Crash Bandicoot: Wrath Of Cortex Is A Hidden Gem You ALL Missed
Trouble Brewing Behind The Scenes
Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex is, undoubtedly, the black sheep of the Crash series. Released in October 2001 for the PS2 and then in April and September 2002 for the Xbox and Nintendo GameCube, the game follows the story of Dr. Neo Cortex and his new superweapon, Crunch Bandicoot, teaming up with the dreaded Elementals of the world to take down Crash. Players take control of Crash and his sister Coco Bandicoot across a series of vibrant platforming worlds, running away from natural disasters and taking control of more vehicles than ever before to collect 25 crystals which act as Crunch's source of power.
The game featured an improved colour palette, better visuals for the characters and an abundance of new vehicles to take for a spin, but holds a mixed approval rating due to various technical issues and an apparent samey feel compared to the rest of the series.
In fact, Toys for Bob and Activision, were seemingly so keen to distance themselves from Wrath of Cortex that they even named their 2020 release: Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time., despite it obviously not being the fourth game in the series. It's a game that has either been laughed away by fans or forgotten about entirely by the community.
But does that mean it's right to just pretend an entire game just didn't happen? Is Wrath of Cortex even that bad?
The truth is that, whatever complaints someone might have, they might not necessarily be the developer's fault. Lead designer Mark Cerny, who had designed the first three games in the franchise, had plans to take the game in a new route with the project, originally called Crash Bandicoot Worlds, supposedly meant to revolve around Crash free-roaming through vibrant open worlds and solving puzzles to progress, a bit like Twinsanity teased a couple of years later on.
Disagreements between Universal, Sony and Mark Cerny eventually led to the original project being forced to restart from scratch, with Travellers Tales being given just twelve months to roll everything out. Maybe goes some way in explaining why things felt a bit rushed and reused.
Nevertheless, for a certain generation of gamers, Wrath of Cortex was still their first introduction to the adventures of Crash, Coco, Dr. Neo Cortex, Aku Aku and co., so for those gamers, it's still one of the iconic games from their childhood. There are an abundance of good things about the game that have been unfairly overlooked over the years, and a plethora of features introduced that even the series now is borrowing from.