I remember when I got a PS2 for Christmas, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex was the first game I played on it. Besides the long load times, it was pretty good. Of course, after I got a Gamecube 2 years or so later, I decided to buy it again, and I must say I was a bit... disappointed. Here's the lowdown on things...
GRAPHICS: 6/10 The biggest disappointment in this game is the graphics. For one, the frame rate is slower. This is most noticeable in the opening cinema, where the frame rate frequently drops significantly. It doesn't bring the game to a crawl, but for a Gamecube game, it's a real put-down, and it's a sure sign of laziness among animators. Another thing is the degraded graphics. Is that flat blue and white surface Crash is water-skiing on SUPPOSED to be water? Fans of Super Mario Sunshine will be angered. Also you can clearly see a large red ring around Uka Uka's red aura that shouldn't be there. Plus, the graphics overall are rough, and the polygons are few, and pretty noticeable.
SOUND: 4/10 Another disappointment is the sound; the volume of each character's voice seems completely random: they'll be completely normal at first, but then go down to a whisper for a few seconds, making it almost inaudible with the music drowning them out, but then the voices will go back to normal again. Don't even bother adjusting the volume on the TV; doing so will only get you broken eardrums the next moment. There's a problem with the sound effects too. They're often louder than any piece of dialouge in this game. In fact, on the first plane level in the game, there's this annoying, sourceless clunking noise (that clearly wasn't in the PS2 version) through the entire time you play that level, sucking out all the fun of shooting hapless victims out of the sky. Other than that, the sound effects are okay, but they can do better.
GAME-PLAY: 5/10 The game-play here is pretty much the exact same as the first 3 games in the series, without any twists or surprises, giving us the same boring valleys, corridors and tunnels all over again. They could at least have Crash talk this time, but it looks like that Traveller's Tales's philosophy when they were making this game was that "anything that's different from the usual Crash Bandicoot mold is sacrilege and blasphemy, and cannot be released to the public." A little bit of trivia: A concept that was announced during the production of the game was that they would put in special Elemental Crates that would appear if you re-enter a level. Activating the Crates would unlock a secret area, reveal a mini-boss, etc., but apparently, the idea was scrapped due to Traveller's Tales's little philosophy. I take points off the game-play for unoriginality.
OVERALL: 5/10 I recommend buying an Xbox, then buying Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex for Xbox. I hear that Crash actually has fur in that one. The Gamecube version is only worth a rental.
GRAPHICS: 6/10 The biggest disappointment in this game is the graphics. For one, the frame rate is slower. This is most noticeable in the opening cinema, where the frame rate frequently drops significantly. It doesn't bring the game to a crawl, but for a Gamecube game, it's a real put-down, and it's a sure sign of laziness among animators. Another thing is the degraded graphics. Is that flat blue and white surface Crash is water-skiing on SUPPOSED to be water? Fans of Super Mario Sunshine will be angered. Also you can clearly see a large red ring around Uka Uka's red aura that shouldn't be there. Plus, the graphics overall are rough, and the polygons are few, and pretty noticeable.
SOUND: 4/10 Another disappointment is the sound; the volume of each character's voice seems completely random: they'll be completely normal at first, but then go down to a whisper for a few seconds, making it almost inaudible with the music drowning them out, but then the voices will go back to normal again. Don't even bother adjusting the volume on the TV; doing so will only get you broken eardrums the next moment. There's a problem with the sound effects too. They're often louder than any piece of dialouge in this game. In fact, on the first plane level in the game, there's this annoying, sourceless clunking noise (that clearly wasn't in the PS2 version) through the entire time you play that level, sucking out all the fun of shooting hapless victims out of the sky. Other than that, the sound effects are okay, but they can do better.
GAME-PLAY: 5/10 The game-play here is pretty much the exact same as the first 3 games in the series, without any twists or surprises, giving us the same boring valleys, corridors and tunnels all over again. They could at least have Crash talk this time, but it looks like that Traveller's Tales's philosophy when they were making this game was that "anything that's different from the usual Crash Bandicoot mold is sacrilege and blasphemy, and cannot be released to the public." A little bit of trivia: A concept that was announced during the production of the game was that they would put in special Elemental Crates that would appear if you re-enter a level. Activating the Crates would unlock a secret area, reveal a mini-boss, etc., but apparently, the idea was scrapped due to Traveller's Tales's little philosophy. I take points off the game-play for unoriginality.
OVERALL: 5/10 I recommend buying an Xbox, then buying Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex for Xbox. I hear that Crash actually has fur in that one. The Gamecube version is only worth a rental.