Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (PS2)

Product Information

The controlling force behind Cortex's plots for conquering the world is Uka Uka, the twin brother of Aku Aku. The "Greatest Hits" version of the game features quicker load times than those of the original version. Randy Nelson of PlayStation: The Official Magazine considered the game to be "one of the best-looking titles on PS2 at the moment", but found the levels to be sparsely populated as a result of their increased width.

But don't marvel too long at the new inventions, because you might find yourself in a heap of destruction. If there's anything good that came out of this game: The music consists of a very high quality diverse techno-symphonic soundtrack. Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex , the first PS2 addition to the series, delivers the same mix of intuitive gameplay and elaborate adventure that fans have come to expect, with many enhancements and all-new environments and missions.Most of the games in the franchise are platform games, although the series also includes other genres such as racing video games, party games and endless runners. This game sticks safely with the old formula of collecting crystals, gems and relics, although it does try to inject some originality by introducing "new vehicles", a technique which, I'm afraid is overused and fails to inspire. The game was intended to feature zany, open-world sci-fi environments, and Crush would have been able to use a variety of vehicles. The only one of these vehicles which I really enjoyed was the gyro-ball, which lets Crash roll around a la Marble Madness.

Much of the game takes place in a "Virtual Reality (VR) Hub System" created by Coco to help Crash gather the Crystals. Well, the graphics are pretty nice, although personally I prefer the graphics in Crash 2 and 3, and the sound effects are good if unoriginal. The resulting debris would render Cortex unconscious, destroy the remote control device controlling Crunch and start an electrical fire in the space station. The vehicle levels aren't very good though, there were some that felt fun like the "Super Monkey Ball"-esque ball levels, but most of them such as the plane levels were just boring and didn't fit in with the game.The only way to stop the Elementals' destructive nature is to imprison them with the use of ancient Crystals. Cortex, who would have been evicted from the Evil Scientist League because of his fraternising with Crash Bandicoot during the events of Twinsanity. A lagging game camera also makes it difficult to judge perspectives, which can make navigating even the simplest of levels somewhat nightmare-ish.

Players can also now control Crash's friends, with Coco also stepping into the limelight during the course of the game. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

It also features a large cast of other characters such as Doctor Neo Cortex, Aku Aku, Coco Bandicoot, Crunch Bandicoot, Doctor N. Another complaint is that the backgrounds, always well detailed in Crash games, are this time too detailed, so much so that I for had trouble telling the difference between what was there for show and what was actually out to hurt me! Bedigian, while impressed by the graphics and effects, acknowledged that the visual style was conservative. I recently played Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex again and must say, it brought back a lot of memories from my childhood. The game was meant to be a reboot of the franchise, and would have provided a new origin story for Crash, marking the beginning of a series of new adventures.

Amongst the new additions of the PlayStation 2 game is Crash's all-new tiptoe move, while the series' use of vehicles has also been hugely expanded with Crash gaining access to gyrocopters, jeeps and a scooter. Reviewers felt that the game was a non-challenging repetition of the formula set by the previous games, with Ben Kosmina of Nintendo World Report summarizing the game's structure as "a carbon copy of Crash 3". The graphics and gameplay are definitely dated compared to modern games, but it still manages to deliver a fun and challenging experience.

The PlayStation 2 version was co-published by Konami, who published all versions of the game in Japan. This became even more clear in 2001, when the company worked with Universal Interactive for Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Halfway through the year 2006, a small article was published on the Internet, listing several online PC games which were meant to be released by Sierra.