For Pete's sake, developers, will you quit messing with the classic Crash formula?! That's all I have to say about this one. In my opinion, Crash of the Titans gets the Unused Potential Award of the Year. The first thing you'll notice about this game is how different everything looks and feels. In this game, you have 20 different "episodes" to get through, some of which have bosses. Nothing weird so far, right? Well, this game introduces something new…12 different enemies called "Titans", which are mutants that you can "jack" (i.e. take control of). The problem is, in order to jack a Titan, you first have to beat it into submission, which is very difficult to do for some of them (namely the Battler and the Ratcicle), and some Titans, such as the Scorporilla and the Shellephant, can only be attacked if you have a "freejack mask" or are riding another Titan. Jacking Titans is the focus of the game, and while being able to control mutants like these is very cool (who doesn't like riding on a huge half-scorpion-half-gorilla thing while beating the snot out of anything that comes near you?), at several points in the game, I found myself frustrated, because there were just too many Titans to deal with. You have to pummel one Titan constantly to jack it, or its "star meter" will go down, and you have to fill the star meter completely before the beast is ready to be jacked. Many times, while I tried to focus on one Titan, two or three more beat me up, and if I diverted my attention even slightly, the Titan I was trying to beat up would get me right back and his star meter would quickly go down. You can block some attacks, but Crash's block is worse than useless: rare are the times when a Titan's claws or fists don't get through just because I happen to be blocking. Worse still, if the Titan blocks your attack, you have to use a charged-up heavy attack, the "block breaker", to hit them, and it's almost a guarantee that the Titan will land several hits long before you can charge up enough to break the block. Someone like me who is not used to combat games will use up lots of time and lives trying to figure out how to attack one Titan and avoid the rest at the same time, even on the easiest difficulty setting. There are other enemies in the game besides Titans, known as "minions". The problem is, each of the five areas has one type of minion and one only, so you'll be sick of the same cookie-cutter bad guys before you even finish the first stage. Several of the bosses of this game are basically extra-large Titans, so you have to jack them as well. In fact, you'll face the same problems trying to jack the bosses, only compounded. On the fourth boss, if I hadn't practically begged my brother to play 2-player with me, and if he hadn't figured out a strategy for defeating this boss, I could have been stuck there losing lives all week. The second and third "bosses" don't even have actual bosses! You're just in a room with Tiny Tiger or N. Gin pulling the strings, and guess what, you have to fight off more bad guys! Seriously, that's practically all you do in this game is fight, fight, fight! If I had to summarize this game in one sentence, it would be this: While this game may still be fun, and controlling huge monsters is almost guaranteed to be awesome, it just doesn't have the magic touch that the first few Crash games had; anybody who was hoping for another top-notch platformer will be sadly disappointed. Pretty much, this game is cool, but it could be a whole lot cooler, not to mention less repetitive and more user-friendly.
Crash's last otuing Crash Boom Bang! probably disappointed many fans of the series. Twinsanity was okay, but it was too short and the glitches were quite frustrating. Tag Team Racing I considered even worse due to the fa... Read Full Review
The Good: -Superb presentation, artistically and technically -Loads of cool monsters to take control of and use in combat -Levels look great -Cutscenes are hilariously funny and involve all of Crash's friends and en... Read Full Review
