Crash N. Sane Trilogy is a pack of three of the most iconic games from the PlayStation library. Here they are lovingly remastered/remade for PC and modern consoles. I hate every single one of them, and also love them all too.
Before now, I hadn't played the original trilogy on PlayStation. Like halfway through Crash 1, I decided to play the og's alongside each game. Due to this, I now have a newfound appreciation for Crash Bandicoot. I also have some pretty severe criticisms of this trilogy pack as well.
Crash 1, 2, and 3 are some of the most frustrating platformers I've ever played. I dedicated 42 hours of my life to 100% them and I don't regret it. These games are straight up hostile to the player, both the ones in the N. Sane pack and the og's. Hitboxes are wonky, depth perception is constantly questionable, animation desync is around every corner. Some of the games love to waste more of your time too. Crash 2 and 3 are the worst of this and constantly make you navigate slow hubs to go from level to level. For this, they make up for it with honest drives to reward the player for putting up with all of that. These are short games with simple premises. They know what they are and don't try to be much more than that. I both despise and respect them as a result.
The N. Sane trilogy I've grown to have a more bitter love-hate relationship with. Playing both the og's and this side by side taught me that Vicarious Visions had many opportunities and took few. The games look pretty, but lose some of their substance. Because the remasters were all pretty much 1x1 recreations of the og's, a lot of the design clarity is lost in translation. Interactable vs non-interactable portions of a level become more unclear, as do the boundaries for some enemies. The games originally relied on some of the PlayStation jank to get visual clarity, and the N. Sane trilogy versions don't respect that often enough. There were many chances the devs had to make certain things better, and they didn't take them. There was one really nice instance where QoL was given, but ultimately that didn't make up for the number of additional missed opportunities.
On a positive note, the gameplay being so 1x1 means playing these versions is the closest you'll get to the og's without directly playing them. The translation from d-pad to thumbstick movement is surprisingly clean. I've played many games that tried this and failed to get it right. Out of the three games in the pack, my favorite is Crash 1, though Crash 3 has some pretty good levels. There's a lot of repetition to the levels in each game and unfortunately for all the variety 3 provides, I feel it also repeats the most. Crash 2, despite its fans, didn't sit right with me. It was consistently the most frustrating and also just wasn't that interesting to me. Though it did have some great levels.
Ultimately I do recommend this trilogy pack. It's nice to see an attempt to properly remaster/remake classic PlayStation titles like this. Especially one that didn't fail completely. I do know that nothing really came of this, but it's still nice to have regardless.
Pick this one up if you're a fan of precision platformers and aren't afraid of some BS platforming. Or if you're a fan of the og's. They're pretty fun games and often go on sale for a decent price.
