It's Crunch Time!

When I heard that Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex was coming to Xbox® from developer Traveller's Tales, I had a Keanu Reeves moment: Whoa! This is gonna be bad. Like, jump-on-the-nitro bad. Would we get the dumbed-down version? Crash Bandicoot stripped to the basics and offered as a token to the Xbox market? How do I tell my kids? I mean, seriously, wasn’t this little orange guy supposed to be the Playstation® mascot? He was. Not anymore, though. And he’s never looked so good!The raw data on the release looked similar to the PS2 version, released six months earlier. Thirty-plus levels, more than 40 hours of gameplay, everyone's favorite hyperactive marsupial (and his sister, Coco), and the well-advertised vehicle levels. There would be a hub, giving the player access to the five different game worlds, and a save feature. All in all, Traveller's Tales looked like it was doing good by us, the players. No catch. No stealing the toy surprise out of the bottom of the box. Could they, would they, give us more?

Bandicoot in da house!

They could, they would, they did—over and above the four-channel surround sound and HDTV support (nice work if you have the equipment to enjoy it). Traveller's Tales took serious advantage of the superior Xbox hardware. Load times were clearly improved, getting the game up and running and letting the player slip in between the various levels and worlds without the long, dry pauses that had made the PS2 version so annoying. Crash isn't about sitting around, toying with buttons and triggers, and thinking about the next level. We want to run, jump, slide, belly flop, and spin, spin, spin. We want to play.

And what a world (five worlds, in fact!) to play in. The Wrath of Cortex comes to life under a rich palette of colors. Enemies look better than ever, and the environments are full of rich, contrasting tones that you don’t even get on some Saturday-morning cartoons. You can tell only a few minutes into the game that the graphical presentation is where developers spent most of their time getting Crash Bandicoot ready for his Xbox debut.

Don't let a marsupial named Crash drive.

Crash gets a serious face-lift, too. Thanks to the Xbox video game system’s ”fur-shading” option, our hyper little hero looks more real than ever (or as real as you can expect for an animated Outback critter with superpowers and happening style), After seeing some real orange fur, just try watching Crash run around in a PS2 environment. You can only wonder, “Who shaved Crash down? And why?” Ewww. Nope, right back to the Xbox for me. Color, shading, and texture all come together under the Xbox version's improved frame rates. If you saw even one of the hiccups that marred the PS2 software, you know what I'm talking about. No more stuttering or slow animations. In-game action is pulled off smoothly and with great attention to detail. Animated scenes are cartoon quality, as they should be in a next-gen platformer. It's one of those "if you don't notice, they did it right" kind of improvements, but personally I don't want anything getting in between me and the wild spinning action or the humorous cut-scene clips. I have to say, this is kind of like seeing Mario throw his pipe wrench away and head off for a new job, but Sony's loss is our gain. Crash Bandicoot has never looked so good, and now there's no going back. A mascot? No. But we've got a new friend in the neighborhood. That's good enough for me.

Article by Danny Chihdo