Review #161: Crash - Mind over Mutant

 The worst Crash game so far, and the last one too!

 People give the post-Naughty Dog Crash games a lot of flak, but I tried them out, I played them and I can safely say that they are decent games, some even really good. Crash of the Titans was among the really good ones, the redesigns and new gameplay mechanics may have not sat well with everyone, but it was undeniably good. Mind over Mutant takes everything bad about Crash of the Titans and takes everything that was really good... and breaks it.

 Does story really matter in these games? Eh, might as well just go for it. N. Cortex is up to no good, again, and this time teams up with N. Brio to take over Crash's friends and finally destroy Crash. On the upside, the game has a good amount of cut-scenes, and they are all done with different animated styles, some ape South Park, some parody anime and their spikey hairs, among others. It was a good idea, except that the game isn't as funny as Crash of the Titans, it does have some funny jokes, but not as many as CotT. The supporting cast, such as N. Gin, Ninca Cortex, Coco and Crunch have much less screen time than before, probably having to do with the fact that the game goes by very fast.

 The game builds up from the last game, most of Crash's moves remain the same, except that he lost the Aku Aku Slide, has the Spin attack from the start and has a new Spin Jump, which is a glorified high jump and you just need to use it to reach high platforms, but never in a "challenging" way, so it's not as fun as it sounds. As with the last game, you can collect Mojo from broken object or fallen enemies, and every time you collect a certain a mount of Mojo, Crash levels up and gets some kind of buff. Titans are back, kinda, they are called Mutants now. Mutants are now a bigger part of the game than before, which I found pretty lame. On paper it sounds like a good idea, having more puzzles that require a Mutant, thing is, most Mutants aren't very fun to control, and even the decent ones aren't as fun to use as Crash. Since Mutants now play a bigger part in the game, you can now store one with you, by pressing R2, and level them up by collecting Mojo while riding one of them. Co-op is back, the second player being relegated to Carbon Crash(or Coco if you are playing on a 360, it's hilarious since Coco appears on the PS2 opening as the second player!).

 Another change I really disliked, is that the game now tries a "open-world" approach, quite like Twinsanity, but not as well. Twinsanity pulled it off relatively well, but here it has one major flaw: Backtracking. You'll go through places, back and forth, by the same exact route, many, many times. Near the end of the game you unlock warps to the four major areas in the game, but it takes you to designated places and you'll still need to walk. A lot. As "open" as the new world is, it's still a very linear game, you can't go to new places until the game opens them up for you, and instead of playing through chapters, the game is made up of 23 story mode missions and 50 missions. The 23 story missions go by in a flash, I was done with the game in less than four hours. Sure, you have the extra 50 missions, but most amount to little more than fat. If you want 100%, you are gonna have to defeat 75 of every common enemy, jack about 5 of each mutant, level up each mutant(Including the rare "hero" variations) to 5(takes a LONG time), level up Crash(Takes even longer), kill enemies in co-op(Yes, you need a second player to 100% the game). It feels as if 80% of the game is fat, retreading old ground over and over again, playing as the clunky Mutants and fulfilling tedious sidequests. It simply isn't much fun. Oh, and the fixed camera can get annoying.

 The game looks relatively good, but it feels as if it played it safe. There's another Forest area, another snow area, another Wasteland area and a new mountain(CotT's mountain wasn't dark like this one) area. By themselves, levels look pretty decent, but Crash of the Titans did them much, much better. Character models are fairly decent, even if the variety is rather small(There's what? 12 Mutants and 4-5 small enemy types). The soundtrack has widely different tracks, some are excellent, while others are just forgettable. Voice acting is phenomenal, even if the lines aren't gold, and I have to mention it... whenever you are close to a collectible, this annoying beep will start to ring, if you can't find the collectible, or reach it, you are gonna have a very annoying time as that vexing beep makes your ears bleed.

 What makes Mind over Mutant so disappointing is just how much Crash of the Titans got right. It wasn't perfect by any means, and it wasn't close to the bar set by Naughty Dog, but it was on the right track. And then came Mind over Mutant and spit all over Crash of the Titans. No bueno.
 4.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

 Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines! Raphael's cool but rude, Michelangelo is a party dude!

 The TMNT 2003 games by Konami are some of the games I remember most from the era, for some reason I really, really liked them, particularly Battle Nexus. So it's time to put those rose-tinted glasses to the test.

 There I was, on a break from studying, and I chose "Alright, let's do one stage with Mikey and call it a day". I quit, and just to check, I try to pick off where I left off.... nope, you've to finish a whole stage. That sucks. So I decided to have my first playthrough with Leonardo, and leave Mikey, my fave, for last.

 What can I say about the game itself? It's really repetitive, I'm playing on Normal but I'm considering switching to easy, y'see, the game isn't hard by any means(At least so far), but enemies take a whole lot of punishment and they come in rather large waves, which is a shame since the combat, while really simple, feels really good.

 And that's it for my first impressions, I kinda like it, but I wish stages wouldn't drag for so long.

Month Overview: October

Games finished in October:
 Assassins Creed 4                                                                9.0
 Dragon Ball Raging Blast 2                                                 8.0
 Castlevania Symphony of the Night                                    10
 Katamari Damacy                                                                8.0
 Megaman Star Force Dragon                                               6.0


 Slow month. I've no idea why, I wasn't particularly busy nor anything. Ah well, the few games I played were really, REALLY good. Can't ever go wrong with Symphony of the Night!

 Game of October:

 Yes, I did score Symphony of the Night higher. Yes, I would pick Symphony of the Night any day of the week over AC 4. But the fact is, it was the second time in the year I went through SotN, but it was the first time I played AC 4, and I really, really enjoyed it. It was pretty good, almost as good as  AC 2, Ubisoft did good.

Runner-up:

 No disrespect to the other games I played this Month, but Symphony of the Night is still Symphony of the Night.

Now Playing: Crash - Mind over Mutant

 'Tis that time of the year again

 Ya know, when the tests start piling up, so I have the need to start a lot of games, and so I do, and stuff? Yeah, that time.

 I'm up to mission 4, and just as with Crash of the Titans, it ain't anything special, but it's good. Post-Naughty Dog Crash games aren't as bad as people make them out to be, they haven't even been close to reaching the excellency that 2 and 3 displayed, but they haven't been terrible. Bah, Twinsanity had its fair share of flaws, but it made up for them in its boldness and creativity with the franchise. Ah, but I digress, Mind over Mutant is off to a good start!

Archile's Grab Bag: The Last one

 It's a shell of a timeeeeeeeeee!

 This is it! The last package of the year. WHAT SURPRISES COULD IT HOLD?!

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - Battle Nexus: I used to play this one on the PC, and I loved it, among all the TMNT games I've played, this was probably my favorite one. I watched and read some reviews the last couple of days, seems it wasn't well received, hopefully it's not a case of me being to young to realize just how bad it really was.

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 - Mutant Nightmare: Ah yes, the only one of the 2003 Konami entries I didn't play, probably since it was my PC Gaming period and this one didn't get a PC release, needless to say, I was having a blast with Konami TMNT games of the era, so I've longed to play it for some years now.

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: This one I played it on the PS2, I remember being kinda indifferent to it? Guess I'll have to see how's it held up today.

 TMNT - Mutant Melee: This one I played it on PC! It was the only TMNT game based on the 2003 cartoon that didn't make it to the PS2. I think... I think I liked this one, but found some things tedious, namely unlocking characters? Can't remember very well, but I do remember it causing my PC to struggle when too much stuff happened at the same time, heh.

  One Piece Grand Adventure: This is the thing that introduced me to One Piece. Kinda. The first game was One Piece Rumble Arena 3, and I fell in love with this Eneru guy, of course, the game was in Japanese and the Internet wasn't as readily available as it is today. I remember reading "Unlock Bon Clay" and of course I had no idea how he or she looked like, so unlocking characters was always a fun experience. Years later I would find out that it actually received an American release in the form of Grand Battle... but it was missing Eneru, among others, but I only cared about Eneru. Imagine my surprise when I found out that there actually was a sequel that reintroduced many of the elements that got lost in the translation, Eneru among them!

 Crash - Mind over Mutant: Crash of the Titans was surprisingly good, really! So good that I've been wanting to play the sequel, and last Crash game on a home console, for a while.

Now Playing: Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil edition

 Evil dies hard(I'm so bad,)

 There's no sidequests. NO. SIDE-QUESTS. DO YOU EVEN RPG, BRO? Customizable stat spread is gone. Really? Oh, and skills are earned as you level up, instead of having to pick them yourself. Passive skills can now be switched at any moment, so now deciding how to specialize your character doesn't feel important. Yet I'm having fun.

 Yes, it's fun, the Crusader looks badass, skills are pretty good looking(If a bit simple), and there's something about loot-based dungeon crawlers that I just love. I like it, but not entirely, at least so far. Oh well!

Unsung Marvels #5: One Piece - Unlimited Adventure

 I felt like writing, so I shall write. Sue me.

 Y'know what one of my favorite genres is? Metroidvanias/Castleroids. They are built upon the premise of "backtracking", which should be a huge no-no. A good Metroidvania makes the backtracking enjoyable. D'you know what kind of games usually suck? Licensed games. Here we have One Piece Unlimited Adventure, a Metroidvania based on an anime, and it's really good. For the most part.

 It's no secret that English is the best thing to happen to linguistics, however, dubs tend to get a bad rep, for some reason(I can only speak for Latin American dubs, and they were really good.), but I digress. Unlimited Adventure doesn't have dual audio, so you are stuck with the English dub. I really don't like the English dub, I mean, it's not awful, but... I really can't stand Luffy's voice. Now that that's out of the way, I can go on.

 Someone, for whatever reason, thought that it would be a good idea to make a Metroidvania out of One Piece. Incredibly enough, the idea was approved and Unlimited Adventure was made. The game works... mostly. Y'see, Metroidvanias, the good ones anyways, lock areas behind obstacles that require a certain ability. Maybe a far off platform that requires a double jump, maybe an obstacle that can only be broken with a special skill or weapon. One Piece offers these obstacles in the form of barriers that require... ingredients. Almost everything in the game drops ingredients, enemies, rocks, hitting trees to have their fruit fall, fishing(You can fish) and even bugs that need to be caught with a net... or having to mine minerals with a pick. These same ingredients can also be used to craft items, some for offensive purposes, healing items or just to enhance a character's HP or SP. This should spell doom for the game, it should be a bore having to grind and farm all these ingredients and elements, but... the core game gets so much right that it's easy to forgive. Plus, it ain't as bad as it sounds, I promise.

 Speaking of characters, on the Story Mode you get to play as all the 8 Mugiwaras at the time(Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin and Franky) and you can switch characters at any time, which will probably be a necessity as bosses can get rather tough. Sadly, having so many characters has a noticeable drawback, y'see the more you use a move the stronger it gets, so you'll probably have some really strong characters, the ones you play the most as, while others will wind up underpowered. You might be willing to switch characters as you play, but there's EIGHT characters, and the game is rather long, so you eventually you'll just give up on keeping them at similar levels. I found it easier to use train all characters until they get their full basic combos and then only train their special moves, while focusing on rotating between three characters(Unsurprisingly I chose the big three, Zoro, Sanji and Luffy(In that order)). These three were also the only ones I spent my ingredients in enhancing their HP and SP.

 Unlimited Adventure is gorgeous, and I do mean gorgeous, but it comes at a cost... the framerate tends to suffer when it gets crowded. After you are done with the Story Mode, you unlock the Colosseum(It might not be the correct name, sorry) in which you have to survive against a army of marines as any of the characters you have unlocked. To the game's merit, there's a ton of unlockable characters, including Pauly, Shanks, Whitebeard and Arlong.... but most of these characters have very limited movesets, in particular when compared to the Mugiwaras, which is really, really disappointing. What's the fun of using a character that has three or less measly attacks? There's also a Versus Mode, but it suffers from the same issue, characters besides the Mugiwaras have very limited movesets. For example, Crocodile has but three moves(A, AA and Waggle) while Eneru has four(A, AA, Air+A and Waggle)... then Calgara, a character with way less creen time than either has a moveset comparable to a Mugiwara Not cool!

 Did I mention waggling? I did. This is one of those rare Wii games that actually have a good control scheme. Yes, really! Waggling is only used for some special attacks, which makes it fairly unintrusive. The rest of the controls feel really good, A is your basic attack, B is jump, pressing both at the same time(A very easy task when holding a Wiimote) performs a dodge. Holding C and pressing an attack button performs an special attack, while double tapping C performs a dash. The directional pad is relegated to items(Picks, Nets, Healing or explosives) while the Minus button allows you to swap characters. Easy, simple, comfortable.

 So, if it's so good, why didn't it took off? I can only guess, which means I'm gonna speculate. Number 1, it was a Wii game and we know that the Wii didn't appeal to "hardcore" gamers(I hate the term, but in this case it saves time) while Metroidvanias are a rather obscure sub-genre of adventure games. Number 2, you think Metroidvanias are obscure? The West hates One Piece. While in Japan it's one of its most celebrated Shonens, it hasn't taken off in the West, for some reason. Number 3, Namco. The game had little promotion coupled with a small quantity of copies produced(Seriously, the price has skyrocketed on Amazon). You couple all of these together and you get, well, a rather obscure game. It's very worth it though(Although maybe not at the price Amazon is demanding),