping for a Twinsanity remake to be released this year as tribute to the game being 20 years old, and improving the levels and lore. But sadly, Crash 4 not selling well might've put that on the shelf. Just imagine Caddy voicing the skunk going BACK AND FORTH and HE CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE for 20 YEARS!
I also liked the mutant games too. They're kind of easy to sh8t on, but I did enjoy them for trying something new. Alas they do suffer from a similar issue to Twinsanity for a casual player. the stages being WAY too long between checkpoints, but Twinsanity shifting to a more comical direction with the story telling really showed it's potential in the Mutant games which have some of the funniest cutscenes (and well animated in Mind over Mutant, even got Anime Crash at the end.) Plus the Mutants had cool designs. I guess it's safe to say though that the original trilogy just set the bar so high (even by modern standards) that the other games really can't be compared favorably, but they're not bad at all.
My favorite crash game of all time! Wish they made a remake like nsane tri. 😢
Man, I loved playing this game with my dad when he got the chance as a kid, there were SO many funny moments that became good memories. There were some flaws, but my child brain didn't notice them at the time. It was the best of the Crash games to me back then, I actually grew up playing Crash. Wish they'd remake this one like they did the others. Very good analysis video!
me too, i can understand the critique but it makes me sad so many dislike this game, as a kid seeing this on the original xbox
I always thought this game aswell as the two GBA crash games would've made a good second remake trilogy. Especially since Vicarious Visions did two of those games already and WOC would require small adjustments to be more in line with the feel of 2 and 3. I'd have even paid for it if it was just DLC ngl 😭
Me too and I still love this game and musics ❤
As a wrath of cortex speedrunner, the floaty jumps are the WORST parts of any run. Especially when your trying to get wr times, the jump physics can ruin any run in an instant.
I saw Coco's limited moveset less as a stereotype and more as a throwback to Crash 1's very limited gameplay.
That's still kinda bad. Considering that there was games after crash 1, that had coco in. Its still a regression of gameplay and leads to poor comparison between the characters.
Yea he was SUPER stretching with that one. Kinda left the video with a bad taste...
@@arionell I was thinking the same thing, especially since girls are weaker than boys
@@arionell Agreed, somewhat. It's very odd to complain that it "plays into the stereotype that girls are somehow weaker than boys" (which is true, physically speaking, but not relevant for video games) instead of complaining about the fact that making a different playable character by taking away movement options is incredibly lazy. This is a *gameplay* review, gameplay should be front and center.
@@calsalitra4689 Yeah he made it sound like he believes Men arent generally stronger than women, which just made him sound dumb and/or ideological.
One thing we can all agree on, though… the soundtrack for the Wrath of Cortex was something wicked.
About to give it a listen now again
Arctic Antics was a rather demanding first level, wasn't it, especially due to being an infamous ice physics level. I guess I never noticed since I played the earlier games first. Maybe it was moved to the start later for some reason.
At that point I had already played Crash 2 so many times that level wasn't a problem to me
I think it is an excellent first level
@@pharohcharnes It's definitelly a level made thinking of players that already had some Crash Bandicoot experience.
@@pharohcharnes I admit I still find it way more forgiving for a casual player than nearly anything in Crash 4.
Twinsanity is pretty cool though, at least from what I remember.
No idea if game design wise it wasn't as good as the first trilogy, but I thought it was super fun with a more focused plot and interesting redesigns, for example, while first trilogy Cortex was menacing, I just loved the twinsanity comedy take, specially on him!
I replayed it recently and it's still very good. If you have the opportunity to play on an emulator to set it to HD, it's even better.
Fun game and it was hilarious. I think making cortex a big dope for once was awesome and his daughter/ niece was a cool addition to the mythos
the level design is a big downgrade and gameplay is mid, its still a fun game tho, but it has some really boring parts.
Twinsanity is right behind crash 4 as the best crash game that wasn't made by naughty dog
"It sold well"
Cortex in Twinsanity: "Wrath of Cortex didn't do as well as we hoped"
So what is it, then? Hmm?
I would believe cortex, it came straight from the developers
The Wrath of Cortex sold more than Twinsanity, though, if I remember correctly.
It sold well, but not as well as they hoped. Simple as that.
It sold well, but not as well as expected compared to the previous game.
Words are hard, don't worry you'll get it
It apparently sold better than CTR according to the GDC 2021 Crash 4 presentation.
As a kid I never thought this was overwhelming or too hard for an introductory level. This was my first crash game and I really enjoyed it. I played it when I was like 6 well after it came out tho.
The most disappointing thing about WoC was all the stuff previews mentioned that ended up not being in the game. I remember reading an issue of EGM, learning about stuff like mini-bosses, elemental-themed crates, and puzzle segments. It was supposed to be an upgrade over Warped (developed by Konami, no less), but ended up being more of the same with a bunch of technical issues.
Konami were just the publisher
I didn't know it was supposed to have all of that! Sounds like they pushed an unfinished game... Traveler's Tales was the developer I believe. Before they got into all the Lego games and renamed to TT games.
6:23 actually in the ps1 versions of Crash 2 and 3 when you spin the nitro exclamation crate it just makes the nitros not exist rather than exploding, this was changed in the N Sane versions to make them explode.
Honestly, i have to say that soundtrack on Crash The Wrath of Cortex is the best thing in the game, there are a couple of great masterpieces. Nice vid btw 🙌🏻
Yeah the music in this game is great, lots of memorable tracks
They may have not had the best foot forward elsewhere but the sound track is a banger
I think all Crash soundtracks are fantastic, but the wrath of cortex takes the cake by a long shot
A couple? The whole soundtrack is great. If only the game could've lived up to it.
@AtlusAngelQ Same for Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the rescue. That game has a great soundtrack.
It may be not the best crash game or not even one of the best but I personally have nostalgia with It and love for some reason, and one of its strengths is its incredible soundtrack. Good video man.
I would say Crash 4 takes a lot of the major issues of 2 and Wrath (Replaying large segments) and makes it worse by hiding Crates in positions where you physically can not see them. Or replaying levels with a filter. Combined with trial and error rail sections you're better off sticking with the old games.
It takes the worst aspects of past Crash games and makes them worse.
Agree. I recently got crash 4 and did not care for it much
Same here. I actually have almost, if not all Crash games myself, yet I have been playing the original Warped mainly all these years… no, I have not completed It’s about time, nor Mind over mutant and Crash of the Titans, actually, those two I tried and hated them immediately. I think Twinsanity was the only one I found so bad it was funny… 🤣 I think ”it’s about time” I get the Twinsanity out from storage if I can find it and replay! Had a demo waaaay back in the day and purchased it later…
ignore all side content and it's almost a great game. if only you could remove evil tawna and her broken ass uncharted gamepaly
@@incaseofimportantnegotiations I bet there's a speedrun trick for that
Crash 4 was fucking terrible toys for big destroyed it
It's not dimension-hopping in Warped, it's time-warping. The title for It's About Time is tongue-in-cheek about how it's been a long time since there was a proper Crash game.
No, the kart and party games are NOT proper Crash games.
I like how everyone is calling the human enemies scientists, while they are actually called Lab Assistants
Correction, they're called motherfucker.obj
ssssssssssssssssame thing?
@@knuclear200x except they are robots
@@cheatsykoopa98 sssssssssssssssssstill the same thing?
I like how everyone is calling the human enemies Lab Assistants, while they are actually called obj_motherfuckers
I was gifted this game as a kid. The second boss introduced me to the concept of bad depth visualization & that was enough reason for me to hate the game. Never make players jump over 2D hazards that move toward them in an over-the-shoulder perspective in an otherwise 3D game. An 11-year-old will call you stupid for it.
If the camera showed everything from the side for that fight, it would be so much more playable.
@@ruschcoil7282 Yeah, it was such a weird choice to not do that.
That gem path shown at 8:49 was the hardest thing in the game for me. I died dozens of times over the course of an hour trying to complete that path.
Seriously, I've had an easier time playing FromSoftware games.
In fairness, Fromsoft games have a completely different skillset from platformers, 3D or otherwise. It makes perfectly fine sense to be better at one than the other.
@@webbowser8834 True. It just thought it was an amusing analogy, considering FromSoft's reputation for brutally challenging games.
Elden Ring: *Puts 100 Nitro crates on your path*
My ass when you can hop on the zero death path so it doesnt despawn die hit the detonator and have zero nitro crates in your death path
It's a fair challenge though, and it is fun
9:30 they are...?
Such a lame comment by him.
The whole video is just pointless excuses because he has nostalgia for the original crash trilogy growing up even though 3 was shit and he cries his eyes out when he remembers there's other games in the series@@nicholasseitler4997
Honestly suprised that these vids are not getting much views. I feel that they are expertly made and are on the level where they should be getting hundreds of thousands
I'm glad you're enjoying them!
Eh I mean they are quite impressive for a new creator but I wouldn't necessarily go that far, it is clear they are picked up by the algorithm and I think this creator could probably start to make it big if they uploaded more frequently.
@@PenguinInPyjamas yeah like how do you only have a few thousand subs? This is quality content! I hope you'll continue to make more
the algorithm giveth and the algorithm taketh away
@@theblode1337 honestly surprised that your comments doesn't have thousands of likes, I feel it is expertly made
9:28 "...it plays right into the stereotype that girls are somehow weaker than boys". Not that it should affect gameplay, but they are. It's true most of the time.
Precisely.
This was actually one of the first games I remember playing, I always needed help killing the water boss and until the point I could manage it on my own I would just delete my save and start from the beginning again.
Now after playing the other games in the series and watching this I can see precisely why this game is seen as disappointing. Love the videos and I know you'll get a big break eventually, the pot of greed vid is only the beginning :P I also am really excited about the variety, ringing the bell for whatever comes next
Same, but nobody would help and i never beat that boss
The water boss? Who is that?
The worst part of this game was having the same boss fought over and over, instead of the classic villains from former games
The tiptoe power up even becomes obsolete as soon as you start unlocking the double jump, death tornado and even the wumpa Bazooka to…
What they should have done with the tiptoe ability (or sneak shoes as it’s sometimes called) was include stealth levels or enemies that were either invincible or had a very specific weak spot that you had to work round to get to without being spotted…
The tiptoe would have been halfway useful if it let you sneak AROUND the crates rather than just on top, especially since you got in early in the game before those power ups. Basically a fun way to cheese around one of the biggest obstacles at the cost of speed.
Coco gets a spaceship level, a snowboard level and I think she has a scooter. She does have some unique levels
What you probably missed by playing on an emulator are the horrifically long loading times before and AFTER every level like on the original PS2 back in 2001. I think the game was pretty fun, but that completely destroyed it for me.
For what its worth, the Greatest hits release, aswell as the eventual Gamecube and Xbox ports, fixed that issue. Though it's funny to think about it, I had a Jampack disc with a demo of this game that also experienced the load time issues present in the final release 😂 it was LONG engraved into the game apparently 💀💀💀
But Crash 4 is soooooooo frustrating with their crates placement !
I wasn't even THAT frustrated with Wrath of Cortex in comparison !
I really enjoyed this video, good work! I’m glad that someone else has pointed out the wonkiness of Wrath’s camera; it really did help to contribute to a noticeably mediocre gameplay experience when combined with the floaty jump physics, relatively slow movement speed, subpar run animation, and overly wide/sparse level design. Like, even as a kid I was well aware of how inferior Wrath was to the originals in almost every respect. Like…even the visuals were somehow worse lol
Thanks for watching! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Naughty Dog did some really clever stuff to get the original Crash trilogy to look so good - Andy Gavin's "Making Crash Bandicoot" posts are well worth a read if that sort of thing interests you: all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
I'm a 90s kid who grew up with the first 4 crash bandicoot games made by naughty dog on ps1 (not forgetting the excellent crash team racing).
I was so disappointed by The Wrath of Cortex, it was a poor knock-off version of crash 3 with repetitive and boring levels, irritating music and terrible sound effects. A complete insult to the naughty dog crash bandicoot games.
"but it holds up better than the other offerings of the time"
*shows twins*
man talk about a hot take
Flaming
twins was way better then this even in its unfinished state
9:18 I like how they handled coco, obviously she isn't as powerful as crash because she isn't the main character. It felt like she was handling the side ops which is interesting. I view it as that they are challenging you by making you play with the crash 1 moveset. This is especially great for the no death route in the china level where they give you an actual fun platforming challenge.
6:57 I'm pretty sure that the reason behind using only nitros at bonus levels is because nitro crates (when exploded by green steel box) doesn't break the nearby boxes, because the box only sends the command to break them, but doesn't load the entire level at the same time
You can notice it on levels where wumpa fruits are near nitros, the nitro explodes but the wumpa doesn't flies
They could make it work by sending the same "break boxes" command to any non-nitro boxes in the bonus levels. This does introduce the possibility that players will get confused and think they have to go into the bonus level to break the non-nitro boxes though, so leaving them all nitro is still better to avoid confusion.
Playing The Wrath of Cortex and Twinsanity was the most rage inducing shit I've ever experienced when I was a kid.
Hey Twinsanity is a classic.
It's my favourite Crash game ever
Twinsanity is so tragic cause it shows its potential and has hella flaws. i love it
@@ColdNorth0628 It's a very flawed game but I feel like that's part of the charm. As a kid I didn't care whatsoever about how janky it could be. I genuinely loved that games. But honestly I loved Wrath of Cortex as well
the personality it has carries the whole game
Ong this game was soo good I loved playing it then and still do now
9:32 Well it is correct, they're physically weaker than boys, doesn't mean they can't be strong and thats what the Sterotype misses. Women don't need to be stronger than men to be strong as they weren't biologically designed to deal with as physical challenges, so considering them lesser for it is dumb because like they weren't inatley made to excel there so why are you basing their value on that?
anyway Basically Coco should've been unique to crash as she is a character like him, Maybe she's faster but spends less time on movements so has less distance, taking into the unientional Gender Sterotype as again yes Women are biologically different from, that uniqueness is what helps them and us come together to overcome challenges.
Her Bazooka could be a gerade launcher instead, could assist with her stopping long range opponents as unlike crash, she can use it while Moving to make up for how she would rely more on her movemnetum to be kept than crash's standard consistent speed.
Making her viable But not the same as she's a different person, However also show how capable she is in her unique traits.
13:00 The same power-ups are obtainable in CB4 but WITH Sneaky Shoes being an EXTRA one
Hot Take: Every single Crash game, including the original three, has exactly all of the same issues you have just brought up with this game and are also efforts in frustration.
THANK YOU
I remember how difficult the original 3 games were. Especially the first 2. It was that bad on the 2nd game that my parents had to get a strategy guide for the game when I was 4 years old. 15 years later I gathered all gems and crystals with a 99% completion rate frustrated that I couldnt get to 100%. I can appreciate Cortex strikes back.
Compared to the issues that you have pointed out the Wrath of Cortex felt too...easy. It's not a bad game. It's just that the other games gave me a better challenge. 1st game getting all bonus codes and completion level codes. 2nd game, getting 100% completion rate. 3rd game getting all platinum relics. There's not really anything special going for the Wrath of Cortex besides the level 3 ball level. One of the only few levels I'll replay any day.
9:35 It's not a stereotype, it's an objective fact, but in a video game you could give Coco something. Cream the Rabbit's first game was in Sonic Advance 2 and Cream was easy mode in that game. She was almost as fast as Sonic, could fly like Tails, and had a homing attack that made even the final boss a breeze.
The difference between the two games is that Crash Bandicoot started being defined by difficulty on a gameplay level where Sonic Advance 2 ultimately wants you to breeze through the level and if playing Sonic made that task too hard you could play as Cream after unlocking her in the first boss zone.
Coco isn't in the game as an easy mode for Crash Bandicoot, instead it's more challenge for a player to accomplish the same task but with less.
Great video, dude. Also, the same title issue of Crash 3 and Crash 4 can apply to CTR and CNK. One where cart racers challenge each other, so only the best one could challenge Nitros Oxide, to save the Earth - called Crash Team Racing. When other, where two teams got taken by Emperor Velo, to entertain his citizens with racing show, while those two teams challenged for faith of the Earth - called Crash Nitro Kart.
Thanks for watching!
Hate to say to this buuuuut it's clearly on you not the games fall you can't be able to pay attention and that's when the games fun regardless how you feel about them and it's not really the game's problems if it were then why are they still bringing back gems and relics because now the challenging to get them and rewarding if they make it too easy it'll be just boring and besides the optional so you have to get all of them there's a crash fan it's clearly up to you if you want to get them all give me personally i got all of them don't know issues except for crash 1 that one was really hard to get them all but i took practice so they're sort of not that hard to get as for crash 3 and 4 uhhhhhhh no 4 i can understand buuuuuuut crash 3 and CTR not really especially 3 because that game is really easy especially with the gems which makes sense because i mean you have to worry about getting without saving and there's and lack hidden places to find the gems only but few and unless you get the color gems and the relics then yeah crash 3 is a really fun game when you come to collecting stuff i change your thos about them since the collectibles in all crash games are divided but you have to remember they're not going to always make them easy to get with some fine with because i make it too easy like wrath it was just boring and not the rewarding
@@raphaelbrown6314 wtf
@@raphaelbrown6314 ?
@raphaelbrown6314 Congrats... your comment has given me a headache
I had recently been working on a playthrough for Wrath of Cortex, the wonky physics and overzealous camera angles alone have made that experience far more infuriating than it ever needed to be. It is quite surreal to think that Traveller's Tales had most of the template down for Crash Bandicoot, and even had a remarkably smooth looking engine for its jump to PlayStation 2, but all of their own quirky design choices get in the way of making it feel like a truly compelling follow-up to Warped.
The red gem path in banzai bonsai was literally the last thing i did in my first playthrough of the game. It felt so weird to get a power up on one random location in the game. Feels like they had the original five and kicked one out for a new one because they were forced to and just threw it in at a random location that had any challenge because it was still in the game and not that important. All the places where you need to use the sneaking power up feel forced and easily avoidable. As soon as you get the tornado spin and double jump combo you can skip every single instance where you could use sneaking.
Unlike the original trilogy, this one had numerous issues and was simply not fun to play.
Infinite loading screens, poor controls, overly difficult levels, shallow level designs, goofy graphics, and, finally, a silly storyline.
I remember as a child being pretty disappointed with wrath of cortex but of course as a child I couldn't process or articulate why. It's decades later but this puts everything into context.
I just finished my first play through of this game and now that I’m done I don’t even want to go back to 100%. It’s not hard to 100%, but the frustration and annoyance that I would get from having to redo levels are figure things outto no avail because the game doesn’t tell me is not worth the stress. I’d have more fun trying to hundred percent twin sanity and I have.
This was my first crash game growing up and I never realized how annoying somethings were because I was young but when I replayed the game a little later. I realized something's are stupid in the game.
Wrath of Cortex and Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly feel more like mediocre DLC for their predecessors than sequels.
Enter the dragonfly isn't even a finished game either.
Only thing good about those 2 games is that they run in 60fps. Well, Spyro attempts to hit 60 lol
13:32 it's actually worse. Those nitro crates are *specifically* designed to be walk-onable. The rest will explode on contact anyway.
9:32 It's also bad since they didn't give her any new abilities in return :( Why force player to play as Crash with less abilities instead of playing Coco with her own set of abilities?
My guess is that so the levels are a hark back to Crash 1's gameplay design with more focus on precision platforming that the extra abilities dumbed down.
I would love to hear your thoughts on Crash 4.
Is it any good?
Coco walked so much slower than Crash. but the main problem of this game is the post game, the fact that you are required to collect all the relics (which is literally impossible in the water and "ball" levels) which unlock a new level area that is so ridiculous difficult it makes you never want to replay the game because you know its impossible to compete. and replay is the main factor for video game success, you want people to comeback and play again or tell their friends to play too. but here you have levels so difficult that players actually feel their souls ripped out of their bodys and put into a blender.
So, about the red gem in Snow Go:
They fixed this in the remasters, but on the original PSX version of Crash 2, you could actually land in the metal jump crate and do a slide jump + spin + belly flop to be able to reach the gem without having to do the secret level. I've never looked up if anyone else knew about this, but I could always do it consistently. They did place the red gem a bit farther up on the n-sane trilogy to compensate, and honestly, good call lol.
Obviously a new player wouldn't ever know about it at first glance but yeah, just pointing out, it can be done like that lmao
I'm gonna say the point of secrets of Crash 2 is to explore something unusual. The Red gem sticking out like that indicates there's a secret somewhere in the game, and it do exist if you noticed a discrepancies on Bear Down (It's intentionally made hard to miss), Which lead you to Secret Portal 1.
This incentive you to go explore and found something that's sticking out like a sore thumb, which the Dev expect you to find really quickly on Air Crash with a neatly placed box and a random platform in the middle of nowhere with no enemy nor box placed. Thus lead you to Secret Portal 2, which is Snow Go.
And the ride continues with hints such as dropping on the center of the map or having a chunk of land sticking out on an usually impossible hole to jump, so they expect you to go explore and finding something out of the ordinary. The only extremely random thing that they did are the Fake Nitros on Bee-Having, which is wtf?
They only did this on Crash 2 since Crash 1 doesn't have any and Crash 3 are locked behind Relics
3:20 Except that isn't the first time. The first time is in secret route in Turtle Woods. Unless player hasn't figured the belly flop by then
It's honestly kind of incredible the game is as decent as it is considering its extremely short development time (pushed out in little over 6 months by the Publisher). Twinsanity was likewise forced out far before being ready or polished in any aspect. Sometimes I wonder how they would have turned out if Traveler's Tales was given more time
Come to think of it, since both games were unfinished,I wonder is that why they were let go from the Crash series
Even as a kid Wrath of Cortex felt ... a little bit underwhelming.
09:57 I feel almost physical pain to see my memories being distorted by how they envisioned Cortex and his role in the franchise
6:24 are we sure about that? The crate in The Eel Deal in the middle of 4 Nitros doesn't get broken by the detonator. Crash Bandicoot 2 motto is "if it's not on screen, it gets de-loaded": the detonator doesn't actually blow up the deloaded Nitro crates, bc thay are, in fact, deloaded. It just deletes them. Those 8 crates adjacent to the nitros wouldn't get touched by the detonator
That's why in (9) Crash Crush you cannot slide-spin too far ahead of the boulder, you have to wait for it to blow the nitros, otherwise they don't get counted and you'll miss the Gem
for the Wrath of Cortex yes, even Level 1 shows it doesn't work anymore like it does in CB2, as the crates after the blue gem (8:12) get blown up by the nitros using the detonator at the main exit. Otherwise you couldn't get the gem :)
1:02 I busted a lung here because both the prequels and the sequels are controversial in the same way The Wrath of Cortex is
Ooh 19:19 is a hot take, I personally enjoyed Twinsanity the most out of any Crash game (even if it was a buggy mess). I won't argue about the other 2 though
I agree, even thought it Washington a buggy mess that kept crashing in the final level at least it was somewhat original
@@andreamicheli2575 I don't think crashing on the last level is normally an issue, maybe your disc was a little scratched or something.
The strangest thing was back then, games journalism had no language to describe what was wrong and couldn't identify these problems. Even gamers who were mostly kids then (lets be honest) couldn't describe it either. It just "felt" wrong. Identifying what game design works well and what doesn't is a monumental difference in the quality of a game but nobody seemed to care about it back then, long as the graphics looked better it got a better review score. We took our classic games that played amazing because of good game design for granted. It's strange that bad design seems to be all over modern games today which makes it easier to expose, but it was harder to talk about in the past.
Ok, but twinsanity is still better than this one
Whatever you are smoking let me hit it because you are trippin
What, nobody mentioned Twinsanity here
@@JustaRandomDude1812 No directly. He added the Twinsanity cover at the end while expressing: "it hold up better that the other offerings of the time. Let's just say the golden age of Crash Bandicoot was definitely over"
17:11 its called wrath of cortex, whys that an issue
I'm surprised Traveller's Tales even got enough work to survive long enough to discover the LEGO mines, when they only made like 2 good games before the LEGO stuff. Like who tf at Universal looked at the guys who made Rascal for PS1 and was like "yo we gotta get these guys to make a Crash game!"
As the last living Wrath Of Cortex defender; This game has issues, but I think it's still kinda underrated. The OT is still solid, I think the N Sane trilogy is actually a vast improvement, hot take, but Wrath of Cortex, Tag Team Racing and Twinsanity are games I think are cool and interesting enough that just throwing them out of canon was a mistake.
You have to admit the soundtrack was awesome.
I think you took the coco thing way too close to heart, I've seen this happen with other characters in other franchises who get gimped and it happens to guys too, shit just happens
Nvm, finished the video, dunking on Twinsanity invalidates any opinion you have
Typical virtue signalling.
Gotta say though, one thing Wrath of Cortax has on point is the music. I could listen to Arctic Antics on loop forever. Such a bop! And the Warp room theme, while not as good as 2' (the original 2...the Insane Trilogy kind of nerfed the song a bit with the sound mixing emphasizing the wrong elements of the song) is still a nice step up from 3 having a more lively beat that fits the nature of the plot and stages you'll be going through.
Only complaint is the lack of recurring leitmotifs except the Warped theme (and even the remixes of that just repeat certain riffs over and over instead of the full song). I kinda prefer Bash and Crash 4's attempts to emulate Josh Mancell's style while maintaining the recurring themes, though Wrath of Cortex is quite fun as its own beast, similar to Twinsanity's acapella. Especially love Tsunami, Cortex Vortex, and Ice Station Bandicoot. Very atmospheric (fun fact: the same guys did the OST for Muppet Racemania and the original Toy Story video game).
It was always an off put that the music didn't loop properly though. Only the XBox version fixed that bug.
I'm sorry, but alternate entrances to previous levels that you unlock through secret paths in later levels is honestly genius.
"It plays right into the stereotype that girls are somehow weaker than boys"
Well, I mean they are. Weaker levels of testosterone leading to weaker bone density, musculature and overall strength. It's not always the case, but in the vast majority of cases it is.
Also really. Coco is smarter than Crash by miles. It makes sense to even it out by making Coco weaker so Crash still adds a strength to the team, just the gameplay execution isn't really creative with it. Crash 4 had Coco and Tawna both smarter AND more physically sound than Crash and that just played into ANOTHER stereotype, that 'girls are better than boys in EVERYTHING'. :P
>weaker bone density
The science understander has logged in
@@e-122psi3 Yeah.
No one ever brings it up when it's the other way around and frankly I never cared. I don't even think the "Women are smarter than men" thing is statistically true either but it's also not something I would care about even if it were true.
People nowadays tend to hear those things and register them as an insult to an entire gender rather than thinking "Well if that's the case then I'll be the exception".
Everyone acts like you're boxing them in rather than just stating reality.
I remember playing this at my friend's house as a kid back when I didn't have a ps2, before I paid attention to developers etc and I immediately realised something was seriously off about this game. We immediately pivoted back to playing Tekken Tag that day
On ps2. I prefer twinsanity than the Wrath of cortex. Cause twinsanity same like crash 123 on ps1
Very bizarre to realize that i never actually played Crash 3 as a kid and it was in fact Wrath of Cortex
Really surprised by this video. Some really great analysis on game design and how small difference add up to knock a game down. Well done. You deserve a lot more attention for your content. Subbed.
Thanks!
That flying tornado boss had me raging as a kid, playing it for hours until I finally beat it and I don't even know if I ever found out about the separate hit boxes.
Dr. Cortex captures innocent Australian animals, uses Evolv-o-ray on them to turn them into super-strong humanoid (mostly) mutants, then brainwashes them to become his evil servants. The last part is a work in progress. Some mutants become intelligent, like Pinstripe Potoroo or Crunch, others stay dumb, like Crash or Ripper Roo.
In the final showdown, Crash's bazooka and Aku Aku's voodoo magic helped bring Crunch to his senses, then he probably got angry at Dr. Cortex for abusing him, hence Crunch's fist to Cortex's face.
If Crash 3 was called “It’s about time”, Crash 4 should’ve been Crash 4rped
As this was my first crash game, the absolute air control you have in this game is something I miss in other platformers
I grew up with this game and a copy of the first crash bandicoot on ps1. Replaying them years later and experiencing 2 and 3 for the first time leaves me with the extremely unpopular opinion that I would rather play wrath of cortex over the most frustrating game, crash 1.
This game was atrocious, but Crunch Bandicoot was a good addition and his cameos in later games were always amusing.
It wasn't atrocious, the only thing bad was some of the enemies and the loading, otherwise it is just warped if it was actually good
12:45 ¿Name of the song?
This was the first Crash game I got as a kid, and I never knew about the no-death platforms taking you to the gems. I thought there was something later in the game that unlocked them like the yellow and red switch platforms in Mario, but never really liked the game enough to get very far.
Which is crazy to me because I was 100%ing other games on the platform at the same age.
One thing about wrath of cortext I hate is from that point on the writing of the games went from, snarky clever 4th wall breaking humour to outright self hatred disguised as self awareness, I miss when crash un-ironically took its self somewhat seriously and not at the same time, crash 1 to 3 has an amazing balance of this.
What are you talking about? Wrath of cortex cutscenes are simple and funny, nothing complicated, you're making it into something it isn't sound like you have issues.
This was the first crash game I played, and while it's special for that reason, I also get a headache just watching this footage lol. So many times I just wanted to rage because of how annoying these levels are. I always blamed myself for whenever I died and just not being skilled enough, but it's really just a lot of bullshit most of the time and bad level design and gameplay mechanics. Platforming with the camera is awful especially when it comes to tight platforming on boxes over pits, and I always dreaded the water levels because of the submarine and how easy it was to die. Definitely a game that isn't easy to go back to. If I had known/played the original PS1 games as a kid, I probably would dislike this game even more tbh.