Context: I've never played the original games, so I'm reviewing Crah Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy as a collection of games, as opposed to a collection of remakes.
Crash 1 is a pretty good but simplistic platformer. It doesn't bring much to the table that hadn't been seen in other platformers up to its release, other than being in 3D, which was new at the time. But I feel like it doesn't fully utilize the possibilities of being in 3D, because half of the levels are extremely linear 3D hallways, and the other half are literally 2D. The game's greatest strength is actually not in the gameplay but the presentation: the characters are memorable and funny, and the game has a very unique musical style. Overall, Crash 1 feels like a promising start to a new series.
Crash 2 brings along many improvements, but also disappointments. First of all, the amount of cutscenes and voice acting has been increased, which is great because yet again, the characters make the game. Another great improvement is that each level now has multiple objectives, which increases replayability. The levels are also less hallway-like this time around. I somewhat miss the world map from Crash 1. In Crash 2, there's just a level select area which is a bit lame and I feel like it makes the reuse of level themes more apparent. You're telling me that you could literally teleport me anywhere, yet there are only a handful of level themes which repeat over and over...?
But the biggest problem I have with this game is its difficulty. There's a discussion to be had about what's "good" vs. "bad" difficulty, and I would say that Crash 2's difficulty is mostly not good, for two reasons. First off, the game suffers from major depth perception issues. A large chunk of my deaths were cases where I tried to jump on a platform or an enemy, but narrowly missed because it's hard to judge where things are in 3D space, and the game gives you no recovery moves like a ledge grab or a double jump. This is especially bad in the level "Hangin' Out", where certain enemies are hard to avoid simply because it's hard to tell how close to you they are. Second reason: the game's level design, especially in the late game, feels like it tries to be as annoying as possible, with traps that are hard to see coming or hard to react to (such as logs rolling around at the speed of sound from offscreen). This type of level design can be okay when the levels are bite-sized (like Super Meat Boy) or if it's easy to recover from damage (like Sonic), but in Crash 2 it can take while to get back to the surprise hazard, which can one-shot you again if you don't have a mask. It actually got to the point where I gave up on the game on the final floor, because the levels started being straight up infuriating.
Crash 3 is easily the best of the bunch, and it's not even close. Yet again we have more cutscenes and interaction between the characters, which is great to see. The new movement options (double jump, hover and sprint) are very welcome, though the double jump felt unreliable and didn't always activate when I wanted it to. Might be an issue with this remake, I don't know. The levels in Crash 3 have much more variety and less reused themes than they did in Crash 1 and 2, and more importantly, it feels like the designers actually wanted to make fun levels this time around! I had a good time with almost all of the levels and I thought the vehicle sections were a nice change of pace. I don't have much else to say about Crash 3, it's just a really solid game!
