Sincerely, a 34-year-old male who finds most MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games monotonous and boring. When Crash Team Rumble was confirmed at the Game Awards last December, I decided to write a story about some of the other announcements. I think that’s an important fact because it makes it all the more surprising and impressive that I had so much fun trying it out for two hours.
One of the main reasons for this is that the Toys for Bob development team already showed in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s about time they knew what Crash and Co. are like and behave, and all this on this new shipment transfer. Whether you’re hanging around as Crash, sucking things up with Dingodile, wrecking things with the female version of Doctor Nefarius Tropy’s staff, or playing one of the other five playable characters, everything seems to handle and feel good to very good. Something fundamental in a game where you have to run and jump to collect wumpa fruits, bring them to your base and prevent the other team from doing the same.
Advertising:
It obviously helps that each map is, in short, a symmetrical three-level Crash Bandicoot level inspired by smaller MOBAs, with a few high platforms or cliffs between the flatter areas, mostly in bright and colorful environments. They also have quirky large and small effects that can be activated by offering relics on special platforms. These effects range from turning into a beach ball or being able to jump higher, to a sandstorm that blinds the other team’s vision or turns your team into powerful giants. Great ideas that make the game come alive a few times per game but doesn’t stop the experience from becoming monotonous after a while.
Because I wasn’t lying in the first paragraph when I said I had a great time for two hours… but I tested it for almost four hours. I started to feel how many games went the same way. Yes, it’s true that you have some variety when choosing one of the three available classes: Annotators (can carry more wumpa fruit at a time and otherwise have normal attributes), Blockers (slower characters but powerful, whose goal is the to prevent the enemy team from advancing) and power-ups (fast characters that collect twice as many relics used to activate effects and activate the gem platforms that increase score faster). However, even their special moves and abilities aren’t enough to really change things, especially when some of the characters are much more powerful than others.
The fact that Crash is an excellent scorer himself might be a nice touch considering this is his franchise, but it’s not much fun to secure 1,300 of the 2,000 wumpa fruit it takes to do that to win often. On the other hand, the opposing team has hardly done anything, since a character or class change is not possible in the middle of the game. I just had to keep walking the same path while their extremely slow blockers couldn’t keep up or took too long to slow me down.
Advertising:
One of the reasons it would take a lot of work to stop me is that fighting a player of the same class as yours is hit or miss as both players keep pressing the normal or special attack button hoping that the other dies a millisecond before you. It’s not a game of tactical thinking or intelligent counterattacks. Just jump or run around your opponent and try to hit them without getting hit yourself.
On the other hand, there is the opposite problem when facing another class. Poor Crash doesn’t stand a chance against a decent Dingodile (blocker) as it’s not slow enough to be easily outplayed or can just suck you into its vacuum. Power-ups also prove nearly useless when scorers are able to quickly conquer gem platforms and the few relic-triggered effects are powerful enough to make a difference.
This also applies to special abilities that you can bestow on your character. While some appear to be included purely because they are entertaining references, others can almost decide the outcome of a game. For example, if your opponents place an electric field that covers their entire base, it will be almost impossible for you to raise your wumpas without taking a lot of damage (and losing some fruit as a result). It’s possible to destroy it, but few characters manage to do so without getting hurt. In short, there isn’t enough action to counter what the opponents are doing, so the outcome of the game is usually decided in the first minute.
There’s also little point in leveling up or gaining access to new characters and abilities since most of the best features and other items are available immediately and don’t even significantly change gameplay. The same tactics that worked for you in the first hour of play will be just as effective after twenty.
This is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why there is a Battle Pass that rewards us with different aspects for completing certain challenges. Some of these make me laugh, but few of them stand out while playing. What’s the point of offering different rarities that are mostly available in the linear progression system? Crash Team Rumble isn’t a free mobile game, but this game that tries to take advantage of our lizard brain, which fixates on pretty colors and pretends to impress others by wearing unusual things, will make you look like one of them.
That’s a shame, especially considering that the main idea behind Crash Team Rumble is fun, with an attractive concept, very nice-looking levels, exciting point-chasing games, and fast-paced on-screen mayhem. The problem is that if there isn’t any variety or depth, all of this isn’t enough to sustain interest for more than a few hours. If we add to that some rather unbalanced characters and abilities, we can say that this game will be forgotten even before the long-awaited games come out in September.
