Unexpectedly Sweet!

I must admit that when I first heard about his game, I thought it would be a carbon-copy of Mario Party, as the same thing had obviously done with Crash Team Racing (blatant copy of Diddy Kong Racing). Compund in the fact that none of the reviews, whether in magazines or Epinions, were real good, and I immediately dismissed the game. Not until I actually rented it from Blockbuster (the games I wanted weren't there) did I actually come to see its true quality and fun.

CB's main attraction, surprisingly, is the adventure mode. Basically, you go to a warp room, compete with computer players in a minigame, and if you win 3 rounds before anyone else does, you receive a trophy. If not, you can try again. Shallow. You have to bet all the minigames to go on to another warp room, where another set of minigames awaits you. Yay. But here's where it gets deeper: starting in warp room 2, you'll need to collect gems and crystals to progress. Now, these gems and crystals are not earned easily. You must beat the minigames once instad of three times, but you have a handicap. In gems, it usually involves defeating the enemies or scoring a certain amount (which is more than your opponent must score) within a small-- very small-- amount of time. The crystals handicap the actual gameplay, with interesting conditions such as winning without the use of a certain move, winning without touching certain things, or only being able to score a certain way. This adds challenge, even though it can somtimes seem very unfair. Also, at the end of each warp room, you must defeat a boss to progress. These boss levels are games of their own, but always use elements from the minigames, like shooting things in tanks or controlling a craft in a variation of the pong-like minigame, or throwing crates.

One of the cool things is that you can go through the adventure mode with a pal in the 2-player adventure mode. It basically plays the same way-- only the first player controls the minimal map movement-- but when you enter a mini-game, you play as kind of a team. While usually you're actually playing the game individually, it's best to try to help out your partner, because at the end, your scores, remaining life, or whatever will be combined to determine which team (instead of player, and it's you two against two from the computer) wins. And in games like the Pong-like minigames, it's the team with the last remaining player(s). Playing with a friend is decidedly more fun than playing alone, and it is a bit easier since you half a 1/2 chance of winning a game vs. a 1/4 chance, assuming you have the same skill as the computer.

The other modes include Battle Mode, which lets you play any mini-game (except the locked ones, which you unlock by reaching them in adventure mode), and Tournament Mode, which involves playing a series of related games, such as all of the Crate Bash games, and trying to win more total games than anyone. These are free-for-all... you don't team up with anybody. And you can play with up to four human players instead of just two.

The graphics and sound are both solid, if not spectacular. The graphics involve a lot of tropical theming, some space theming, a little old-west theming, and more. While not incredibly detailed, there are no graphical glitches like draw-in, and everything is clear and easy to discern. I suppose that sacrificing detail for cleanness is okay in a game like this, though. The music is light and sometimes treads the "elevator music" line, and is enjoyable. Sometimes it almost sound ambient or even vacant, but it somehow woks and lets you concentrate on the action. The sounds are pretty good, however, they sadly repeat A LOT!!! The taunts can be annoying to the taunter as well as the taunted.

The minigames themselves are pretty fun. There is a 4-player chaotic takeoff on Pong, a game where you run around picking up crates and throwing them out each other (or kicking them), a game where you hop around on pogo sticks to color squares your color, a multi-lap race around a small circle, a game similar to Mario Party's Bumper Balls minigame where you ride around on polar bears and try to knock each other out of the ring, a battle game where you shoot at each other from tanks, and a game where you find you balloons around a ring and jump to pop them. And then there are also several games in Warp Room 5 that resemble the games I just listed, but have MAJOR variations. I've only been able to play one of them, Dragon Drop (which is quite good), as you need loads of trophies, gems, crystals, or ankhs (which you earn by "beating the course champs twice in a row.") to unlock each game. Pretty much all the games are fun, and there are a total of 22 games outside of the special games in Warp Room 5. They do this by having extra variations of most of the games. For example, there is a Bash game, a Space Bash, a Jungle Bash, and a Drain Bash. All of these are different by a little, as the floors can fall out in Space Bash, a totem pole spews out deadly Nitro crates in Jungle Bash, etc.

The games can be complicated due to special rules in the gem or crystal challenges, in addition to the fact that most of the games have several different items, like a lightning bolt that paralyzes other players, an anvil that crushes whoever holds it after about 10 seconds, etc. However, helpful instruction screens explain everything pretty well, and even give you reminders sometimes.

But the good points stop there. My biggest complaint with Crash Bash is that it is completely unbalanced. The computer players often miss easy opportunities, but then make some that seem almost impossible. They are extremely easy at the beginning but all of a sudden get tough later on. Add in the fact that you must beat most of the levels on gem or crystal modes to complete the game, and you can be extremely frustrated in no time flat!!! Another bad point is that the adventure mode is somewhat linear in its structure-- not as bad as Mario party 3's adventure mode, but still, I would've liked a more open-ended game from Crash Bash. Lastly, the story line is extremely weak. It involves Aku Aku (the evil idol) telling his brother, Uka Uka (the good idol), that evil will prevail. Uka Uka disagrees and challenges his brother to a match of their gratest champions. And that's about it for the plot line. Before each boss battle your respectivbe idol (you can play as a good player or an evil one) will talk to you a bit, but it is mostly just trivial talk. The ending is even lamer, but I guess I shouldn't ruin it for you since you will be playing through a whole game partially to get to it. And just keep in mind that of the 22 games in the first 4 warp rooms, there are only seven types of games.

Crash Bash makes a very good party game, as it has that chaotic, mischievous, just plain out and out fun mood to it. While it is surprisingly a decent single-player game, the real fun starts when you get a couple of friends to play. While Crash Bash does have its weaknesses, it is a solid, if not spectacular, game to rent a couple times. But just be warned that it could wear its welcome out quickly if your patience is thin, so a buy is only recommended if you have time and a lot of patience, and of course a passion for this type of game.