Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Reviews: 10 Critical Reactions You Need To Know
Crash's glorious return home.
It feels like an age ago that Sony's Shawn Layden took to the E3 stage last year and announced that Crash Bandicoot was coming back (kinda), with remasters of the original trilogy of Crash games, now known as the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
As great as all the pre-release footage looked, many fans were still anxious about Vicarious Visions' ability to faithfully bring Naughty Dog's iconic platformers to the PS4, but thankfully, the critical consensus so far seems to suggest they've done a stellar job for the most part.
Though this collection was never going to score top marks considering the divisive reaction to the original game upon release and Vicarious' clear desire to preserve the titles free of contemporary flourishes, it nevertheless seems that fans are largely going to love this shiny new update.
It's safe to say that if the game can ride nostalgia to strong sales as well as critical acclaim, then a fully-fledged new Crash title will probably be on the horizon soon enough.
10. It's An Extremely Faithful Remake...For Better & Worse
"As far as remakes go, you can’t get any better than this. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is exactly how fans envisioned it – an unadulterated celebration of a PlayStation pioneer. With such a weight on their shoulders, Vicarious Visions have pulled it off with such diligence, infused with a streak of their own creativity...Everything, from patrol patterns of enemies down to the distance between each gap you leap over, has been accurately recreated with equal parts passion and precision." - The Sixth Axis
"The warm and fuzzy feeling you get from seeing familiar Crash levels presented in a way that mirrors what you held in your imagination is undeniable. But so too is the reality that Crash games aren't timeless. No amount of lighting or funny animations can make up for the rudimentary 3D platforming on display. You could even say that the look of these games belies their true nature." - Gamespot
"If you’re sitting there gnashing your teeth at anyone daring to criticise Crash Bandicoot then we can assure you that this is absolutely the game for you, and that you shouldn’t listen to us and just go out and buy it right now. Because this is an excellent remaster, one of the best we’ve ever seen, and all the more impressive because, according to what the developer told us, it seems to have been made almost from scratch – rather than by working with the original source code." - Metro
Regardless of individual critical reception to the games themselves, there is a clear consensus among the press so far that, as far as remasters go, this is not only an extremely faithful rendition of the original titles, but one of the best in recent memory.
The rub is that while the new versions come with all the brilliance of the original titles, they also bring most of the flaws with them too, namely their inherently simplistic platforming mechanics (especially in 2017) and general clunkiness.
As long as you're prepared to accept that the games have largely been preserved without a ton of mechanic tinkering, though, you're in for a wild ride.