Crash Bandicoot (version in “Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy”, played on PS5 for review)

The fatal flaw isn’t that “Crash Bandicoot” is hard. Plenty of great platformers are hard. It’s that, beyond throwing hordes of 1-Ups at the player, “Bandicoot” isn’t designed to compliment its difficulty. It’s manageable, if charmless, up until the last few levels where the death traps become unreasonable for first-time players to avoid and checkpoints get placed seemingly whole minutes away from each other. “Get gud”, no doubt, but there’s little satisfaction in conquering these challenges. I just want it to be over, a stance no kid-friendly platformer should aim to instill in their audience. Loads fast on PS5, though.

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