Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – Warped! – 4: It’s About Time (Part 1?) – (Part 2?)

Welcome back to this year’s anniversary reviews! Today, we’re moving to the next game in the collection!

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Uh oh. He's got a lightbulb moment, and that means
nothing good.

This story begins immediately after Crash 1. Neo Cortex was tossed from his zeppelin and is falling to the islands below. He survives the crash (pun intended) and finds that he has landed in an underground cave where he finds a crystal glowing a faint purple. He gets a new idea…

Turtle armadillo, doesn't matter; you're in my way!

Cut to a year later. Crash Bandicoot and his brainy sister Coco are chilling on their island when Coco’s laptop runs out of juice. Just the usual problem for her, really. And even though she’s playable here, no way she’s going to get a new battery herself! Nah, bro’s gotta do it. Crash thus embarks on this quest. But midway through the first level, he steps on a teleporter and gets abducted. He appears on a space station owned by Cortex and his new assistant, Dr. N. Gin. He is greeted by a giant hologram of Cortex’s face.

"You better not pull out your yo-yo while I am expositing,
Crash! Are you... Hey! I said put that away!"

I see it over there! Yeah. That's the point.
They aren't hard to find. At all!

Cortex says that, although they have been enemies before, he and the Bandicoot need to team up against an even greater threat coming from space – soon the planets will align, and the resulting energy might destroy the Earth. Cortex has found the Master Crystal that can put a stop to this; however, it needs several more “slave” Crystals to have enough power to prevent the catastrophe. the diminutive scientist claims he will need the physically capable mammal to collect 25 Crystals scattered around the world. Cortex will provide the means of teleportation, and occasional commentary on our progress.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - Crash Bandicoot 1

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – Warped! – 4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2)

Yeeaaahhhh... I was not a fan. In fact, after playing today's
games, I might like Crash Purple even less.

I don’t know if anyone else reading this knows what the first game ever reviewed on this blog was, way back on July 19th, 2013. Well, it was actually a duet of games for the Game Boy Advance: Crash Purple: Ripto's Revenge, and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. This not-very-ambitious crossover had Crash and Spyro square against each other due to the machinations of their respective villains. The games, developed by Vicarious Visions were… shall we say… not that great. At best, they were tolerable 2D platformers that put much bigger focus on playing mini-games, of all things. Anybody that’s accustomed to Crash’s usual extra-tough 2.5D platforming or Spyro’s 3D platforming likely didn’t get their money’s worth.

Run! Ruuuuuuun!

I bring this up because I haven’t touched either franchise since. That review was 13 years ago. And even on Steam, when I got my hands on the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, it took me forever to even think of playing them. Well! I’m crossing one of these two off the bucket list for this year’s anniversary review. Maybe the other one next year? Who knows.

I also have Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time among the games I want to cover this year, and I have a little rule for myself: If I want to cover a game that isn’t the first in a series, but I own any that came before in that series, then I will want to cover those previous ones too if it matters. Might as well get this show on the road. I can call it a… Crash course across the franchise.

Also developed by Vicarious Visions, and published by Activision, the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was released first to PlayStation 4 on June 30th, 2017, and to Steam a year later. It is comprised of remastered/remade versions of the franchise’s first three games, all of which were PlayStation games originally developed by Naughty Dog:

• Crash Bandicoot, released on September 9th, 1996;
• Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, on November 6th, 1997;
• And Crash Bandicoot: Warped, on November 3rd, 1998. This would be the last proper entry for these platformers for about 22 years.

One game per year? Crash is a regular! …Well, not to this blog he isn’t! But I’m looking forward to correcting that. We’re starting this collection of games NOW!

Garry's Mod

Hoo boy, where to begin. Where indeed. There’s just so damn much to say about Garry’s Mod. Well… for starters, it’s not so much a video game as it is a physics engine that allows for an insane level of creativity on the part of its users. …Yeah, that’s the short version. I don’t think I can properly review this as a video game, as it really is more like a tool to create games… or to have fun putting items together and seeing how they interact. Unless the games made by its users count as the game itself. Anyway!

Developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve, Garry’s Mod was released on… November 29th, 2006. Almost 20 years ago. That makes it one of the oldest products in my Steam library. When this game came out, my French-speaking ass was still learning English in high school!

Everybody has to start somewhere. Me? I got myself
crushed by that tower. That's how I found out that we
still have HP during sandbox/construction...

Officially, this software was created by Garry Newman, a developer from Valve who worked on Half-Life 2. The original, titular mod was just that game with a few additions; but then this expanded into a full sandbox game comprising not only H-L2’s physics engine and assets, but also the assets of other games made with the Source engine. Notable ones include Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike, as well as possibly the biggest name out of all of them, Team Fortress 2. The only requirement is that you own the other base games in your Steam library in order to access the assets.

If you ask me, the funniest thing about this article is that I took so long to get around to talking about Garry’s Mod that Facepunch Studios released a sequel in the meantime; S&box came out last April, roughly 19 and a half years after its predecessor. But let’s focus on Garry’s Mod, or as it is also known, GMod.

I could decorate a cozy home with this stuff.
Too bad this field isn't much of a house!

Full disclaimer here, I did play a few hours of this game in preparation for this article, but not dozens, so I obviously won’t have the experience of others who've spent hundreds of hours on it. Heck, this article will be less like a review and more of an informative thing. Though, it will have some of my impressions based on what I’ve tested. I wasn’t even sure whether I could cover this product correctly, it’s just a sandbox after all; as a result, expect this to be less about the game itself and more about what others have made from it. Honestly, I’m coming in so late to this that it’s probably the best I can do; celebrate how this program was used and how it left a mark in gaming history.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 5)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Finishing this today. Bring out the swear jar, I’m gonna need it.

The World That Never Was – Riku (Continued)

Uh oh.

Pretty much every boss in this part of the game has a move
that takes us down to 1 HP. Fuckers.

Riku has found Sora trapped in an energy sphere, sleeping, and being consumed by darkness. Out of Sora’s body forms a cloaked figure with red eyes. This thing, called the Anti Black Coat Nightmare, is a tough boss, and it’s a sign of what I should expect for the rest of the game. We’re almost at the end. That said, my first fight against this guy, and realizing just how difficult it was, encouraged me to go back and train some more. Not a fan of grinding, but I will if I must. I overcame this first challenge, the first of four final bosses.

I hope you haven’t forgotten to level up Riku; it’s only him for all four battles. Who cares about Sora, whom you’ve been playing for literally his own half of the game so far?

How long have these cutscenes been going on? I just want
to mash my Keyblade in his smug face already!

Anti Black Coat disappears, and Riku tries to get through to Sora, the same words heard in the dream. To no avail. Riku hears Terra-Xehanort’s Heartless, Ansem, saying that Sora’s heart belongs to the darkness now. When the villain asks why Riku hasn’t returned to the real world, the teen understands: He’s been in Sora’s dreams the whole time. His shirt bears the mark of a Dream Eater, because he has basically become one. When he saw the hooded figure at the start of the Exam, he subconsciously landed into Sora’s dreams to protect him. Darkness appears under Riku’s feet and he is sucked in.

I watch the playthroughs from other people and realize, if
I was struggling that bad... was it just because I was
underleveled and didn't know? Could be, considering how
often I went back to level-grind between attempts against
all these bosses...

He reappears floating in a void, facing Ansem. The villain tries to get Riku to accept the darkness again, but the teen’s resolve is to fight it and its users. Stage 1 starts in the void, with Riku attacking the boss whenever possible, just waiting on a chance to do a Reality Shift. That move transfers the fight to solid ground, where Dream Eaters can help; Ansem fights using his Guardian, which can shield him from frontal damage (but leaves his back open).

His second phase is worse. Ansem merges with his Guardian, and that’s what we fight. This asshole loves to push you to the far end of the arena, and then load up lasers that hit fast and mini-black holes that you can get sucked into when going in for an attack, leaving you at 1 HP. This guy was, up to that point, the most unpleasant fight I’ve had in that damn game.

Those goddamned lasers. If you aren't already moving fast,
you are getting hit. The only way around is Flowmotion.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

The last few chapters! And we’re starting with the kingdom based on Fantasia!

Symphony of Sorcery – Sora

To think that the "sorcerer" from this short ended up being
one of the most important characters in the entire KH
franchise. That name, though... Yen Sid... Subtle.

Fantasia is a collection of shorts animated over classical music; the way this gets combined into a KH world is by having The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as its core, from which other shorts can be magically accessed. We even get scenes from Mickey’s short remade in 3D! Sora lands in Mickey’s dream of being a great sorcerer manipulating comets; however, he gets kicked out of it by the Spellican, the Nightmare we’ve been chasing. Sora comes out of the dream in Yen Sid’s office… or so it seems. Mickey in the sorcerer’s chair, wearing the sorcerer’s magical hat, and waving around as if casting an endless spell under a trance, says otherwise.

These worlds have dragons now. Or is it T-rexes?

Mickey has been trapped into this predicament by the Spellican. The mouse can only be saved by Sora going into a musical world and picking up a Sound Idea. The place he lands on is based on the short scored with Beethoven’s The Pastoral Symphony. The Reality Shift in these musical worlds triggers a mini-game in which you play along to the music using the touch screen, dragging notes across the screen or tapping them at specific moments.

At this point, enemies are getting annoying. So much of this game is walk forward, beat up a crowd of enemies, repeat. Said enemies have far more HP than before, on top of using more spells and status effects. Nothing quite like being affected by a debuff that prevents special moves right as you’re low on health. Or getting sniped from afar while you’re waiting on said debuff to go away so you can heal.

I can't wait to beat this guy to a pulp. There is just an aura
around this guy, something I know I won't like.

Not much happens on the path to the Sound Idea. However, when Sora reaches it, he encounters the mysterious figure (MF) again. The opponent takes a moment to appreciate the beautiful world they’re in, before adding that he isn’t part of the dreams that are part of the Mark of Mastery. But, that if Sora remains asleep, then their paths will cross soon… After getting the Idea, Sora reappears in the Tower, where his trinket alone isn’t enough to rescue Mickey; but he knows he can trust Riku to do his part. Sure enough, the second Sound Idea appears and undoes the spell. With that achieved, Sora is ready to enter the final cursed spellbook.