You see it everywhere: OMG, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is too hard! Is the Dark Souls of platformers! But back in the day, the average kid could finish each game on a single afternoon, and get the 100% the next one. I don't recall neither of the Crash games being particularly hard.
Furthermore, these games from the early 3D era were already gimped in difficulty compared to 16bit and 8bit days. The original G&G? Now that a hard game! NGII? For the average kid, reaching the final stage was a huge success, killing the last boss was for pros. Battletoads? Only the legitimate skilled and committed gamers could pass the third level, and it only got harder from there!
Nowadays, ADD is the only reason why someone wouldn't see the credits of modern games...
I like difficult games, it's why I own a Playstation 4 Pro, the only professional console on the market.
Not sure why people are complaining about Crash though, it has some challenge unlike say Ratchet and Clank or Kameo, but I wouldn't class it amongst really difficult games.
Well there were some who said DS 3 needed an easy mode, read some of the posts on reddit about that. It would not suprise me to find gamers today struggling with mildly challenging games of the past they're so used to having their hands held. I can understand kids struggling with games as they haven't developed yet but adults it's not hard to learn and become good. I used to be bad at Souls games now I'm a slaying machine.
The only thing that comes to my mind when Crash Bandicoot was hard during PS1 era was probably those Tank Controllers but even then, Crash wasn't that hard of a game to begin with.
@mjorh said:
"Crash Bandicoot is the Dark Souls of platformers"
Everyone knows that games are easier now a days than they were before. Back then, gaming was a niche that was played by "nerds" and "kids". Developers catered to that core small audience. Now a days, games are catered to a "wider" audience.
i dont remember crash being hard when i played it on the PS1. i remember getting stuck a bit for a few mins on the odd section but i would get past it.
i have to admit though that my platforming skills today are a bit pants and i think i would be dying more than i would when crash came out first. hollow knight has been sobering playing O_O. i am really really rusty.
They didnt say it was hard, they said it had annoying difficulty spikes. Basically the game is unbalanced and unpolished. It doesnt have that special touch. The game is wasted potential. A letdown one might say. Greatness, did not arrive.
They didnt say it was hard, they said it had annoying difficulty spikes. Basically the game is unbalanced and unpolished. It doesnt have that special touch. The game is wasted potential. A letdown one might say. Greatness, did not arrive.
Not to me. It's really the same game from PS1 era only using today's standard tech.
I really hope N. Sane Trilogy does well in terms of sells so we can get a Spyro Remake one day.
Back then, almost all games were platform kind of games, so we were trained, now the genre is rare and we are so used to FPS that we lost the skill to platform to the moon.
@ShadowDeathX: "Back then, gaming was a niche that was played by "nerds" and "kids". Developers catered to that core small audience. "
Be more specific when mentioning back then. Sure maybe you might be thinking during the 70's/early 80's but even then I wouldn't be surprised if all types of people played Atari systems and computer games.
@howmakewood: I'd say it's a bit of a stretch. I never found it nearly as punishing or overly precise as something like the first Rayman game, for instance.
Actually I heard a Naughty Dog developer say that Crash Bandicoot was originally an attempt to make a game similar to Donkey Kong Country, but translate it from a 2D space to a 3D space.
I definitely felt the Donkey Kong Country vibe when I first played Crash Bandicoot which is probably why I loved it so much since Donkey Kong Country is my favorite game of all time.
@howmakewood: I'd say it's a bit of a stretch. I never found it nearly as punishing or overly precise as something like the first Rayman game, for instance.
Can't say for myself, wasn't fan of Crash on ps1 so doubt I'll be picking the new collection up
@loco145: The first game was always really hard but the second and third were toned down.
In the remakes, the depth perception and camera angles seem a little off. That's why jumps sometimes arent as they appear and take multiple tries. The running levels with the boulders and bears may seem unfair with the pits because of this as well. You gotta remember that the developer is not like top tier talent or anything (they are still fine remakes though imo)
@howmakewood: I'm only familiar with the original trilogy. I used to play them when I was a kid, but I won't be picking up the remakes. :(
@jg4xchamp: I dunno, I feel like some of the contributions here are just design-issues rather than an evenly set challenge. You've played Super Mario 3D World, right? I remember the Crash trilogy suffering the same issue that game had with depth perception. It's sometimes hard to tell where a platform actually lies on the Y Axis. This was a problem at least for the original trilogy because of flat shading and a lack of shadows to indicate where something is on that axis.
The first game also had the issue of having no variable jump height. Much like Rayman 1, it meant that to get the most out of the platforming, the developers would make it so that the hardest jumps required the player to be at the absolute end of a platform which is harder to do on the Z axis because, you know, Crash is standing in the way of the some vital information. Not that I think it really was all that hard when I was a kid. I definitely had a harder time with Rayman 1. That game is especially frustrating - not in a good way.
@jg4xchamp: I dunno, I feel like some of the contributions here are just design-issues rather than an evenly set challenge. You've played Super Mario 3D World, right? I remember the Crash trilogy suffering the same issue that game had with depth perception. It's sometimes hard to tell where a platform actually lies on the Y Axis. This was a problem at least for the original trilogy because of flat shading and a lack of shadows to indicate where something is on that axis.
The first game also had the issue of having no variable jump height. Much like Rayman 1, it meant that to get the most out of the platforming, the developers would make it so that the hardest jumps required the player to be at the absolute end of a platform which is harder to do on the Z axis because, you know, Crash is standing in the way of the some vital information. Not that I think it really was all that hard when I was a kid. I definitely had a harder time with Rayman 1. That game is especially frustrating - not in a good way.
I'm not absolving the game of its short comings, but I am saying the critiques of Crash are actually done poorly. Because little to no insight goes into what is frustrating about the gameplay, and it's more than just basic buzzphrases, or how it has depth perception issues. It also isn't all that hard, but I guess that's whatever.
@jg4xchamp: What? Depth from contemporary culture criticism? Don't be preposterous Sir Scampy.
It's hard to actually get what people mean when they don't explain what they mean. You have to make an awful lot of assumptions. The reader does about 80% of the communicative work internally and this assumes that they've played the game. What I mean is that when a reviewer says Crash 1 is frustrating, I have to fill in the blanks myself by saying "They probably mean the poor depth perception of the over-reliance of precision specific platforming" But the reviewer? They're not exploring that opinion.
Make an assertion -> Back it up with examples and evidence -> Maybe offer a counter-argument or a suggestion of improvement.
So far only 0.1 % of people got the Platinum trophy for the first Crash Bandicoot (by far the most difficult of the trilogy).
What makes it even more difficult is that you have to do speed runs on every level without dying, and without ckeckpoints.
To beat the required times you must finish the mission as quickly as possible without dying and must get time crates along the way (checkpoints are disabled during time trials).
Let's see you platinum this game since it's so easy.
Same with the Mario series. People complained about The Lost levels being too difficult, yet that was one of the very few Mario games that provided a challenge, besides making challenging levels in Mario Maker.
Bro, there's challenge where the game wants you to use consistent mechanics and there's challenge where the game is just being a bitch.
Just like some of the god fucking awful camera decisions in Crash 1, along with jank from the original like the box glitch, Lost Levels does more to troll its player with shit like invisible blocks, inconsistent wind and backward warp zones than it actually asks you to use those mechanics you mastered in Mario 1.
It's a middling rom hack before they were a thing and NoA was right to hold it back.
@howmakewood: I'm only familiar with the original trilogy. I used to play them when I was a kid, but I won't be picking up the remakes. :(
@jg4xchamp: I dunno, I feel like some of the contributions here are just design-issues rather than an evenly set challenge. You've played Super Mario 3D World, right? I remember the Crash trilogy suffering the same issue that game had with depth perception. It's sometimes hard to tell where a platform actually lies on the Y Axis. This was a problem at least for the original trilogy because of flat shading and a lack of shadows to indicate where something is on that axis.
The first game also had the issue of having no variable jump height. Much like Rayman 1, it meant that to get the most out of the platforming, the developers would make it so that the hardest jumps required the player to be at the absolute end of a platform which is harder to do on the Z axis because, you know, Crash is standing in the way of the some vital information. Not that I think it really was all that hard when I was a kid. I definitely had a harder time with Rayman 1. That game is especially frustrating - not in a good way.
Super Mario 3D World had depth perception issues? I don't recall that entirely, but I definitely get what you mean when you say that in regards to Crash. I've been replaying Crash Bandicoot: Warped and the game has multiple issues in regards to platforming: the original DualShock controller (though maybe that's due to the age of my controller) makes it hard to jump precisely. I feel like I have to fidget around and the controller just doesn't respond the way I'd like. Then there's the depth perception issue. For instance, look at this example from High Time in the third Warp area.
It looks to be a fairly simple jump onto the magic carpets right? Well, I usually found myself over-estimating how far I actually needed to jump and trying to correct it before I fall into the "pit." That correcting part isn't easy either thanks in part to the controls which aren't super tight in the sense that there seems to be a slow response time when trying to quickly change directions. Another example is the animal levels as Coco. When you're going up a slope and there's barrels coming down at you the jump that you perform to avoid them has this weird Y-axis issue where you might very well just ram the barrel anyways (despite believing you timed the jump correctly). Sometimes you fall into pits or get hit just by being slightly too close to an edge/enemy. On some levels where you're in air combat or on jet skis you have issues of objects being closer than they appear. The double jump also has some problems of its own, when you do the second jump you lose the amount of distance you'd like to gain from it. There's a sort of lag that occurs when you press X a second time and it just feels unnatural.
The game isn't terribly difficult either, at least not to the extent that I remember as a child. I've been playing Warped again and a lot of the frustration just comes from the imprecise jumping or how the camera hides obstacles until you're close/it's too late to do anything (Dino levels). You can cheese most of the enemies, Nitro crates, TNT crates, and hard to reach crates by using the fruit bazooka, levels are extremely short, etc. I was going to say the biggest challenge was probably the time crystals, but I just realized that there was a running mechanic in the game by holding down R2. Heck, the hardest part is that the extra gems are locked behind things you'd have to either spend hours laboring over to find or just do a simple Google search to figure out that you need to: collect ten time crystals to open a new path in an old level, complete that path and collect the extra gem which then opens a path you couldn't previously enter before in a different level.
Still, there are things I like about the game a lot, such as: the music (really good), voice acting isn't too shabby, atmosphere and themes of levels/Warp rooms, and the bosses (they're really easy to beat, but I like the character design and personalities).
I've heard they used the physics from Crash Bandicoot 3 in all 3 Crash games for the remake which in turn has made the first 2 games harder than usual because the levels weren't designed for those physics. It's mainly the first game that is hard as balls specially the time trial challenges they've added. I mean I could dedicate a week of my life trying to get the plat but yeah no thanks lol. I got up to the High Road level in Crash 1 before asking myself am I actually having fun right now? An I realised I'm not.. So I think I'm trading it in.
I think I would enjoy a Spyro Trilogy remaster much better, because I remember those games being more about collectables and exploration over just pure ridiculous challenge.
@loco145: Was just thinking that same thing. I've read reviewers complain it's stuck with bad controls and it's hard to estimate the jump....no, your just not good at the game and seem to be having problems just admitting that.
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