Review: Crash Team Rumble – Remote Party Game

Full of mini-games, Crash Bash was a game I had a lot of fun with when I first started – although it was far from flawless. When Crash Team Rumble was announced, I immediately picked the interest group, not least after Activision’s successful revival and update of other Crash Bandicoot adventures. But is competitive online gaming with the madness unleashed the way to go?

promising start…

Two teams of four players each, the courses are full of platform jumping, traps and loads of fruits to collect. The first team to deliver 2,000 fruits to the base wins. Simple setup but very fun. Matches are easy to get into, while there is depth in both the course design and the character gallery. The fact that control follows the slightest hint doesn’t make things worse.

As of this writing, there are nine playable characters, divided into three different classes: recorder, blocker, and support. Scorers are fast and can collect more fruit, blockers are slow but powerful and can mess up the opposing team’s fruit collection, while support is a type of middle that is better at activating various bonuses and traps.

Add to this that each character also has some unique moves and attacks that can help in tricky situations, and it’s clear that there are good opportunities to play tactically for those who want and can. This is not the least noticeable in the few times I have had a close-knit team as an opponent; Then the usual matches quickly end in a huge loss.

…that soon fade away

But this is also an issue for Crash Team Rumble. Whether I’m playing alone or with a friend – that is, with two or three random teammates and unknown opponents – most people just run around doing little to nothing. Sometimes things go well, sometimes not at all. Many times it gets messy.

However, I can imagine it could be a lot of fun with four friends playing together and helping each other out. for a while anyway. Because with a single game mode, similar paths and characters controlled in basically the same way, the gameplay quickly becomes conventional. Also, completing missions to unlock new costumes and badges is not something that appeals to me.

Sure, there are temporary game modes that modify the rules or add special traps – but I want something completely different. Why not run competitions with multiple players at the same time and the camera from the original game, or pure platform jumping with increasing difficulty? Or why not a bunch of simple mini games that work both online and with friends on the same couch? but not.

Activision

Living on lost time?

There’s also a question mark over how long Crash Team Rumble will live. There is no single player content and all play requires an online connection. If the servers are down, the game is unusable. Same if you run out of opponents.

Another thing of concern is that it takes an oddly long time to connect to the game server. What takes a few seconds in other games can take up to two minutes here. Plus, it can be really hard to find full squads at certain times of the day, and the computer-controlled players that are added in afterwards aren’t very smart.

Then we have Microsoft’s potential purchase of Activision Blizzard. Will the family game specialists at Toys for Bob continue to work on more content for Crash Team Rumble, or will they go straight to creating new adventures with Crash, Spyro, Banjo, and all the other platform heroes Microsoft has bought? The future will tell.

However, I hope Crash Team Rumble grows and survives. Basically, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s a shame the rest is missing.

Activision

Crash Rumble team

tested: July 2023
Type: platform / team game
DeveloperBob Games
publisher: Activision
platform: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
tested on: Playstation 5
measuring: 5.6 GB
prize: 399 SEK at Mediamarket