After a fairly recent announcement, the subsidiary developer of Activision, King, managed to finalize a very early version of Crash Bandicoot Mobile, publishing it in soft launch on the mobile market for iOS and Android, however restricting the field with a rather substantial limit of territories where it is possible to use the title. Let's talk about the arrival of a video game icon, initially patented by N and after various vicissitudes acquired by Activision, which since the 90s has managed to reach the current videogame generation with the Crash Bandicoot N'Sane Trilogy, faithful remake of the first three strictly platform chapters developed by Naughty Dog.
The new revival of the cute and crazy animal will therefore arrive in full version also on our smartphones, but we have already had the opportunity to get our hands on the game in its soft launch phase. So here's what we could find in the first version of Crash Bandicoot Mobile, which will be expanded and launched globally over the next few weeks.
Crash Bandicoot arrives on Mobile
Learning from other titles of the same genre, Crash Bandicoot Mobile offers a much more refined and interesting level design
Wanting to catalog the experience of the new title we could talk about a Endless Runner, where Crash Bandicoot travels through streets full of boxes to break and obstacles to overcome. The speed of the game, at least in the early stages, is more than affordable and begins to create difficulties only by advancing in the story. The gameplay is partly inspired by Subway Surfers, but offering many variables of the well-known Bandicoot, such as one truly amazing verticality of the levels. The character, to reach the finish line, will have to turn on himself to break the boxes and obtain the contents, passing from one moment to the next between higher and underground platforms. Everything is extremely simple to learn but at this stage the touch controls were unresponsive and certainly to be reviewed.
Starting from the decisions made upstream, the software house has decided to make the experience much more linear and to increase the sense of progression, through well-thought-out tricks. In fact, it is not possible to lose the objects obtained in the races, since the useful checkpoints allow you to restart after death from some intermediate points of the level, thus keeping all the materials obtained up to that moment. In this way, finding resources never ends up being frustrating, and the gameplay is made much easier due to the infinite possible attempts to pass a level.
Furthermore, Crash Bandicoot Mobile does not feature the usual Endless Runner procedural structure, because it is not completely comparable to the aforementioned genre. The races are not in fact infinite, but they have a specific purpose with which they begin and end. To advance in the campaign you have to KO some bosses, who are protected by several henchmen. In order to get rid of them it is instead necessary to obtain certain objects that are created in specific laboratories on the game base field, which will be enhanced and expanded with the progress of the missions.
The microtransaction system slows down the gameplay, but it is not absolutely invasive for now
For the creations of the workshops it is necessary to wait a gradually increasing waiting time, or use the currency represented by the gems, in a paid system that for the moment it seems to be fortunately anything but invasive. To bring Crash creations to life, he must first find certain reagents, which are found in levels dedicated to the collection of materials. Instead, these can actually continue indefinitely, but through useful crossroads the player can decide when it is time to return to base camp with the loot, to obtain what is necessary and advance in the main campaign.
Ready to debut
Although the idea of a Free-to-Play with microtransactions can be scary when combined with the patented character of Naugty Dog for PlayStation 1, Crash Bandicoot Mobile's system proved to be functional and fun, as it only partially limits the consecutive playing time, and does not require extreme grinding, but healthy runs, excellent for entertaining oneself in the various empty moments of the day. The work manages to guarantee the idea of a really interesting sense of progression, but it is undoubtedly to review the control system. There are also several additional buildings on the main island, which require a clear advancement in the campaign to be unlocked and will certainly expand the contents of the final version of the game. Appointment to our review therefore, in which we will finally be able to clarify some doubts dedicated to the final release and analyze the more advanced stages of the game, hoping that the work will not be pleasant only in the first hours.
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