Crash Twinsanity PS2 Review

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Crash Bandicoot has had an interesting time since first being built for the Playstation console. He quickly rose to become what many had determined as the Playstation's mascot alongside Mario for Nintendo and Sonic for SEGA but as mascots became less and less important for a consoles image, Crash seemingly died out and almost had to line up at the unemployment queue. That was until the developers decided to put him on the other consoles and since then Crash has appeared on everything, even the N-Gage. Twinsanity is the first game to introduce a team based element and it's a surprising combination who you play as, Crash and Cortex.

The storyline which brings these two arch nemesis together is really quite cliche but is done well enough to justify the two main characters of previous titles teaming up. Two twins from outer space have invaded the land in which Crash and Cortex reside. The only reason they team up is that the twins outlay their plans to destroy Cortex and enslave Crash after taking over the world. The game is somewhat played out like the GBA game from last year where you play in various different worlds to find out the identity of the twins before finally defeating them.

Crash Twinsanity as with every other console crash game is a third person platform title. The world is completely three dimensional which on paper offers exploration but in practice the game is extremely linear and is definitely aimed at a younger market. Basically you run through each level avoiding or defeating characters before taking on a boss character and moving on. Of course the game is not this simple and along the way you will run into problems and the most frustrating aspect of the game. One which almost single handedly destroys its appeal.

One of the biggest problems we found with this game is the amount of time between save points in each level. To give an example, early in the game you play through a number of roll sequences then take on some enemies, solve a puzzle and get outside again. Normally you would expect a save point at the end of the roll, after the enemies and when solving the puzzle but Twinsanity decides that you don't need a save point at those points. One thing which does combat this is the checkpoints where you start if you die, but once all the lives are gone its back to the start and those who get frustrated easily with a game will no doubt turn this off. It almost kills the game.