The story of Wrath of Cortex revolves, once again, around the misadventures of Dr. Neo Cortex (and if the title of the game didn’t tip you off…then I don’t know what to say), attempting to take over the world and defeat Crash Bandicoot. This time, Cortex has Crunch, a giant Bandicoot with the ability to speak coherently instead of look like a compete vegetable like Crash, to put and end to Crash and his sister Coco. Along with the help of 4 elemental masks (Water, Earth, Wind, & Fire, you know the 70’s rock band), Cortex has the odds stacked in his favor. Of course, Crash & Coco get wind of this plan (I’m fairly sure Crash broke wind actually), and go out to stop it. The mission: defeat Crunch, Cortex, and the masks, just so we can have another Crash game. Crash Bandicoot: Now Cortex Is Really Freakin’ Pissed would be a good one.

Anyone who’s played a Crash Bandicoot game before will be right at home – especially those who played Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Because basically that’s what this game is. All the elements of Warped are in place: Crash goes around collecting crystals (check), collecting gems by making sure to break all the boxes or by not dying and taking the Death Roads (check), and do the always entertaining time trials for those cool relics (check). The formula is the exact same, right down to the level themes, be it underwater, in an airplane, or being chased by a gigantic something. It’s a good thing Universal owns the whole series because Naughty Dog could make a killing on copyright infringement.

Crash is split into 5 separate areas, each with 5 levels inside them, for a total of 25. There’s also a hidden 6th hub with 5 more levels, which you have to unlock. This is, of course, the same exact pattern of play with Warped. You start out with one open, and as you defeat all the levels and beat the boss, new ones are unlocked. This does add a slight bit of non-linearity to the game, but it’s still very linear in structure.

However (insert gasping), there is something new in this game; well something never done in a Crash game before. For one, Coco Bandicoot is playable in full. Not like the last game where she was riding a tiger or a Jet-Ski, but actual hopping & bopping platform levels. Her moves aren’t much different than crash (though her somersault jump is cool), so playing as the brains of the family (but someone with a 10 IQ could handle that task) isn’t much different. Also, Crash gets to play Super Monkey Ball a little bit, rolling around in a hamster wheel (no, he’s not Harvey the Wonder Hamster), collecting fruit and avoiding the nitro crates. Also, Crash gets to drive a Jeep to avoid a herd of rhinos out to gore him & turn the brainless wonder into Bandicoot-burger. Besides that, if you’ve played Crash 3 you’ve played this game.

But as shocking as this sounds, WoC is actually…fun! Despite the lack of any originality whatsoever, the formula of collecting fruit, breaking boxes and collecting the masks still isn’t stale, and since the game plays so well, it feels fresh. The level design is mostly pedestrian and nothing truly memorable (unlike the downright kick-ass levels of Warped), but it’s not terrible either. The actual platform levels are still quite good (the wild west levels come to mind). Too bad there’s not enough of them.

Crash has plenty of moves at his disposal, and he controls them with ease. The usual spin, slide, crawl, and belly flop make a return, as well as a new tiptoe move to slowly walk across those nasty nitro crates. Each move is easy to perform and each move will be required to use in order to complete the game. My only complaint is sometimes being unable to line up right to hit overhead boxes, or make jumps right. More often than not you’ll die a lot before clearing a level. But that’s how platform games work.

However there’s 2 things also that hamper the gameplay. First off is the engine. Before summer, it was assumed that Crash would be a more open 3D form of gameplay, like Sonic Adventure is, if not fully 3D roaming. But that isn’t the case here at all. Instead the game follows the exact 2½-D pattern as the previous 3 Crash games. So the game remains “on rails” throughout. This isn’t necessarily bad, but just not delivering on a promise of a different style of gameplay.

Also, there are the load times. I rarely talk about load times – everyone complained that Max Payne had bad load times. I didn’t mind those at all. But this game…God. I feel like I’m aging before my eyes waiting for each level to load. And watching Crash fall through the sky while the game flashes “loading” isn’t exactly a way to entertain in-between (nor is when the sibling team bump each other around when switching characters). They are honestly horrendous and way too long. It takes 5 minutes JUST to get to the first level after you start up! Once you get past the title screen you have to wait for the loading screen, then load the game, wait, select a level, wait, wait, order pizza, eat pizza, wait, get ice cream, wait, and wait some more before the level is actually loaded. At least put the game on DVD-ROM to speed up the loading times! Thankfully I have some patience, or I wouldn’t get too far in this game.

Really, if the load times were cut down drastically this game would have fared much, much better. Because as fun as this game can get to be, despite the lack of innovation or creativity, the loading can get desperately annoying. What keeps the game going strong is the gameplay is still quite solid and worth playing. Barely.

Visuals are Crash’s strong point with this game – they’re downright dazzling in places. It’s a very colorful game (since it’s a cartoon style and everything), and it’s all in high-resolution, bringing jagged edges to their knees. The style is of course the same as previous Crash games. And as to be expected, there’s a lot of genuinely funny humor to be had here, with silly enemies and goofy death animations. And since each level looks different, there’s a lot of variety in what you see. However the visuals and engine do cause some problems when navigating, as I mentioned before. Lining up can be difficult due to a few flaws in the graphics.

Sound effects are great – too bad they’re all borrowed from Warped. Every last sound effect, from collecting fruit, to getting the crystals gems, all the same. Even hitting the checkpoints is the exact same effect. Obviously this means they aren’t too bad at all, just not original (however I can see ripping off level structure and such, but the sound effects??). The music in each level fits the theme, from weird medieval sounding music in the levels with the wizards and those sorts, wintery music for snow levels, and a western theme for that batch of levels. Most of it gets drowned out however, so you barely notice it.