Game review

An old ’coot is crashin’ the Playstation party

Sony’s Playstation founded an empire that almost none of its original stars stuck around to see. Parappa the Rapper is forgotten to almost everyone, Spyro the Dragon has been MIA for the last decade and Lara Croft’s last outing was an Xbox exclusive. As for Crash Bandicoot? He’s befallen a fate worse than all those others combined: mediocrity.

But this, the orange marsupial’s 16th star outing, actually ranks as one of his best. Why? It’s a ritzy repackaging of his first three games: Crash Bandicoot, Cortex Strikes Back and Warped. You know, the ones you first bought two decades ago.

Activision and Vicarious Visions have done a bang-up job of pulling Crash into the Ultra HD age of the PS4 Pro. From the game’s famous Aku Aku masks to Polar the adorable sidekick bear, everything looks resplendent in its fancy new 4K-upscalable resolution.

This entire remaster was made from scratch, so you wouldn’t find a bridge slat, Venus flytrap or bounce crate out of place if you were to place a level side by side with its original incarnation. The downside? You’re going to quickly make friends with the Game Over screen. All these three games suffer from dramatic spikes in difficulty, and Crash’s debut is especially prone to throwing you under a bus.

Be it through imprecise controls, awkward level design or plain old fiendishness, some levels can take well over an hour to complete despite only lasting the best part of three minutes. As funny as it is to watch a winged Crash ascend to heaven the first time around, it soon feels as though he’s trying to flee the scene before you hurl your controller at him.

Compared to modern console heroes like Nathan Drake, Kratos and Ellie, there’s something raw about this old bandicoot – even if his rough edges still have enough charm to make you think a 17th Crash game wouldn’t be so bad. Rob Leedham