Crash Team Rumble

Yours truly is a 34-year-old man that thinks most multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games seem repetitive and boring, so I decided to write some news pieces about the other announcements when Crash Team Rumble was confirmed at The Game Awards last December. I think this an important note, as it makes it all the more surprising and impressive that I had a lot of fun playing it for a couple of hours for review.

One of the main reasons for this is that the developers at Toys for Bob have already proven they know how Crash and crew should look, sound and feel after making Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, and they bring all of that into this game. Whether it's spinning around as Crash, vacuuming stuff as Dingodile, smacking everything with the female Dr. Nefarious Tropy's staff or using any of the other five playable characters, everything controls and feels either good or great. Very important in a game where you're running and jumping around collecting Wumpa Fruit and bringing it back to your base and/or stopping the other team from doing so.

This is obviously helped by each map being what's basically a smaller MOBA-inspired symmetrical three-laned Crash Bandicoot level with some tall platforms or cliffs in-between the more flat areas - most in colourful eye-catching environments. They also have big and small unique effects that can be activated by delivering relics to special platforms. These range from being turned into a beach ball, or getting boosted jumps, all the way to a sandstorm obscuring the other team's view, or your team becoming powerful giants. Cool ideas that spice things up once or twice each match, but they aren't enough to stop the experience from becoming monotonous after a short while.

Because I really meant I had fun for two hours in the first paragraph... and the review session lasted close to four. Many matches just started to feel and play out the same way. Sure, you get some variety by choosing another of the three available classes: Scorer (able to carry more Wumpa Fruits at once and generally have average stats besides that), Blocker (slow powerful characters meant to stop the enemy team from scoring), or Booster (fast characters that gather double the amount of relics used for power-ups and trigger the score-boosting gem platforms quicker), but not even their special move sets and abilities are enough to truly change things up. Especially when some characters are far more effective than others.

The fact that Crash himself is an excellent Scorer might be a good idea when it's his franchise, but it's not fun when I alone was able to gather 1300 of the 2000 Wumpa Fruits required to win so many times. The other team could rarely do anything about it either, as it's not possible to change character or class mid-game. Then I just had to run the same path over and over again, while their slow Blockers couldn't manage to keep up or it would take too much time to stop me.

One of the reasons why it would take a lot to stop me is that fighting a player with the same class as you is pretty much about luck when both players either spam the regular attack button or use their special hoping the other would die the millisecond before you. There's no tactical thinking or smart counters here. Just run or jump around each other and try to hit the others while avoiding getting hit yourself.

Then there's the opposite problem when meeting another class. Poor Crash doesn't stand a chance if he comes across a decent Dingodile (Blocker) when the latter isn't slow enough to be easily outrun or can just suck you in with his vacuum gun. The Boosters also seem close to pointless when the Scorers are able to capture gem platforms fairly quick and few relic power-ups are strong enough to truly make a difference.

This also applies to the special abilites you can give your character. Where some seem to just be included because they are fun references, others can all but decide the result of a match. An example of the latter is placing an electricity field that covers the entire bank/base of the opposite team, making it almost impossible to cash in your Wumpas without taking serious damage (and with that losing some fruit). It's possible to destroy it, but few characters are able to do that without getting hurt. To put it simply: there aren't enough counters for what the other players are doing, so each match's result is more often than not decided within the first minute.

Leveling up and getting access to new characters and abilities doesn't alleviate that much either when most of the best stuff is available early on and they still don't change the flow of a match in a significant way. The same tactics that worked the first hour will be just as effective after twenty.

That's without a doubt one of the reasons why there's a battle pass rewarding us with different cosmetics for completing specific challenges. Quite a few of these made me laugh, but only a handful are noticeable when playing. And what's the point of giving them different rarities when most of it can be obtained in the linear progression system? Crash Team Rumble isn't a free-to-play mobile game, but this sure makes it seem like one by trying to exploit our lizard brains that are looking at the pretty colours and want to impress other by wearing rare stuff.

Such a shame when the core of Crash Team Rumble is a lot of fun with an engaging concept, cool-looking levels, thrilling score-chases and heart-pounding chaos unfolding on the screen. The problem is that this isn't enough when there's no depth or variety in there to keep it engaging for more than an hour or two. Top that with pretty unbalanced characters and abilities right now, and I think it's safe to say this game will be forgotten even before September's anticipated games arrive.