Zero Punctuation: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Yahtzee takes on the Crash Bandicoot remaster, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

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[Neurotic Void Melody]

Does everybody just temporarily forget about Mario Sunshine and Galaxy when denouncing the possibility of 3D platformers ever working? I don't think it's particularly healthy form of criticism to resort to "it will never work! And you're stupid for even trying! Don't bother!" When it really comes down to the execution not the inherent idea that falls flat. It's a bit of an unfortunate close-minded approach that's artificially limiting.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The only Crash Bandicoot game I've ever played was the kart racer that was clearly trying to ape Mario Kart.

 

[09philj]

Does everybody just temporarily forget about Mario Sunshine and Galaxy when denouncing the possibility of 3D platformers ever working? I don't think it's particularly healthy form of criticism to resort to "it will never work! And you're stupid for even trying! Don't bother!" When it really comes down to the execution not the inherent idea that falls flat. It's a bit of an unfortunate close-minded approach that's artificially limiting.

Galaxy tended to lock you into reasonably straight paths, and when it didn't you were probably running around on one planetoid jumping on enemies. The 3D was the means by which you travelled between different kinds of 2D.

 

[BarkBarker]

The N sane trilogy is nice and all but without the credit of "being amazing for a PS1 game" in terms of what they achieved and the very specific tone in sound effects and visuals the original games had, I just can't find the charm in N sane trilogy. Naughty Dog have proven in every generation they know what the fuck they are doing and I just can't find the pleasantry in a slightly overbloomed, "modern touch up" that doesn't seem to have much interest in the original games very precise composition. Shit like the sound of the sewer hitting sfx in crash 2 music is off, most certainly off for one example and it's a nagging annoyance every time that note hits.

 

[darkrage6]

The N sane trilogy is nice and all but without the credit of "being amazing for a PS1 game" in terms of what they achieved and the very specific tone in sound effects and visuals the original games had, I just can't find the charm in N sane trilogy. Naughty Dog have proven in every generation they know what the fuck they are doing and I just can't find the pleasantry in a slightly overbloomed, "modern touch up" that doesn't seem to have much interest in the original games very precise composition. Shit like the sound of the sewer hitting sfx in crash 2 music is off, most certainly off for one example and it's a nagging annoyance every time that note hits.

As someone who never played the origins I really dig the soundtrack.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I never played the first Crash game; I skipped straight to Warped and then played a little of the second before I got frustrated. So the whole "save his girlfriend" plot was something I'm just now learning about. Gotta say, though, those DeviantArt kids must have skipped over the first game as well, because all I've seen in the way of hypersexualized fan art is an aged-up version of Coco.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I thought I was the only one who wondered about Crash's girlfriend, she disappeared after 1 and was in none of the handheld games or party games (no really, there were Crash Bandicoot party games and I played them), maybe she was on the ones after Twinsanity but I wouldn't know since the franchise stagnated at that point.

Basically what I've been saying about 3D platformers, Jak & Dexter were the early sign since they predicted the entire industry would go after sandboxes and more "mature" experiences (this was the time GTA III came out) and shifted their games after that. Then absolutely nothing noteworthy for platformers came out during the PS2 era (except maybe Rayman and Psychonauts), then the Xbox Live arcade came out where the indies would make use of 2D out of necessity and the Wii heavily pushed casual gaming (i.e. NSMBWii sold what Galaxy 1 and 2 sold combined).

snip

Yeah, but Galaxy was somewhat linear and Sunshine made a lot of weird decisions, with the voice cutscenes being the minor, and FLUDD being the major.

 

[Darth_Payn]

The only Crash Bandicoot game I've ever played was the kart racer that was clearly trying to ape Mario Kart.

I thought I was the only one who wondered about Crash's girlfriend, she disappeared after 1 and was in none of the handheld games or party games (no really, there were Crash Bandicoot party games and I played them), maybe she was on the ones after Twinsanity but I wouldn't know since the franchise stagnated at that point.

Basically what I've been saying about 3D platformers, Jak & Dexter were the early sign since they predicted the entire industry would go after sandboxes and more "mature" experiences (this was the time GTA III came out) and shifted their games after that. Then absolutely nothing noteworthy for platformers came out during the PS2 era (except maybe Rayman and Psychonauts), then the Xbox Live arcade came out where the indies would make use of 2D out of necessity and the Wii heavily pushed casual gaming (i.e. NSMBWii sold what Galaxy 1 and 2 sold combined).

snip

Yeah, but Galaxy was somewhat linear and Sunshine made a lot of weird decisions, with the voice cutscenes being the minor, and FLUDD being the major.

If that's the case for Crash Bandicoot being so gung-ho to rip off Mario, then why wasn't he allowed to grab onto THOSE FUCKING edges above all THOSE FUCKING bottomless pits? Do they finally fix that in this remake?

 

[darkrage6]

The only Crash Bandicoot game I've ever played was the kart racer that was clearly trying to ape Mario Kart.

I thought I was the only one who wondered about Crash's girlfriend, she disappeared after 1 and was in none of the handheld games or party games (no really, there were Crash Bandicoot party games and I played them), maybe she was on the ones after Twinsanity but I wouldn't know since the franchise stagnated at that point.

Basically what I've been saying about 3D platformers, Jak & Dexter were the early sign since they predicted the entire industry would go after sandboxes and more "mature" experiences (this was the time GTA III came out) and shifted their games after that. Then absolutely nothing noteworthy for platformers came out during the PS2 era (except maybe Rayman and Psychonauts), then the Xbox Live arcade came out where the indies would make use of 2D out of necessity and the Wii heavily pushed casual gaming (i.e. NSMBWii sold what Galaxy 1 and 2 sold combined).

snip

Yeah, but Galaxy was somewhat linear and Sunshine made a lot of weird decisions, with the voice cutscenes being the minor, and FLUDD being the major.

If that's the case for Crash Bandicoot being so gung-ho to rip off Mario, then why wasn't he allowed to grab onto THOSE FUCKING edges above all THOSE FUCKING bottomless pits? Do they finally fix that in this remake?

Nope.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Does everybody just temporarily forget about Mario Sunshine and Galaxy when denouncing the possibility of 3D platformers ever working? I don't think it's particularly healthy form of criticism to resort to "it will never work! And you're stupid for even trying! Don't bother!" When it really comes down to the execution not the inherent idea that falls flat. It's a bit of an unfortunate close-minded approach that's artificially limiting.

Galaxy still suffered from a lack of camera control though. Don't remember if Sunshine had it, but a 3D platformer without camera control always causes difficulty judging distances. Recently Little Nightmares caused many slip-ups due to the static camera. Which makes me hope Mario Odyssey has camera control.

 

[Dak_N_Jaxter]

Having grown up on the Jak and Sly Series (and some of Spyro and Ratchet) I've really never understood Yahtzee's aversion to 3D platforming. I'll just chock it up to taste, because I've never found platforming in 3D to be inherently problematic. Challenging and frustrating maybe, but, in a good way.

 

[darkrage6]

Having grown up on the Jak and Sly Series (and some of Spyro and Ratchet) I've really never understood Yahtzee's aversion to 3D platforming. I'll just chock it up to taste, because I've never found platforming in 3D to be inherently problematic. Challenging and frustrating maybe, but, in a good way.

Same here, I grew up with Sonic Adventure games so i'm very much used to it. Getting 100% on all three games wasn't nearly as hard as say getting all of the A-Ranks in SA2.

 

[shrekfan246]

Having grown up on the Jak and Sly Series (and some of Spyro and Ratchet) I've really never understood Yahtzee's aversion to 3D platforming. I'll just chock it up to taste, because I've never found platforming in 3D to be inherently problematic. Challenging and frustrating maybe, but, in a good way.

It's kinda the same way that I'm always confused about people who apparently have such huge issues with controlling Mirror's Edge. Nothing about it is weird or unintuitive to me, even with the inherently smaller FOV you get from being in first-person rather than third. Third-person 3D platformers have only given me any issues if they expected you to do a lot of precise jumping without giving you a clear indication of where you would land, typically through shadows or poor camera angles. But, well, the Banjo games are two of my favorite games ever, so I'm biased as well.

 

[Bindal]

To be honest, I did play the original trilogy and even Wrath of Cortex quite a lot - Warped and Cortex especially. So this thing does give me a reason to consider picking up a PS4. If I actually do is a different question, but probably when I can afford one.

I thought I was the only one who wondered about Crash's girlfriend, she disappeared after 1 and was in none of the handheld games or party games (no really, there were Crash Bandicoot party games and I played them), maybe she was on the ones after Twinsanity but I wouldn't know since the franchise stagnated at that point.

She cameod in the 100% ending of Crash Team Racing (the first one) and it says that after Crash 1, she broke up with Crash and got together with someone else. Meaning they deliberately dropped her to never pick her up again.

Tawna (yes, she got a name!) may come back now more often given that she's given a minor amount of re-characterisation (the intro makes her more competent by taking out one lab assistant and having to surrender to a whole horde of them VS "held at the wrists by two lab assistants and not even trying" in the original) and a visual redesign to make her a bit more tomboyish.
So she might play a role in the DLC or a sequel, who knows.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Does everybody just temporarily forget about Mario Sunshine and Galaxy when denouncing the possibility of 3D platformers ever working? I don't think it's particularly healthy form of criticism to resort to "it will never work! And you're stupid for even trying! Don't bother!" When it really comes down to the execution not the inherent idea that falls flat. It's a bit of an unfortunate close-minded approach that's artificially limiting.

Because it's human nature to lie by omission in order to push an argument that has a glaring counterpoint. The big reason you don't see as many 3D platformers is pretty simple: they live and die on level design and great level design is HAAAAAAAAAARD. Not only hard, it's tedious because there are no tricks to it. It's trial and error, manipulating geometry and playtesting it until it strikes a balance of being challenging enough to be fun, but not enough to frustrate. Putting a 3rd dimension into that process just made things harder, especially as tech became more advanced, which was why 3D platformers became fewer. Difficult to propagate when there are no shortcuts to good design

 

[kimiyoribaka]

I find it interesting that Yahtzee's explanation for why 3D platformers such as mario 64 didn't work applies far more to crash bandicoot than to mario 64 or any of the other examples given, precisely for the reason that crash bandicoot focused on 2 dimensions so often.

 

[BrawlMan]

Does everybody just temporarily forget about Mario Sunshine and Galaxy when denouncing the possibility of 3D platformers ever working? I don't think it's particularly healthy form of criticism to resort to "it will never work! And you're stupid for even trying! Don't bother!" When it really comes down to the execution not the inherent idea that falls flat. It's a bit of an unfortunate close-minded approach that's artificially limiting.

Galaxy still suffered from a lack of camera control though. Don't remember if Sunshine had it, but a 3D platformer without camera control always causes difficulty judging distances. Recently Little Nightmares caused many slip-ups due to the static camera. Which makes me hope Mario Odyssey has camera control.

A lot of people seem to forget, but Super Mario Sunshine had full 3D camera control.

I already put my thoughts about the Crash n sane trilogy, so just check my profile or the game industry forum page.

 

[ChupathingyX]

I thought I was the only one who wondered about Crash's girlfriend, she disappeared after 1 and was in none of the handheld games or party games (no really, there were Crash Bandicoot party games and I played them),

She was playable in Crash Boom Bang!.

 

[iamnotincompliance]

My theory has long been at the advent of 3D, every game genre had to try it lest they be considered stagnant. Platformers, as well as fighters, gave it a go, it largely didn't work, and they've gone back to 2D because that worked just fine.