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I've never been on the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Crash Team Rumble train, not even back when it was called Wumpa League and the community wouldn’t stop obsessing over leaks for the once cancelled project. The more we've seen of the game, which is a selection of team-based minigames to capture wumpa fruit in a variety of ways, the less interested I’ve become. This week, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:footage of the game leaked, before a subsequent announcement from Activision confirmed 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the price point and release date - it looks free to play but it’s not. None of these things are encouraging, and when you look at all the potential Crash Bandicoot has, it's a little sad to see it reduced to this.
I should like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Crash Team Rumble. I adore Crash Team Racing, the game it is named for, and I'm a Crash Bash defender. But Crash Bash came out at a very different time. Games were quicker to make, and the market for casual party games was not so saturated. It was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mario Party but you played as Coco instead of Daisy, and that was fine. But Team Rumble isn't the nice and relaxed party game for your mates in between mainline releases - there's no promise of Crash 5 any time soon, and this is designed as an online multiplayer game, likely with microtransactions, cosmetic rewards, and a lot of grinding - the battle pass was front and centre of the release date reveal. There’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:not even a single-player mode.
Then there's the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Crash Team Racing link. Despite the name, the 'team' element didn't really come into it. Whether your character was good or evil would determine which mask you got while racing, but that's about it. There were team-based game modes you could play, but most people ignore them in favour of the racing, what with it being a racing game and all. Building off a mode most people ignored doesn't seem like the smartest strategy.
#Crash Team Rumble's gameplay looks like a bunch of gimmicky minigames thrown together with a vaguely Crash aesthetic. It's kinda Fortnite, kinda MOBA, mostly nothing. Despite the hype for Wumpa League when it was under wraps, no one seems to care much about this, and why would they? It's not really a Crash game at all, but a generic online multiplayer outing with a Crash skin on it. It's true that CTR started life as a kart racer and had Crash added later, but a major difference there is that the game under the hood was good. Rumble, quite simply, doesn't appear to be.
I probably wouldn't be going this hard on it if it wasn't a Crash game, but a new IP instead. Only if it was fronted by new character Billy Blenkinsop the Bear nobody would care. Like all the other live-service games pumped out recently with a lack of identity beyond incentivising spending cash in the in-game store, it would pick up little to no traction, quickly wither, and then fade into obscurity as the servers are shut down. I doubt adding the Crash name will change that eventuality, but it may extend the stay of execution by six months.
The most frustrating thing is it just doesn't need to be this way. For me, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped is the best platformer eve♛r. Yes, even better than that one you've just muttered into your screen. I understand that games are difficult to make, but surely there should have been an attempt at just doing a modern day version of Crash 3? Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time was almost there, but catered a little too hard to the Crash Bandicoot subreddit in making levels that were too long and making you sweat for every single gem. I 100 percented (or 107 percented) all three of the classic trilogy, so I like a challenge, but I can't chill out with Crash 4 because it constantly demands attention.
However, I recognise what it was doing with clearly divided levels, a shared theme, and appreciated the ability to play as new characters, even if only some of them landed. It was solid groundwork to build upon in the pursuit of reaching Crash 3's heights, but it didn't sell well enough or let the publisher gouge players enough, so here's Crash Bash Fortnite. Also, Spyro's dead.
Crash Team Rumble is a worrying sign of Crash's future, as a marketable and recognisable mascot rather than a hero to have adventures built around. We've been here once before with Crash, and it feels like nothing has changed. I'm still waiting for him to return to the glory days of Warped, but until then Tawna can bounce off Cortex's head to reach a balloon with double wumpa power, or something.