Crash Bandicoot 2: The Wrath of Cortex continues roughly where the last game left off. I think. I never actually finished the first game as younger me found it to be too difficult. Crash 2 on the other hand seemed to be just the right amount of difficulty, and became darling to my younger self partially due to it being one of the first games I ever beat on my own. Now that I am older and have a whole trove of games beaten, how does the game hold up?
Pretty good, for the most part. Smashing through crates is still incredibly fun, and the controls are responsive and satisfying. The camera-on-rails works a lot better than Mario 64's awful camera, too. That being said, there are levels where the game has you playing in the classic 2D sidescroller format where instead of running forward you are now running to the right of screen. While playing these levels I would find myself running and jumping off of the side of the path towards the camera because I didn't have a very good view of where Crash was moving. Something about the 3D Crash in the 2D-styled (sometimes called 2.5D nowadays) gameplay made it difficult to stay on the path, which became a mild annoyance throughout. Otherwise, though, the basics where pretty solid, and the animation is still impressive today when you compare it to the robotic looks of Crash's contemporaries. The developers of Crash famously detailed how they accomplished this in their blog posts, so I won't go on about it too much here.
The game is far from perfect, however. The fact that every level has a Bonus level is pretty tedious by the time you get half way through the game. I understand it was a way to bridge the 2D platforming with the 3D platforming, but as I said before I'm not particularly a fan of how that 2D platforming was handled. Not to mention the only real reason to need a bonus level is to rack up lives, of which you will have plenty from the first handful of levels so long as you aren't absolutely new to videogames. And I suppose that is another problem: I'm quite a bit better than the kids this game was aimed at. That isn't really a knock on the game, since the difficulty is still within the bounds of being fun, but it made the life system almost pointless. I never dipped below 27-30 lives at any given time.
Even the boss fights weren't enough to really put up a challenge. The boss fights (outside of the last one, which is a boring disappointment) where fun in their own right, but rarely took more than a couple tries as you memorized their very obvious and easily avoided attack patterns. Once again, this is a game aimed at kids so I can't really knock them for it. What I can knock them for, however, is the boring last boss. The game builds up to a final boss battle against Cortex, the series' version of Bowser (complete with his own 'power stars' in the form of 'crystals'), which consists of you chasing him through space while in a jetpack with the awful controls. The jetpack had shown up in two levels previously, and both were among my least favorite levels in the entire game because they were so horrible to control. And in this boss fight, you dodge a few asteroids, gain up on Cortex, do a spin attack and repeat three times until he's done. I beat him on my first try without really trying. All in all, I would say he was one of the easiest bosses in the game, which isn't exactly what you want out of a final boss.
Despite that let down, most of the game's levels a very fun. The game does a good job layering in obstacles for Crash to dodge and jump over, and every once in awhile it will throw you something completely new like the boulder levels or the levels where you ride a polar bear cub. As far as level variance, this game does well. But the very structure of this game is a bit confusing. What's the point in collecting these crystals, exactly? The gems I understand as you either have to beat a secret level or destroy every box on a level, but the crystals themselves required to beat the game just appear in the path of the level. The level itself is little more than a path, so beating the level would seem like enough of an accomplishment. All the crystals really do is give the game a plot (and you a reason to track through the levels), but given you could beat a level and just avoid the crystal seems like a bit of an oversight. What's the point in that, exactly? Isn't the point of the game to beat all of the levels so we can get to the boss fights? Then why do I have to grab a crystal along the way for it to count? In Mario 64 at least the world's were open, so the Stars you collected had to be found. If you miss a crystal in Crash Bandicoot you're either blind or you took a secret level to the ending, which always inconveniently started before the crystal shows up, and drops you off considerably after.
Besides all of that, Crash is just plain fun. The controls are spot on (outside of the jetpack levels) and the game is just about the right length before I get bored. I'm not entirely sure if I would say Crash was particularly innovative in anything (besides looking good), but it was an above average release that deserves to be competitive with, even if it isn't quite as good as, Mario 64.
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