By Nikhil Nayyar
A man tries, a bandicoot dies. A bandicoot dies, no one cries. A bandicoot dies. How many more lives?
I begin this review by issuing a warning. Games are meant to be fun, they are meant to push you as an individual to grow and develop within the realm of electrons and code. Yet, this is not what “Crash Bandicoot” does. It isn’t a game. It’s a punishment. For what, you may ask? It is a punishment for the audacity that you choose to take on that which is known by only God Himself. You live, vicariously – a bandicoot dies.
What is the goal in the end? That you attain the hordes of collectibles, hordes to satisfy your gluttonous hunger for the might Wumpa Fruits. Let us say that in this moment, in this very moment of time, you manage to beat the level that impedes your progress. Yet, at what cost? You live; Crash dies by fire, by falling, by stabbing, by drowning, by freezing, by coming to the infinite realization that somewhere out there past the realm of his own existence, there is an all powerful God.
You are that God, but ultimately, you as God do not care for his existence or his pain. You are the one who burns him, throws him from the lofty heights, who cuts him down, who suffocates him with water, who removes any warmth from his existence, who makes him understand that there is no escape, that he will never leave the labyrinth of his own nightmare, the labyrinth of your own design.
He beats the level, he gets the Wumpa fruit, but the boxes are left alongside the blood and tears our noble Crash Bandicoot shed along the way. They rain down upon our hero, marking him, like Cain, for each of his failures. Who is to blame? Is it Neo Cortex, a modern day Frankenstein, the antagonist who corrupted science to damn Crash into creation? Is it Naughty Dog, the developers and architects of Crash’s eternal torture? Or is it you, the being who, every time you turn on the PS4, subject Crash to his eternal damnation?
You live. You, the player, lives. And in doing so, you condemn Crash Bandicoot to die. You become bored and leave your room and console to gather dust. You live your life, enjoying the connection inherent in it. But all the while, Crash waits, he waits for you to turn on the system again. For Crash knows nothing else.
He doesn’t know of the life we live. He is confined to that feeble virtual space. He wakes only to find himself in the same place, alone and the puppet of an evil, cursed deity. Crash bears that boulder up the hill simply because he knows nothing else.
Ultimately, then, the question becomes one of remorse. How long can you keep him in his nightmare…?
7/10 – Updated graphics shed new life on the classic but the gameplay itself falls just a bit flat.