Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy Review – An Extra Life

The return of Crash Bandicoot is one of the most authentic remasters this side of the PlayStation 4, for better and for worse.

Developer: Vicarious Visions
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PlayStation 4
Release Date: June 30th, 2017

It’s curious to think that, before Uncharted and The Last of Us were even a twinkle in Naughty Dog’s eye, the studio was most famously known for an anthropomorphic, bipedal bandicoot with a taste for skinny jeans. Crash Bandicoot was born out of the race to find a mascot capable of doing for PlayStation what Sonic and Mario did for Sega and Nintendo, and the grinning marsupial went on to become synonymous with a platforming experience that was entirely its own thing.

Two decades later, and a solved licensing disagreement has allowed Sony to bring Crash back to his PlayStation home in the form of the N.Sane Trilogy – Vicarious Visions’ three-in-one remaster of the original Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped.

As remasters go, the design philosophy behind the N.Sane Trilogy is an interesting one; both a boon and a detriment to the final result. Vicarious Visions has decided to simply re-present the Bandicoot experience in a shinier-looking form, rather than work to address or remedy the problems lying just beneath the surface of these decades-old titles. After you’ve reveled in the pleasures of seeing Crash once again on screen (and boy is he looking good), these inherent mechanical flaws begin to quickly surface and hold the experience back, though this is more of an issue for the original Crash Bandicoot over its sequels.

The old-school design sensibilities of Crash have aged about as well as a raw chicken in a Turkish sauna.

The focus on aesthetic reconstruction, to Vicarious Visions’ credit, is a huge draw for picking up the N.Sane Trilogy, especially for old Crash fans. Everything, from the opening logos to the lavishly restored soundtrack, is a sensory treat, and the comedic flair in character animation is as affable as it was twenty years ago. As someone who used to enjoy these titles as a kid, floods of memories came rushing back as I played each faithfully reconstructed level, and something as small as the jingle of a recognizable sound effect was enough to make me smile with glee. This is Crash as you remember him, certainly, but that good news is also what’s part of the problem with the N.Sane Trilogy.

Looks aren’t everything (as I’m sure N.Gin will be pleased to hear), after all, and the old-school design sensibilities of Crash – left largely untouched by Vicarious Visions in the N.Sane Trilogy – have aged about as well as a raw chicken in a Turkish sauna. With his gawkish limbs and flailing tongue, I’m sure Crash never struck anyone as the epitome of athleticism, and he still maneuvers about as gracefully as he looks. Jumping, especially, feels far less precise than it needs to be, considering the majority of the experience relies on clearing precarious gaps and hurdling over various perils.

Perhaps in another remaster, these might have been passed off as forgivable quibbles, but the N.Sane Trilogy’s arcade-like difficulty instead compounds this frustration twofold. Crash Bandicoot is infamous for being one of the more challenging of the child-friendly platforming games out there, but this challenge largely derives itself from inconsistent, not intentional, design. In what feels like a painful blast from the past, the N.Sane Trilogy retains the franchise’s use of “Game Over” fail states, where losing all lives restarts the level with loss of all progress up till that point. Despite “Game Over” still being widely associated with video games in popular culture, the N.Sane Trilogy is an awkward reminder of why such tropes have been ditched by developers since the era of the bandicoot, as such fail states impede progress and entertainment for the sake of arbitrary punishment.

Luckily, the N.Sane Trilogy’s difficulty spike becomes more balanced over the course of the three games, though the over-reliance on awkward vehicle missions in Crash Warped makes Crash Bandicoot 2 the most enjoyable experience of the trilogy. To say the N.Sane Trilogy is completely without sub-surface level revision is a bit of a white lie, too. Vicarious Visions has implemented analog stick support, online score tables, and the ability to play as Coco Bandicoot for the entirety of all three games, while the newly incorporated bonus levels pad out a trilogy which together already provides around 15 to 20 hours of play, confidently justifying its $40 asking price.

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These additions are fine, but it leaves you wondering why the studio didn’t remove its rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia and take a more hard, earnest look about what could seriously be improved in each of the games. Fan-service is important, of course, but servicing the player should always come first. Unfortunately, the N.Sane Trilogy is more interested in the former than the latter, which makes this remaster nothing more than the best way to play an inconsistent series of titles.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.