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Platform
Xbox 360
Genre
Action Platformers
Publisher
Activision
Developer
Radical
Entertainment
ESRB
E +10 (Everyone)
Released
October 7, 2008
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- Monster powers are interesting
- Cutscenes are innovative and hilarious
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- Endless and repetitive
backtracking
- No camera controls, making platform jumping difficult at times
- The story itself is confusing, making most missions are
bewilderingly confusing
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Review: Bee Movie Game (360)
Review: Tales of Vesperia (360)
Review: Overlord (360)
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Crash:
Mind Over Mutant
Score: 6.5 / 10
Crash is back and he’s brought friends. In
his latest adventure, Crash: Mind over Mutant, Crash and his sister Coco
fight to save Wumpa Island from Neo Cortex’s Batman Forever-like scheme
to control the world with interactive TV sunglasses. Although the game
shows a lot of potential with its creative cutscenes and mutant control,
the gameplay itself fails to live up to the standard created with its
opening scene.
Armed with the ability to take over mutants such as giant roller ball
armadillos, ice sneezing polar bears and energy shooting hyenas, Crash
combines their powers with his own spinning, jumping and digging
abilities to solve puzzles and beat up the bad guys. Although there is a
variety in the mutants and abilities, the main game lacks a sense of
creativity and direction. Mission parameters are unclear and most goals
are simply fetch and retrieve. More than once I accidentally hit a
switch
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and discovered that I had completed an
optional mission. Although the adventures themselves are fun, there
never seems to be a real point behind Crash’s actions and after a few
hours of wandering, the main game can get tiring.
While a lot of other reviewers have found the co-op play dull, I found
it good to have company throughout the |
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adventure. Playing most of the game with a friend (thank you Todd) let’s
you use more monsters at once and it helps to have two people working at
some of the puzzles when there are no clues provided from the game.
Although the camera only focuses on one player, the camera spends so
much time in an extreme zoom-out mode that it was never too much of a
burden. However, with the average TV size approaching forty+ inches, I
wonder why split screen action isn’t an available option.
However, what really drags Crash down is the repetitive nature of the
gameplay. Whenever a mission is completed, the next task is almost
always to retrace your steps and make your way to the opposite end of
the island. What makes things worse is that the has game so many
missions revolving around retracing your steps, showing that endless
backtracking was the developer’s intent when creating the game. Once or
twice it would be interesting, but four or five times through ten minute
long levels is mind numbing and a cheap way to extend a game. Extending
this problem is the poor World Map and mission outline, with only a star
over a general area and a one line tag serving as your guide. Although a
teleportation system does open up later in the game, it doesn’t take
back the anger I expressed at a bag of Ruffles All-Dressed after finding
out that my reward for a disappointing three minute long boss fight was
to hike all the way back through the level.
Though controlling telekinetic penguins is fun, what makes this game
interesting are the cutscenes. Taking homage from 30’s monster movies,
50’s instructional films and handpuppet theatre among other genres, at
sometimes longer than 5 minutes, the off the wall short films keep are a
real attraction. However when you compare them to the game’s repetitive
gameplay, it makes me wonder why Crash’s creative team didn’t
concentrate more on their level design.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant, falls into a weird category. The gameplay is
for 10-12 year olds but the story is for adults. If the game offered
more variety than standard platforming and limited puzzles, the game
would rate right up there with this season’s holiday adventure titles.
But with a short adventure time (<10 hours) and repetitive gameplay,
like Crash so many times during the adventure, this game ends up falling
just short of the next level. There are some glitches, every once and a
while Crash would lean over and meld into the surface; thankfully the
game seemed to recognize when this happens and killed me soon after.
Luckily this never happened enough to affect my experience. However, if
you loved last year’s Crash of the Titans or are a grade school-gamer
with a love of offbeat humour, this game may just appeal to you.
- Karol Kudyba
(December 8, 2008) |
