User blog:TyrantRex/TyrantRex's thoughts on Crash Bandicoot

Note: This isn't a proper review, but rather my thoughts and opinions on the game!

I recommend listening to this while reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhl_cOqGoT0

Background
I'll say this right now, this is gonna be a very biased one. Can't help it, I've been playing this game since I was 8 and have beaten it like 10 times, even though I could never 100% until two years ago... Either way I'll be looking at the N. Sane Trilogy remaster and the Nintendo Switch port.

had already 100%ed Crash N. Sane on my brother's PS4 but I got the trilogy again on Switch because I couldn't help it.

The Game
Crash 1, one of the pioneers of 3D platformers and the unofficial mascot of the PS1, does this game really need explaining? I think most everyone knows about it, and it's dated compared to its sequels like the wonky jumping or the clumsy save system, so instead I'll mostly go over what the remaster fixes, a minor difference I noticed between the Switch and PS4 versions, and why everyone who called this "the Dark Souls of platformers" sucks at platformers.

So what does the N. Sane version fixes compared to the PS1 version? Well... 'EVERYTHING! 'Yeah, pretty much everything wrong with Crash 1 is fixed in this remaster. The first and most obvious, Gem collecting. I always hated how Gems work in Crash 1, on top of breaking every box you also have to beat the whole level without dying a single time, that's bad design and straight up artificial difficulty, it's also the reason why I could never 100% Crash 1 until recently. Simply put, the tricky precise nature of Crash 1's level design and how long some levels are made getting Gems a nightmare because 1 tiny mistake and you're repeating a 5 minute long gauntlet all over again. On the remaster, 'you can die and still get the Gems! ' This single change makes the game infinitely better and far less frustrating to complete. The only exception is the six color gems, however only three color gems are in fairly difficult levels so it's not that big of a deal and a fair trade if you ask me. Even with Slippery Climb the hardest level in the game, it's not that hard.

The second, Jumping. Every review of Crash 1 I find seems to point out that the jumping is very heavy and depth percetion gets you killed constantly, and to that I always say "Really? I never had any problem with jumping". People say it's hard to know where you're going to land a jump and that the jumping is too floaty, in fairness those two are valid concerns but there's a very easy solution that most don't seem to know. When I make jumps in this game I do two things: With this little trick, you always know exactly where Crash is going to land at all times and will almost always get enough time in the air to reach the platform. True this takes some practice to get used to and I've had over a decade to practice it so it's not fair to expect newcomers to get this right away, but once you get the hang of it making precise jumps on small platforms in rapid succession is absolutely no problem at all. When it comes to the remake Crash's jumping was adjusted to be less floaty and heavy, it's much better but people now say that having less time in the air along with Crash's new hitbox makes it too easy to slip off platforms. To that I say: The looking-at-the-shadow trick still worked perfectly fine with no problem, once again if you hold the jump button you'll still get enough jump distance to line up Crash's shadow with the intended platform. Really, there were only two times in the entire game where I slipped off a platform and both times I jumped too early during a Time Trial.
 * I keep the Jump button held down at all times during the jump, if you hold down the jump button Crash makes longer jumps.
 * I don't look at Crash while in the air, instead I look at Crash's shadow . Once Crash's shadow is neatly lined up with the platform I want to jump on, I let go the D-Pad/analog stick, at that moment Crash stops his momentum and lands on where the shadow is.

The "slippery jumping" isn't the only reason people called this "dark souls", the other seems to be "Ohtheleveldesignistoodifficultthere'snomarginforerrorIdieconstantlyinsertmorewhining!". Whenever I see people complain that the game is too hard and they have footage it seems to me that they're just playing badly. Crash 1's level design is all about timing and precise jumps, people seem to play recklessly and not try to be precise when jumping. The simplest trick here is to be patient and take your time, most of the time when looking at a tough jump you can simply stop running and wait for the right time to jump, with this stop-n'-go method making tricky jumps is not a problem. Once again, I know I'm being kinda unfair because I know every single one of these levels inside out so I already know how the obstacles and timings work, but really people it's not that hard to prepare and get the right timings, most of the time you can clearly see what you're supposed to land on and how you're supposed to do it.

The other supposed source of "dark souls difficult" is the new Time Trials. That I can partly agree on, Crash 1 is built around slower paced precise platforming so speedrunning sounds counterproductive and in some cases it can be, however here's the catch: this is only a problem when going for Platinum relics which you don't need! I only got two Sapphire relics in the entire game, all the rest where gold, and in every case there were times where I stopped and waited before making some jumps. The time limits for Gold and Sapphire Relics seem forgiving enough and really you just need Sapphires. It never took me more than 10 minutes to get any of the Relics either.

The last thing people complain about is the hitboxes, now when I played the PS4 version I did have many times where hitboxes didn't seem to work as intended, however in the Switch version hitboxes were never a problem, they always worked just fine and I never had a cheap death due to bad hit detection. I don't know if hit boxes were fixed for the rerelease or if I'm just a super pro... it's most likely the former.

So enough me trying to justify the supposed "tough difficult that is actually people suck at the game" by pointing out that I know every little detail of this game, what did I think of my revisit to Crash 1 remastered? It's funny, when I started the playthrough I had a "Let's get this over with and get on to the good parts" mentality, Crash 1 was never my favorite and I did have some issues in the PS4 version, but I was very surprised at how smoothly everything went this time and how much I found myself actually wanting to do everything. I've always felt that if you're forcing yourself to go through a game you're not enjoying it *cough*SA2*cough*, but I never felt like I was forcing myself to replay Crash 1, even with Crash 2 and 3 right next to it both of which I consider to be superior, I still wanted to voluntarily keep going with Crash 1.

Dumb "Dark Souls" complains aside, it's amazing how much a few changes can improve a 20 year old game and how having those issues fixed shows that Crash 1 is still a well designed platforming game. With that said, can the Spyro remake please fix Spyro 1?