After the release of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, the series began to develop further. With Crash and his friends came the arcade race, then there was a full-fledged fourth part, and now Crash Team Rumble is on sale. This is an attempt to make a multiplayer entertainment based on the series, another service game with long-term support and constant updates. However, there is a suspicion that the idea was so-so and this project will not live long.
There is never much fruit
Two teams of four players in each get on the map. The task is to collect the fruit scattered all over the place and take it to their base. As soon as one of the teams gets 2 thousand points, the match ends. There is only one mode, so the rules in each match are the same, and gameplay-wise it all resembles a greatly simplified MOBA – I immediately had associations with Pokémon Unite, only in “Crash” you don’t have to fight with mobs.
The skills of the heroes of the same class are different. Crash, for example, is able to make a roll and flop on the ground, while Tona uses a cat hook, and Catfish can target enemies from the air. But in the end, almost everyone does the same thing: collect fruit, take it to the base, and fight back against enemies. The tanks have the easiest task – they either defend their own base so that no one would interfere with the team dropping fruit, or stand at the side of the enemies and annoy them with their presence.
The main problem with Crash Team Rumble, which caused me to lose interest in the game very quickly, is the lack of depth in the gameplay. In each match, team members run around, smashing crates, picking up fruit, and taking it back to base. Sometimes along the way fighting with other players, sometimes interacting with the environment. In addition to the fruit scattered across the map relics – collect enough, bring it to a special platform and activate the bonus, unique to a particular location. Somewhere you briefly sit in a big ball, allowing you to quickly scurry around the map, somewhere you start jumping higher and falling louder.
Everything follows the same script. There is almost no teamwork – once I played as Crash, and one of the opponents took a tank and stood on our base, not letting anyone near. It was impossible to deal with him alone, so I ran around in circles, hoping that someone would help. No help – everyone was just fooling around somewhere in the distance and didn’t even think to carry fruit to the base. This happens in a large number of matches – very often you get players who ignore the main task.
The progression system, which could have made such hopeless matches a little more fun thanks to the rewards, doesn’t save you either. First, you earn experience to unlock all the characters – at first only three are unlocked. Then you do battle pass quests and earn experience for each individual character by unlocking cosmetic items for them. But everything happens terribly slowly – there are 100 levels in the skip, and it takes a long time even to get to the tenth.