Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, the game of the summer ?

One would almost tend to forget it because the thing was never really official,
but was a time when PlayStation had its mascot. Born in the 1990s, Sony's first home console has long sought a face. Or was it rather the players, who had the usual to connect Sonic to Sega and Mario to Nintendo. PlayStation had to have its mascot. Crash Bandicoot, the hero of a gaming suite named after him, became the first icon of the PlayStation. 21 years after its birth, Activision and Vicarious Visions pay him a beautiful tribute with a collection of remasters with the good taste of apples, and that Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy.

Difficult to separate the history of the first PlayStation from the sneakers of Crash Bandicoot. The marsupial invented by Naughty Dog quickly established itself as the flagship character of a console that was not lacking. How was this possible? No doubt because we were just emerging from the golden age of platform games, and obviously every manufacturer and publisher had to have in his toy library a platform featuring a nice anthropomorphic animal. Hedgehogs, cats, dogs, bats ... Crash, as a bandicoot (yes, this species really exists) responded to this demand, this habit. And then, the game was terribly pretty. With its colors, its dynamism, its polygons, Crash Bandicoot gave a very nice picture of the console. A cool game, for cool teens. Even dying was fun. The game has played so well on PlayStation that it has resulted in several sequels and spin-offs, such as the famous Crash Team Racing, a racing game very inspired by Mario Kart 64. The panty horned critter A lot of players, and of course, as she celebrated her 20th birthday last year, Activision could not miss out on such an opportunity. The American publisher however had the good idea not to remaster a game, but three. The first three, of course. And it was with great pleasure that we embarked on Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy.

A FIRST ORDER TECHNICAL REALIZATION

The N.Sane Trilogy offers you from the start to choose between one of the three Crash. Of course, we first went to the first game, but note that we could have started with the second opus, or even the third one: the player is free to attack the trilogy as he wishes. Anyway, it was by landing in the first level of Crash Bandicoot that we became aware of the visual success that this remaster. Actually, it would be more accurate to talk about remake, because Vicarious Visions never had the source code of 1996 and was forced to recreate everything from scratch. They literally recreated the game, from scratch. A real performance, a fortiori when you see the result.

The N.Sane Trilogy will certainly not remain in the annals of the history of the video game for its graphics, but the rendering is still very satisfactory. It's nice, it's cool, it's colorful, and most of all, it's true to the original games. Some players will think that the game is duller than before, and in fact they will be partly right. The current consoles are capable of displaying many more colors than a PlayStation, so developers use it to enrich and nuance the color palette of the three Crash Bandicoot. An evil for a good: one loses in fidelity what one gains in visual comfort, because our eyes of 2017 would probably not have supported the result. In 1996 we had appreciated the artistic direction of the title, the richness of its levels, the animations of the controlled character: we find all this 20 years later, and that is all that counts.

Crash Bandicoot 3 is probably the best, thanks to its travels in time and the variety of levels it allows. Middle Ages, Prehistory, Thousand and One Nights, Future, the developers have given themselves to heart joy, for a result satisfactory. Special attention was paid to the effects of light, all very successful, water apart. Whether represented as a puddle or as a wider sphere, the result is much more contrasted here. This is often quite a failure, especially in this level where we control Coco, in a jet-ski event that has weathered rather badly, by the way.

THE OLD POTS, THE BEST JAM?

This little miss on the phase of jet-ski should not worry you: the rest of the trilogy has it extremely well aged. While on the whole, the phases in the vehicle are not the most exciting, the phases of pure and hard platforms did not take a wrinkle. The layout of the traps, the timing, the use of space in level-design, everything is mastered, to give birth to a platform game very accessible but quickly demanding. This is all the more true as the jumps are slightly different, and it will be necessary to accompany them longer than before, keeping the dedicated key depressed. Once this little novelty integrated, one progresses rapidly in the levels, playing with the death which waits with each jump, with each crevasse, with each enemy.

Crash Bandicoot had this successful he managed to make death fun. As in the original game, each of your failures will be punctuated by a funny little animation, all of the original games. We have fun seeing crash carved, burnt, crushed ... Always with this spirit Tex Avery very marked. Crash Bandicoot has always been a cartoon, and it has not changed! The game demanded a lot from the player, but with well-placed checkpoints and very different behavioral enemies from one level to the next, the progression mixes challenge and discovery pleasure, to form an explosive cocktail, to which one quickly becomes addicted. Finally, only one thing annoys: jumps that sometimes lack precision, as if the joystick did not respond well. A tiny latency that in some cases could be fatal to you. And of course, it irritates a little.

Only the most hardcore players will try to make the best time, to break all the boxes, to find all the secrets: they have not been forgotten. With friends, we will pass the controller, trying to go as far as possible. Crash Bandicoot has not aged: the concept is too efficient, too controlled for it.

Of course, the N.Sane Trilogy has a definite advantage, of which it knows how to take advantage: it is the factor nostalgia. Very clearly, the game should suit everyone who had discovered it when it was released, or soon after. We talked about the graphics, but we could also talk about the hours of music, entirely reorchestrated for the occasion. Whether it is the main theme of the series or the soundtrack of the game, with its percussion or tribal sounds, the game quickly exerts a magical charm on anyone who experienced these games 20 years ago. Gemstones, apples, cases of TNT or Nitro to avoid, we find all these elements with a real pleasure, a pleasure that will undoubtedly escape those who at the time were too young or vague plans for their parents. The same goes for the villains of the game: those who loved the series and / or Crash Team Racing will inevitably be overwhelmed by nostalgia by confronting Tiny, Pinstripe, Papu Papu, Dingodile and others Dr. N. Gine and Ripper Roo. Characters that had been somewhat forgotten, for some, and that we rediscover with pleasure.

This nostalgia factor is not to be underestimated since if Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy carries three excellent platform games, the genre has evolved greatly since then, and it is possible that some players are not sensitive to the formula. Vicarious Visions decided not to touch anything, adding as novelty that the possibility of playing with Coco in the first two episodes. A bias that will appeal to some, where others might prefer a little more novelties. For our part, there is only one thing that we reproach the collection: to go from one episode to the other is not easy. As is, the player is forced to leave his level, return to the hub of the game concerned, and then return to the main menu. And thus to endure each time several times of loading. In terms of ergonomics, we will go back. Nothing dramatic of course, but the whole would have deserved more flexibility ...

Nostalgia is probably for something, but very objectively it is difficult not to recognize that these three Crash Bandicoot are excellent platform games. Certainly, 20 years later, they are less imaginative, less surprising, and the formula may even seem dated at times. But this science of timing and level-design, and the rhythm they impose on the player, have not disappeared. With its updated graphics, music and humor, Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy feels good holidays. The new players may still be hungry, but the fans of the series will rediscover with pleasure three games that they adored for good reasons. This kind of timeless pleasure is the mark of great games, and there is very little they can boast of such quality.

Good points :

-Pretty and respectful of original work
-The oldschool feeling
-Always as demanding
-Three games in one

Bad points :

-Slight latency on some jumps
-Moving from one game to another should be simpler

Note :
17/20