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Crash Bandicoot originally appeared on the PlayStation in
1996. Since then, the Crash Bandicoot series, originally
developed by Naughty Dog (until after Crash Bandicoot: Warped),
Crash
 himself has starred in many other titles and spin-offs,
including several
Mario Kart-esque releases, such as Crash Team Racing.
Crash Bandicoot has often been referred to as the
PlayStation’s answer to Mario – in the same vein as Spyro
and Lara Croft - I’ll let your make your own decisions on that one.
The majority of
Crash Bandicoot releases have been Platform
titles, seeing the player going through a structured Level
collecting Wumpa Fruit and Gems whilst defeating foes and solving
puzzles to progress. At the end of each Level is a Boss that, after
you beat, allows you to move-on to another Level, which is normally
very different in appearance. Since his PlayStation days Crash has
now appeared on several formats including PlayStation2, Game Boy
Advance, GameCube and Xbox.
Crash Boom Bang! will be the Bandicoots fourteenth title,
and the second Party-Game - the first being Crash Bash. The
main objective behind the game is completing each Level and having
the most Points overall to win. To complete a Level you must find
certain items which are hidden, it’s basically a treasure hunt. You
move around each Level by rolling the Dice, like on a Board Game,
and you gain Points in each Mini-Game. There are forty different
Mini-Games in total, yet Crash Boom Bang! has taken a lot of
ideas from the pioneers of this genre, like the Mario Party
series.
The storyline for the title sees Crash trying to aid The Viscount.
The Viscount has a treasure map that shows the location of the
“Super Big Power Crystal”, and decides that to make things easier
it would be wise to have some help, because of a previous attempt
to find the Super Big Power Crystal by himself, in which The
Viscount failed. So he invites a few of the brainiest and strongest
characters to aid him in his quest, except he tells them that this
is a race and you have to collect all the Stone Tablets on the Map.
If a player finds them all and reaches the end, you earn
£100,000,000 - all of the Guests (Crash, Doctor Neo Cortex and
Pinstripe Potoroo etc.) fall for this trick and start searching
right away.
A small addition that seems to be becoming common-place in
Party-Games is that you can collect furniture to decorate your
Room. These pieces of furniture, as well as other
 characters, are
unlocked in the Adventure Mode. There is also a Multi-Player where
you can play with up to four players in an all-out battle to win by
gaining Points and playing Mini-Games.
Visually Crash Boom Bang! does nothing wrong, it has solid
looking Maps and Character Models, although they don’t look
comfortable in they way they move. The graphics in the Mini-Games
are also done very well, running fairly smoothly and looking quite
solid. Everything is done with a small amount of flair, although it
has been done better in other games on the NintendoDS. All-in-all
the visuals look well implemented.
The sound in the game is very chirpy, bouncy and happy and has a
cartoon-style background Score, but it does get very repetitive,
and after a while you forget about it even being there. The quality
of the sound doesn’t really do anything to add to the frantic party
atmosphere, there is no Voice-Acting, apart from the same old
character screams that you get in every platform game, and all of
the Cut-Scenes are done in a comic-strip inspired design, with the
text under the pictures.
Although this is a nice idea for a NintendoDS-exclusive Crash
Bandicoot game, while it looks and sounds good, that is sadly
where the compliments end. The actual game is quite horrible to
play; to understand what exactly it is you have to do is a
challenge in itself. As for controls, Crash Boom Bang! uses
everything the NintendoDS has to offer, the Mini-Games all use the
Touch Screen and some work very well, but most are a horrid mess
that don’t feel right using the Stylus, as well a selection which
fail simply because the controls are too slow and often
unresponsive. It’s very hard to win Mini-Games because of this, and
the game tends to make you feel very frustrated within just minutes
of play.
The title doesn’t feature a Save facility for your progress through
Adventure Mode, and so you either play the game all the way through
or you have to start from the beginning – “Just how games used to
be” many of you may rightly be saying, however, in modern gaming
the Save function is the most coined of all the safety-cushions we,
as gamers, have adapted to over the years, and so it’s absence make
it so much more conspicuous - the game isn’t very long, but if you
only have five minutes free, or fancy a quick go in a similar
time-frame, unlocking new items is simply not possible.
A lot has been focused onto the Multi-Player aspect of the game,
which is four-player with only a single Game Card. If you find any
enjoyment from this game – which, to be blunt, is very unlikely -
then it’s the Multi-Player that will be pulling you back for more.
The game, as a whole, simply has far too many issues to recommend
as a solid release for the NintendoDS; especially given the calibre
of First-Party titles regularly arriving on the system. If more
time and attention had been given to it, Crash Boom Bang!
could’ve really stood out as a fun and exciting Party Game on the
NintendoDS, but, as it stands, the game is a frustrating and
horrible mess that is simply not worth giving away. |
