Wandering marsupial
To begin with, Crash Bandiccot: the Wrath of Cortex was the first platform game created under the wing of Naughty Dog. She had a difficult destiny - first it had to be made by another studio under the close supervision of the well-known Mark Zerni, who is famous for the design of the Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Knack series, and is also responsible for the technical content of the Sony consoles. In addition, the game was originally supposed to have an open world and a lot of revolutionary innovations. But it didn't work out - the developers got into a fight and Traveller's Tales was assigned to work on the debut game of the series for the sixth generation of consoles. They, in their turn, feeling a heavy burden, not compatible with their experience, decided to go along the beaten track and show the world another platformer in the spirit of the immortal third part, slightly updating the graphics and redesigning the levels. This whole situation reminds the director J.J. Abrams, who decided to repeat in the seventh episode of Star Wars the situations that had already happened before. Such a step is understandable - when you take to continue the cult series, you hang over too much responsibility and any liberties can be perceived by the public in bayonets. So here too - instead of inventing a bicycle, the authors tried to slightly improve what had worked well before. The game was released in late 2001 on Playstation 2, XBOX and GameCube. Did this game repeat the success of the previous parts, and could it be compared to the founder's work? We won't know until we figure it out.
Plot
The introductory video shows us the corridors of Neo Cortex's lair. Then we see the hall where Uka-Uka, the evil brother of Aku-Aku, tells off his subordinates for not being able to resist the crazy bandit. First of all, of course, Dr. Cortex gets under the hot hand. To justify that something mumbles about the fact that you can not underestimate the bandit, but handy evil genius, an odd-looking guy with a rocket in his head, N. Gene steps in for a colleague and says that right now is preparing a powerful weapon to capture the world - a genetically modified bandit named Krunch. However, in order for him to gain full power, he needs the energy of four elements - natural masks like Uka-Uki and Aku-Aku. It is said that long ago these masks were captured and de-energized by magic crystals.
Meanwhile, in Cresh's house flows quiet and peaceful life. But the idyll is interrupted by natural disasters. Aku-Aku suspects of these troubles of his dark brother and goes to negotiate in the space temple of Crash Bash. Having met Uka-Uka, he sees four freed masks and by a miracle stays alive. When he realizes that he needs to act urgently, Aku-Aku equips a team to collect crystals to weaken the scoundrels and imprison them again, this time forever.
This is the beginning of the story. It's clear that it doesn't pretend to be dramatic and doesn't want to turn your inner world upside down, but for the Crash Bandicoot games the scenario here is quite detailed. Moreover, this is probably the first and last case when the character, being a villain in the series, is gradually transformed into a hero. Another thing is graphics. Unfortunately, even for the beginning of the two-thousand game models look miserable, plastic and soulless. Now I'm not even talking about the need for empathy, the characters in Crash Bandicoot: the Wrath of Cortex are banal disgusting. By some miracle, the Crash model from the game of five years ago with three times less polygons looks more pleasant to the eye than the present one. This is definitely a minus.
Gameplay
The game process in the new project is not much different from Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. The protagonist traditionally gets to the command center, from where the exit to any of the available levels is made. The central world is divided into several zones, consisting of five levels and a mandatory boss. And the heels of the levels you can pass in any sequence, but only passing all five opens the battle with the boss. The boss is always the same - Crunch, only with the use of forces of different elements: in one level he will send you a sea wave, and in the other to use fire. In general, this is, of course, an interesting approach, but there is not much variety here - I want to see different villains. After all, why show that bunch of evil geniuses in the beginning, if they will not be involved anywhere afterwards? After you win the boss, you have access to the next zone, to the next five levels. And so on until the very end. There is also a secret zone, consisting of five optional levels to pass through. However, if you are a fan of squeezing out of the game maximum and gain more than a hundred percent, they too will have to be investigated.
The basic elements remain the same. Kresh is still dying from any touch of the enemy and protect it from this can only mask. Having collected three Aku-Aku, which are stored in wooden boxes, you will provide yourself with a temporary invulnerability, in which any enemy dies from contact with you. At the same time in the background sounds cheerful melody on the drums, symbolizing your greatness. Also, the bandit did not change and his favorite treat - the fruit of the vampire. They are scattered here in huge quantities in the manner of gold rings from Sonic the hedgehog and the collection of hundreds of such gives you extra life. The goal at every level is to find the purple crystal, because they are the ones you need to stop the elementals. But this isn't the only collector's item we have here. Apart from the crystals, without which you can't make any progress on the plot, you can collect one or more gems in each level. Gray stones can be obtained by crashing all the boxes at the level. It is not as easy as it seems at first glance - some boxes are cunningly hidden, and in order to find them, we will have to explore every corner of this or that location. There are two gray stones on separate levels. This means that in addition to breaking boxes, you have to find another secret passageway that contains an additional stone. As a rule, these areas are very difficult and you will have to swear for a long time before you can overpower them. There are also rare colored stones in different shapes and shapes here - it's fantastic to get them. They are hidden better than any other treasure.
Finally, in addition to the stones, you can also earn relics. To do this, you will need to return to the already passed level and take a special stopwatch at the beginning of the way. After you do this, a timer will appear at the top of the screen. Now you need to get to the finish line as soon as possible - your final reward will depend on these indicators. A sapphire relic is very easy to get. Next comes (in order of value) the silver, gold and platinum relics. The latter is not even trying to collect, if you have not previously passed the story - without special boots, speedboats will not work out. When you accept the game mode for a while, the regular wooden boxes at the level are replaced by numerical ones. By breaking such a box, you freeze the timer for the number of seconds indicated on the edges of the box. The rarest and most valuable box gives you three seconds in advance. This mode is quite complicated, but it can hardly compete with the complexity of Naughty Dog games. By the way, yours will try not to go unnoticed - for every five relics here opens one level of the additional zone.
Read on in the next article https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d81fe968600e100ac9a1102/bagged-against-wild-masks-part-ii-5d88969aec575b00b2c49921