For a very long time, this was my most hated video game. I had just gotten into the Crash Bandicoot games, and to me, this game was pure blasphemy. Looking back, it seems strange that I got so worked up over the game. There are games to get angry about, like the recent Final Fantasies, Mass Effect 3, and Resident Evil 6 but those are serious games with serious fanbases. Crash Bandicoot was slowly crumbling after Naughty Dog left the series and I think it's safe to say that public interest was waning.
In hindsight, I can sort of see why this game came out the way they did. Radical Entertainment wanted to reinvigorate interest in the series and to do that they needed to reinvent a few things. Granted, even today I don't like the direction they went in as it is decidedly not Crash Bandicoot, but the heart was definitely in the right place.
I suppose I should start on how my hype began for this game. It was the Christmas of 2004; I was seven years old and had gotten Crash Twinsanity, the first Crash game I ever played. I fell in love with the game, and even today it's my favorite in the series. Playing the game does get depressing once you learn what was happening behind the scenes and how much content was cut from the game that may never see the light of day, but not only is Crash Twinsanity the best Crash game, but it is also the Best Unfinished Game Ever Made.
Fast forward a few years; my family are walking out the theater, though what movie we saw I can't remember, when I saw a commercial for a new game, Crash of the Titans. I had long beat Twinsanity and had already sunk my teeth into Crash: Tag Team Racing, so needless to say I was pretty excited.
However, I didn't see any gameplay from the commercial. I had only caught the end part where the title is brought up. If I had actually seen any gameplay I think I would have never played the game as long as I lived.
Some time later I was at a friend's house when I noticed he had the game. Of course I requested to play it. I played a couple of levels and I was getting angry. Very, very angry. This wasn't Crash. It felt nothing like Twinsanity gameplay-wise and certainly didn't resemble it in any way shape or form. I probably would never have touched the game again if my brother didn't get it for his birthday party some time later.
I decided for the purpose for this post that I would play the game for a bit to remember what it was like. Surprisingly, I hadn't touched the game in nearly 5 years, the last time I played it being in 2009. But enough beating around the bush, let's get to the game.
I s'pose I should start with the most obvious thing; the redesigns.
As I said, I disliked the redesigns immensely as a kid and I still don't really care for them now. Some of them are alright, like N-Gin and Coco, but others, like Uka-Uka and Tiny,are just awful.
By the way, that tiger in green at the far right? That's Tiny. You know, this guy?
...I have no comment.
Speaking of unnecessary change, Crash actually speaks...sort of. He talks in the same garbled nonsense he used in Tag Team Racing except now it's his legitimate way of communication. I didn't mind it so much in TTR because Crash wasn't really speaking to anyone, he was just making stupid sounds, sort of like Team Racing in a way. In Titans, Crash is actually conversing using those sounds, and yes characters do respond as if he were speaking English. My general impression of Crash was that he was a silent buffoon; his actions did the talking for him, which was what made Twinsanity so funny.
But what of the gameplay? The most important element in a video game? Well, Titans plays out as a beat-em-up platformer. You run through levels that are even more linear than the original games' and occasionally beat up hordes of enemies. The platforming itself is alright; Crash's jumping feels clunky at times but it's not a game breaker. I will say that the platforming is MUCH easier than the previous games; falling into bottomless pits only takes away some health so you're less likely to lose a life from missing a jump. It's also less inspired; platforming sections are largely made up of copy-and-pasted bits from other platformers and some parts feel a little like Super Mario Sunshine.
Where the game falls flat however is the combat. To this day, it mystifies me why combat was ever considered to be a main element for a Crash game. Fighting enemies was never that complex; you spin at the right time and the bad creature goes away, but it was never the focus. As a kid I hated the combat because it wasn't Crash. Now though...it's just flat out uninteresting and even a little unpolished. Crash will always target whatever's closest to him which can lead to the issue of him not attacking who you want to attack. Also, whenever Crash performs a combo, he always stumbles a little as if he put all his weight into the attack. Not only does this leave him wide open for further attack, but it also makes combat feel clunky as well. Outside of that though, there's not really a lot to say about it. You can collect Mojo to unlock new abilities, but that's in virtually every modern brawler. Really, the only other noteworthy thing to say is that you can unlock an ability called, "Old Skool" (yes, with a "k"), which is just the spin attack. At first, Crash can't do the spin for very long because it makes him dizzy (which never stopped him from doing the death tornado in Warped and Wrath of Cortex but whatever), but if you collect enough Mojo, you can spin infinitely, which honestly isn't as cool as you'd think, especially since a good chunk of the enemies, especially the Titans, start abusing their block privileges by the end of the game.
Oh yeah, I should probably bring up the Titans. Now, the Titans are a cool concept; each one has its own separate power and are mostly unique in design. There's one that can summon spikes, one that's a combination between a scorpion and a gorilla, and one with ice powers. However, all the Titans ever amount to is as a massive crutch in combat. They make smaller enemies a joke and the other Titans insignificant now that you're riding one of them. Even then, Titans are separated into 3 distinct camps: basic sized Titans, projectile-firing Titans, and large lumbering Titans that can only be weakened by another Titan. Even then, the only Titan that actually felt unique in any way was this one that could roll into a ball and crush everything. The rest are basically carbon copies of their respective camps, which definitely leads to further disappointment. There's a Titan that's essentially a giant bat, so you'd expect it to fly, right? Well joke's on you, it can't. All it can do is perform basic combos like most of the other Titans.
Using the Titans outside of combat wouldn't be implemented until Mind Over Mutant, which for the record I actually tried out. I don't know whether it was because my anger over Titans had subsided or if it was actually a better game, but I sort of liked the game. I only rented Mind Over Mutant, but maybe someday 5-10 years down the road I'll purchase it to complete the collection.
I never finished Crash of the Titans. Not out of hatred or spite, but because I couldn't, and still can't, finish it. Even though I hated it as a kid, something compelled me to keep playing, and I did make it far into the game. What made me stop was Uka-Uka, who is quite possibly the cheapest boss in the entire Crash series. When I briefly played this game in preparation for this post, I took another shot at it, and lo and behold I still can't do it, and I'm the guy who beat Castlevania.
In order to beat Uka-Uka, you have to jack him first, then destroy one of the three pieces of the Evolvo-Ray. However, Crash's fists won't do squat, so you have to jack one of the nearby swarm of Titans. I'm not kidding, enemies come pouring in from every angle in infinite numbers. There are two Titans in particular; the aforementioned bat and an eel that fires electricity. Problem is, neither Titan is effective in this scenario. The eel will auto-aim at the nearest target which chances are won't be Uka-Uka, so you're gonna have to manually aim. The manual aim sucks; you hold down one of the shoulder buttons to bring up an aiming reticle, but the sensitivity is way off and barely fires where you're aiming half the time. You'd think you'd be better off using the bat, but the problem is Uka-Uka constantly blocks so you'll have to find an opening, which is easier said than done considering the swarm of enemies. Even worse, Uka-Uka has some of the strongest projectiles in the game; just a few hits will kill a Titan. Not only that, but he has an attack which can knock Crash off the Titan, which can get irritating when you think you've got him pinned.
The farthest I ever got on this fight was destroying the first part of the Evolvo-Ray. I literally cannot beat this game.
Honestly though, I find it harder and harder to actually care about this game. I remember a while back I watched Movie Bob's review of The Phantom Menace and he said that, while he was angry when the movie came out, now he sees it as a below average film. That's pretty much the same story with me. I just can''t find it in me to care anymore. Things that once made me angry now just don't even grab my interest. And that's the way my interest crumbled, not with a bang, but a whimper (boom, "The Hollow Man," haha).
However, despite my apathetic feelings towards it now and my hatred of it as a kid, Crash of the Titans was extremely influential. The following year, I asked for the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy for my birthday, and although I only got the first two games, that birthday still stands out in my mind as one of the most special days of my life. It also marked the point when I began to shift more towards retro games. I began to play older games out of preference, which led to me purchasing more SNES games as well. I do play modern games, but I don't play them nearly as often as I do games from the early-90's to mid 2000's.
The other thing I feel I should bring up is that I wrote a letter to Radical Entertainment. In hindsight, the letter was extremely immature and was almost on par with the kind of crap you find on Internet forums when the brats and trolls take over. I whined that this wasn't Crash Bandicoot and that they're ruining the series. I probably didn't deserve a response considering the rude things I said, not to mention I live in Georgia and Radical is situated in Canada, so it probably wouldn't have been worth writing back.
But to my surprise, they responded several months later. And it was handwritten.
I don't know the current whereabouts of the letter, and if I do find it I'll make sure to update this post, What I will say is that they were more understanding than they had any right to be and they promised that Crash would win me back with what they had in store. Unfortunately, after Mind Over Mutant, I never heard anything Crash related besides rumors.
Then this piece of information came out.
Specifically, this was a cancelled game for the DS that started and ended development sometime in 2010. It was meant to take the series back to its roots. I don't mean to toot my own horn, especially since I don't know where the letter is, and let's face it, you have every right not to believe me because I don't have proof, but somehow I feel like I caused it. I feel like I contributed toward something that could have potentially been the next big step for Crash, but it was already cancelled by the time news of it came out. There's something simultaneously happy and tragic about this. On one hand, they never gave up on Crash and had big plans for it, but on the other hand, we still haven't seen anything substantial come out for about 6 years.
I guess that about wraps up my experience with Crash of the Titans, a remarkably depressing moment not just in my life but Crash's life as well. I do hope that Crash can come back someday, maybe not as big as he once was but at maybe have some sort of presence, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Honestly, there's something bittersweet about writing this post. I can finally let go of the whole Titans mess, but it's stuck with me for nearly a decade, not to mention the sheer influence it's had on me as a gamer. Not to mention looking at where the series went after this one...yeah, it's kinda sad actually. Oh well, the past is the past.
