Release: Oct 7 2008 (US), Oct 31 2008 (UK)
Developer: Radical
Publisher: Activision
Genre: Platformer
Every medium has its standout personalities, and gaming is no exception. Who doesn’t recognize Mario? Who can look at a cardboard box and not think of Snake? Who can hear “What are ya buying?” without having a mental jump to RE4′s merchant? The point here is that there are a few characters in gaming we just can’t help but adore. Crash Bandicoot, the catalyst for hours spent in front of the PS1 trying to get every single box in each level, was one of these. Now our favorite virtual marsupial is dropping on to the 360 in Crash: Mind Over Mutant.
A(nother) Nefarious Plot
Cortex is back, and more evil than ever. This time around, he plans to use a Internet-capable weapon, the “N-V,” (kinda like N-Gage, eh?) to control the minds of all creatures tall and small. It’s up to Crash once again to stop Cortex’s evil plot and bring peace to the world – until the next game anyway.
The cast of characters should be familiar to those who’ve played past Crash titles, and the return of N. Brio is a pleasant “hello” from years ago. You’ll not be lost if you’re a Crash virgin, but being a long-time fan has its advantages. In terms of story it’s hardly original, however it’s presented rather remarkably in the 6 hours you’ll take to beat it; the animated cutscenes are a joy to behold. Granted, the visuals might not appeal much to more mature players, but even if you don’t like the style (which changes with every cutscene) you’ll find something to like in the dialogue.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant has a case of what we like to call “Bipolar Vernacular.” This disease is characterized by two symptoms: 1) Great, and pretty damn funny, voice acting during cutscenes, and 2) Confusingly bad voice work when outside of cut scenes. When NPC’s speak, you’ll scramble for subtitles, which, annoyingly, are nowhere to be found. Some of the voices are so distorted and hard to understand that you’d be up a creek if you didn’t have the “Missions” screen to guide you. On top of that, the grunt enemy creatures should take up synchronized swimming, as they have the habit of all speaking at once. A few Speech Therapy Centers on Wumpa Island are in order.
If you’re thinking this is just another ‘collect 25 crystals from each level and beat a boss to advance’ title, think again. The guys at Radical have taken Crash into an open world environment. While you can’t perform drive-bys in Chinatown, it’s still a huge island with varied environments including the staple Ice and Desert regions, as well as a a Junkyard. It’s your task to travel these areas and perform missions that progress the story. For example, finding and ‘jacking’ (taking control of bigger creatures, and using them to unlock areas previously inaccessible) a rolling creature in the desert, and backtracking to the Ice region to unlock a door. Yep, you’ll be doing an ungodly amount of backtracking here.
Welcome To Wumpa Island
While the environments are very detailed, and beg to be explored, chances are you’ll not be so thrilled when you see the same platforms to jump on over and over again. To make matters worse the camera controls itself, and while it usually works fine, it doesn’t always point in the right direction which makes it difficult to judge many jumps, leading to unnecessary loss of lives. Not that there’s much of a penalty…
You don’t have to worry about falling off cliffs, or even fighting. While it has a suprisingly well developed and enjoyable combat system, it feels strangely pointless when you can’t die. Like The Fortune, Crash Bandicoot is totally Indestructible; losing all your health only warps you back a couple off feet. Platforming loses it’s urgency and challenge when you get to ‘mulligan’ endlessly. Sure, the title is primarily targeted at younger generations, but do we need to dumb down this much?
The only thing better than passing a controller to a friend is actually playing together. In this respect, Crash: Mind Over Mutant does not disappoint. When playing your single player file, you can plug in a second controller, hit the B button, and experience true ‘Drop in, Drop out’ co-op, Lego series style. The second player controls Coco, who has a move set pretty identical to Crash. You can do anything Crash can do, so feel free to ‘jack’ two RhinoRollers, and have a little pinball game. Co-op mode is great fun, as long as you can deal with the camera, which focuses on only 1 player – allowing the other to get completely lost off-screen. Alternatively, instead of walking around, you can press B to become Aku Aku (the weird mask thing), hovering around the other player, shooting exploding chickens – not kidding.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant is a fairly well polished beast, with a few issues. Fans of the series should definitely ‘try before you buy’ with a rental rather than a full purchase, and those who’ve never played a Crash game probably won’t see why the series was held in such high regard at all. Mind Over Mutant takes a step in a different direction, which is respectable for such a long-running series, but the magic of the original titles has not been replicated and the game falls short as a result.
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