Crash Bash is basically Mario Party, but with Crash Bandicoot characters. The story is that Aku-Aku, and his evil brother, Uka-Uka, want to see who is stronger. So they get other people to compete for them. Anyway, you have to battle through 28 levels, with somewhere around 5 different minigames, which increase in difficulty, depending on what level you’re on. There are bosses, too. The game is about 5 hours long, if you don’t get stuck.
The gameplay is not very good, seeing as it is ridiculously repetitive. You end up doing the same thing over and over, as well as redoing levels to get the special collectibles, crystals, trophies, and gems. Another flaw is that a lot of the bosses are recycled from previous games, stretching as far back as Crash Bandicoot 1! This is the fifth game in the series, by the way.
Also, most of the games and bosses are very simple. For example, one of the minigames is just a game of air hockey, but you’re in ships. This is probably the most complex one. Even though this is a terrible game, there IS a piece of hay in the needle stack, the minigame polar push. You ride polar bears, very small ones. You have to push each other off an icy platform. There are some cool powerups, like a shrink ray, giant anvil that crushed whoever its over, and lighting that makes you unable to move. This is probably the only reason to play Crash Bash, but there is no ‘quick play’, so you have to do the campaign.
The graphics are also pretty bad, but only because they haven’t changed at all from the first game, which was released almost five years before. Everything looks okay, but it should be better.
The sound is just fine, but still lacks dialogue on most characters. As with the other games, Aku-Aku does a lot of talking. He still gets to say my favourite line, “Unamagola” in the Deathmatch mode. He’s a powerup. But the baddies, Cortex, N.Gin, etc, have lost most of their speech. They now just scream, yell, laugh, or grunt a lot. The good guys do the same thing. The sound is probably the best thing in this game, which is pretty sad. It isn’t great, but at least it matches up with stuff that happens, even if the music is repetitive and annoying.
