''BOOGIDAH BAH!''
Developed: Toys For Bob
Published: Activision
Genre: Multiplayer
Release Date: June 20th, 2023
Platforms: PS4/PS4/Xbox Family Series
*Review copy provided to me by Activision*
Crash Team Rumble is a fast paced team based 4v4 that is developed by Toys For Bob and published by Activision. With Crash Bandicoot becoming a hot commodity lately with the N'Sane Trilogy and Crash 4, Activision aims to keep that fire burning by bringing a capture point team based action game to our consoles. But was it a smart move making this type of game with this property or was it a fail that makes you scream WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH, in shame. Only one way to find out, so lets go!
''AVENGERS! ASSEMBLE!''
GAMEPLAY:
"Crash Team Rumble" is an entertaining 4v4 action game that pits two teams against each other with the goal to collect and score Wumpa Fruit into their goals until a maximum of 2000 Wumpa is collected, and once collected, boom baby, game over man, you or the other team win the day. This can honestly be pretty annoying to be fair. Now I'm a very competitive person, perhaps WAY too competitive for my own sake. Everyone is playing, having a good time, laughing and me, I'm laser focused and all business, especially considering I do not like to lose. Playing as Dingodile, who is a defensive player, your job for this character is to stop the enemy from scoring in their own goal, so what you do is head over to their goal and just be the most annoying menace you can possible\y be. Easy right? well yeah, that is if your freaking team would score the dang Wumpa Fruit!. One round of doing this, I literally held the opposing team to only 926 captured fruit for the entire round, that's right, I'm pretty bad ass, however the second round, my team decided it was time to do a stage play of Weekend At Bernies and basically act dead. For around 10 minutes of this round, I was playing my heart out to stop the enemy from scoring, at times fighting 3 people at a time, all while my team weren't capturing a dang thing, making us sit at around 523 fruit for that entire 10 min run. Ugh. Seriously bro? this forced me to leave my post and try to get us some boosters and score myself, which we did, but ultimately ended up losing the match 2000 to 1600. I was as angry as Falco on Star Fox and basically was like ''HEY EINSTEIN IM ON YOUR SIDE''. But blah blah, enough ranting about my over competitiveness, lets dive into the rest of the game, alright?.
The mechanics here in Crash Team Rumble are extremely straight forward to use, and even, dare I say it, easy as all heck. This is a great thing because even for people new to this type of gaming genre, you will have no trouble at all picking up and playing at any point in time, whether you're a pro or just beginning, it doesn't matter, because you too will end up telling yourself ''I'm just going to play one ten minute match then I'm good'' but then look at your clock minutes later and you've already been playing two hours, WOAH. Because this is a competitive game overall, it in itself provides a pretty diverse level of maps, each having their own unique power ups and obstacles to discover, some feeling brand new to the world of Crash Bandicoot, while others, feeling like little mini platformer levels ripped straight out of the games themselves. Thats' right, ripped, like a fart. Huh?. As you engage in friendly or angry combat against your opponents, you will be required to traverse and make your way across each of the 9 levels and their environments while you collect fruit to boost your teams score closer to victory, block your opponents from scoring in a strategic fashion using characters like Dingodile or plants that use projectiles, or making use of level themed powerups that you can activate by using gears and other items you collect to power them up. Since this is a competitive and strategic themed game, there are three aspects of gameplay you need to actually focus on: Scoring, Blocking and Boosting, these three will determine just how many matches you will be able to win or endure. How is that decided though? simple, a class system that pertains to each one of those roles, with every character currently in the game, falling into one of those categories. For example, Crash is focused around capturing fruit as fast as possible, Dingodile is your main defensive jerk face, Coco acts as your booster who moves in quick succession to light up local pillars in order to give your team a Booster advantage of a x3 turn in when you turn in your gathered fruit into your collection bank. Picking and choosing the right combination is a must, because one wrong decision and its going to feel like a night after you ate some late night Taco Bell, and then get the case of the bubbly gut. You think you can fight through it, endure it, but ultimately, the rush of defeat comes gushing out and your team and belly loses. RIP booty, we hardly knew you.
''LOOKS LIKE CRASH IS POOPING FRUIT, DOESNT IT?''
The team based game play and the fast paced nature of the matches in my opinion is what gives Crash Team Rumble its allure overall, due to it being easily accessible with its mechanics for quick in and out sessions, incentive to want to play for longer periods due to the Battle Pass actually unlocking really cool cosmetics, new characters and end level custom music to celebrate to - it all just feels like... well.. a Crash game. Sometimes games when they go this route to try to make a spin off of a beloved franchise, lose the look and feel of what made a property engaging in the first place and luckily for us, this title retains the conventional control dynamics that makes the core Crash games so fluid and smooth feeling. This is achieved via its snappy movements, unique abilities of each character like Coco's defensive wall, Dingodiles vacuum to stun enemy players or suck up Wumpa, Dr Nitrus Brio having the ability to summon his hulk form to do massive damage to the enemy team for a limited amount of time, etc, It's all extremely fun. Just don't be like me and war cry your very first match in the game because you're amped up and then proceed to immediately fall in a pit and die... talk about embarrassing, it was all recorded too. Hello mom, I'm on America's funniest home video. The game isn't perfect, obviously, as some questions will come up at a later time in regards to its longevity as an On Live Service title, but for now, I guess we can push those worries aside and get to using our quick platforming skills as we dash and slide through and over obstacles and use each characters skills to our advantage in crucial moments, such as summoning a locker for your team in order to regenerate your teams health in order to give you a strategic advantage in a nail biter of a match. But... I get a little too focused and totally forget to use my equipped character abilities half of that time because I'm so concentrated on capturing Wumpa that logic and strategy just... goes way over there... while I'm... way over here. Pretty much like a dudes ''hover hand'' when they're caught being too scared to put their hand around a woman, so they're left just awkwardly smiling like they're hugging a ghost. Yes, that's me, except with using actual abilities and skills.
By integrating its mechanics so smoothly, Crash Team Rumble has a concise tutorial that you can play before jumping into a competitive match that teaches you the basics in order to show you that each characters are easy to grasp due to the move menu that is similar to something you'd see in a freaking fighting game. It's not as robust, but it gives you a quick run down on what each character has the capability of doing and pulling off, which if you actually do pull off something really bad ass, the game rewards you for it with ''heroic moments'', which are instances where each individuals can complete an objective for a character and gain EXP to level your playable character or battle pass level by collecting tons of Wumpa, eliminating a specific amount of enemies, boosting a certain percentage, etc, and then at the end of the round, your results are tallied into one large sum of experience points. The best route is using the flexibility of the role system and while adhering to the role of scorer, blocker or booster is recommended for team work, yes, well.. sometimes you have to make do with what you have, regardless of your role. If your team is not picking up the slack and you're a blocker, then use your fat boy Dingodile self and just start going to the enemy base and slowing them down, dropping your main abilities to send an electric shock to stun enemies and attempt to stay alive while you wait for skill cooldown, activate a power up rolling ball that allows you to spin across the map, knocking everyone and anyone away to their deaths, summon meteors to inflict small damage on the other team to confuse them, hook people in the face with unlockable Tawna, etc. There's just so many varied ways to take on strangers and even a group of friends if you feel like using private matches to set up a friendly game with some buddies over a weekend. This feature, yeah, I'll never use it, I have no friends, well.. I kind of do if my dogs count? if I can only teach them to talk to me like in Homeward Bound, then I'll be freaking set. Loser has to watch Airbud. Another credit to Crash Team Rumble is a big proponent of why this game might have a pretty good shelf life, all things considered, why is this? well because it has Cross Play, right out of the box and right from the get go. This is absolutely key, and surprisingly not a lot of Live Service games use this for some reason? HELLO MCFLY? ITS COMMON SENSE. Cross play, alongside constant updates will be the two types of major features that will sustain the player and keep them coming back, beyond the initial months of its release, but... how long ,again, will this be supported? I can't exactly say at the moment, however if it wants to be super successful, just sign it up for an OnlyFans account and the simps will carry it. Which would be a huge win, heck, you wouldn't even need microtransactions. Get to it, Activision.
''THERE SHALL BE ONLY ONE''
OVERALL:
At the end of the day, Crash Team Rumble is an extremely fun competitive 4v4 title, but it does have some tiny drawbacks that might give people pause. For one, its a Live Service game, and those usually have 50/50 level of support, on the extension of that, load times are pretty bad in between rounds with the loading screen sometimes taking 20 to 30 seconds to pop you into a match, which can get tiring. Finally you do have somewhat of a single player mode using Bots to pass time in, but it feels lifeless and not very competitive compared to other games with AI Bots. But even with those negatives, with the fast paced gameplay, strategic matches utilizing all 9 characters abilities and skills, large focus on teamwork, great in game challenge incentives for leveling your character and battle pass for items, characters and unlockables, smooth control scheme that feels ripped right out of a mainstream Crash title, with all that, I can definitely recommend this spin off title to anyone that is curious and wants a quick and easy pick up and play game to just have some fun and for a good price. So with all that having been said, my verdict is clear, GameNChick says BUY NOW
