the earliest episode of reviews on the run had 4 reviews featured: mario 64, tomb raider, crash bandicoot and sega soccer 97. i wanted to cover one of these as to play one game covered in every episode of the show as it re-airs, as the re-air is starting with episode one rather than the pilot i figured i would have this published alongside episode 1 to stay a little ahead of things. i'd already played mario 64 and tomb raider, i had considered replaying tomb raider for this since i do love the game, but i figured i should try a new game for me and so i went for the most interesting of the two games i hadn't played: crash bandicoot.

crash i really didn't expect to love as much as i did because before this my only real exposure to the series was the xbox 360 game "mind over mutant' which was a game that had some great ideas but didn't leave an impresson on me at all but the charm and love in this game in almost every corner is off the charts and it's easy to find yourself falling for it too. crash himself is adorably animated, paranoid and scared and he's just so cute, but in an edgier way than even sonic at the time and i much prefer his design and animations here versus what i've seen of the later games made, he just suits being a cute lil guy more i think. it's a cute looking game in general, lots of detail in the levels with wildlife, some really cute critter enemies and the levels in general feeling really alive with the amount of movement in them, the low poly look just vibes really well with the style and setting and the jungles and rivers especially look amazing to me, there's even some really good looking rain later on, some of the later levels are a little less interesting to me though, the industrial stuff and the castle just isn't really all that cool compared to the earlier jungles, tribal villages and temples, these levels also have another big issue that hurts the game for me but i'll get into that later, game's pretty basically and it also sounds great too, all timer platformer ost, the main theme is catchy and iconic for a reason but my favourite ended up being the river level and the rolling circle's (idk what to call them, not the boulder but the jungle traps) level music, super good stuff, even the boss themes are really catchy, the latter super reminded me a lot of their later jak games with the instrumentation and the former just sounds nice to me, very kids licenced games-core music :), it was composed by josh mancell and he also composed for both the jak games and the really funny johnny nemonic pc game, check that one out it's FMV gold.

the gameplay is, maybe more of a mixed bag for me, kind of, i think how the game plays is great, the levels are all really well designed and mostly very fun, mostly, the game has two things which i do really dislike, for a start the difficulty is way too high on the games final island, for the first two islands i would have called the game tough but fair, bu a few levels into the final island the games just goes far too far with the difficulty to the point many of the levels just aren't fun to play to me, especially when combined with the other thing i dislike, the lives system, i died 20 or so times per level and some of these levels have very few checkpoints and nowhere near that many lives in them, and with the saves being tied to bonus levels and not every level having one, you can see why i opted to use a cheat to unlock every level at this point in the game, i don't think i could have beaten this otherwisem same with unlocking the bonus levels which were also very difficult. despite these issues the game is really fun though! it's very similar to what i think the purest form of a traditional 2D platformer would be like in 3D, you run from start to finish, you have a basic spin attack and you have wumpa fruits as this games coins for extra lives which you can get via crates which you can bash on or jump on and use as platforms, it's simple and it works, the game was basically a pioneer in the genre, the levels aren't all simple though, there's gimmicks, some good like the fun boulder levels, or the darkness levels or the river levels, some iffy ones like the differing pathways or the temples and some downright unfun ones like the rain level or the hog levels, but i can give it a pass since there wasn't a blueprint for this stuff and i respect them for trying, plus even in the levels that don't work, the ideas themselves were solid, i just don't have the skill for them.

it's also a short enough game at about 6 hours, less if you have skill or cheat faster than i did and i'd reccomend it, it's a classic and beyond the difficulty it's a lot of fun to play, full of charm and heart. you already know it had tons of sequels which i do hope to get to some day and the kart racer spinoffs seem pretty cool too, there was even a remake trilogy but i'm not so sure on it. i think aesthetically it looks much worse and the look of the game is a large part of the charm for me, but it does have some cut levels as dlc which is very cool and it even includes the time trials from crash 3. naughty dog too don't really need to be talked about, they're still one of the industry's most successful devs even now and i've talked about a bunch of their games already and i'll probably continue to, i loved jak and TLOU2. one also interesting thing of note is that this is an early mark cerny joint, you may know him from things like knack, marble madness, kid chamelion and some other smaller stuff, no big deal really.

the reviews on the run this was featured in is interesting to me really for the games picked, both because they're good games and for what they represent, the games both represent the companies of the systems they released for and for what they meant to their genres. crash for example represented a more linier 2D style take on the 3D platformer, something different to the more open free roaming style of mario 64 or the later likes of gex and vexx or the more mature cinematic style in tomb raider that would come to dominate the last generation of games these days and segas sports game showcases the sega style of sports, something they would dominate in for the saturn and the dreamcast. they also represent the consoles well, sega's focus for arcade style games on the saturn, sony's more edgy take on the platformer where nintendos was more family friendly, two audiances they would try and court for that generation, showed even more by the addition of tomb raider which went for a more mature audiance than any of the other three games with its more sexualised MC and its violence. episode 1 had a similarly themed portion of reviews on the run featuring mostly flight games for the systems and pc but with sega's game being an arcade racer, sadly i have played that game and while i loved it, i would rather cover one of the flight games next week because it's in a series i've never really played, so i'll cover star fox 64 before the next episode.