The Final Word game review

Crash Bandicoot -- Naughty Dog/Sony Computer Entertainment

Jungle mayhem is unleashed on the world in Sony's Crash Bandicoot. Crash is out to save his girlfriend from the mad scientist, can you help? Guide Crash through lushiously colored 3-D levels. Use your wits to avoid the most dangerous of perils, and if you're lucky you'll survive to the end of this exciting new action-platform game.

????
This game had great potential, it could have been a really great game, it could have been... Graphically this game was very impressive, the use of detail and lush color made it jump out at you. Yes, the game is 3-D, however you are very restricted in your movements by the stages. The music and sound effects are very fitting to the game. Gameplay is where it suffers most; the controls are relatively easy to learn, however there is nothing you can do about the collision counters. Unless of course you prefer these unseen challenges; standing on a pit and falling through solid ground, making a jump and realizing that the pit literally stretched, trying to jump between two rolling stones and getting hit by them a few steps away from them. A cheesy approach was taken to extend longevity. After you go through most of these levels you find out that you must go through them all again in order to pick up any items you missed. Overall, this game is poorly made and shouldn't even be considered competition for Mario 64.

R.I.P.
The more I played this game, the angrier I became. The more I played this game, the more the other staff feared I would crush my console into a billion pieces. The more I played this game, the lower my opinion of Naughty Dog dropped... oh, wait, they did /team-0/final_word/3do/way_warrior.html">Way of the Warrior... I guess my opinion can't drop much lower than rock bottom. Sure this game has absolutely beautiful graphics, and catchy music, but on the other side, it was horribly predictable, and somebody... somebody... AH! Somebody can't do basic math!!! Or at least... oh forget it. Look, if you're really REALLY into 2-D platform games shot from funky angles where the scene presented by the moving camera angle many times has little to do with where the objects on the screen actually are, AND you like beating your head on a stucco wall until it bleeds, then by all means, buy this game. Sony, you need to watch a few more Sprite commercials... "Image is nothing...".

>>>>> 27.5/50 <<<<<		????	R.I.P.
Graphics		4.5	4.0
Sound		4.0	4.0
Gameplay/Control		1.5	1.0
Longevity/Playability		3.0	1.0
Overall		2.5	2.0
Total		15.5	12.0

(10/96)