i am a proponent of hard games. if done well, they’re an absolute treat and a great challenge. beating a hard boss or level rewards an indescribable feeling, and those bosses encourage me to further invest myself in the mechanics of the game. even in simpler games, understanding the intricacies of how the physics work or how to best navigate each level is really fun.

hard games, though, are a lot tougher to design well. the fine line between too easy and too frustrating is thin, and some developers and their games fail to balance it. you’ll either get games like grapple dog, which, while generally okay to play, are both too easy and too mechanically simple to stand out, or you’ll get games like crash bandicoot.

crash 1’s remake isn’t fun. straight up, i did not have a good time playing it. it’s not a game i’d recommend to others, at least in its modern port. very few levels pass the test of being challenging yet fair; by the end of the game, many of the levels are difficult, but very few ensure that deaths feel like your fault.

my real problems, though, come with how this game controls. ironically, everything is really smooth - the jumps feel tuned really well, and there’s just the right level of speed - but it doesn’t work with how these levels are designed.

here’s a big example: there’s a slight acceleration before crash gets to full speed. in any other game, this makes a lot of sense. it helps transition the player smoothly between an unmoving state and a moving one. when running around, it feels nice. but when you get to the super tight platforming stages where you’re constantly stopping and moving again, that slight acceleration causes major problems. you end up missing jumps because you didn’t make the minor adjustment to reach top speed, which is endlessly frustrating. because these levels are designed so tightly, that tiny little detail adds a ton of newfound problems that wouldn’t exist had this tiny feature not been added.

another major problem is the depth perception. the camera is so far behind crash, so you end up miscalculating jumps really, really often in the 3D sections. it’s another issue you really can’t miss in any level, as there’s at least one jump in each level that’s decently hard to judge.

and one more: the hitboxes are atrociously bad. it feels like vicarious visions didn’t realize that making hitboxes extremely literal is so, so frustrating.

here’s a super quick game design tip: hitboxes should be a little bit forgiving. i think the most obvious example i’m familiar with is geometry dash, another challenging platformer. the hitboxes are noticeably smaller than the visual spikes, which is a good thing! it makes extremely small clips and mistakes less punishing, especially because the game is already pretty hard in its own right. when you die, you know you’re dead. every mistake feels like a mistake.

crash’s hitboxes are extremely literal, and combined with the atrocious camera angle, there are some deaths that feel completely BS, which is a very, very large problem in a precision platformer!

there’s also 2D sections in some of the levels here, which are… fine. they’re more playable than the 3D sections due to the better camera, but the hitboxes are still extremely, extremely frustrating.

that leads me to the level design… man, some of the stages are just terrible to play. there are some fun ones here, for sure. jungle rollers, upstream, native fortress, they’re all quite fun and provide a nice mix of challenge, playability, and theming. but as the levels become more challenging, they also become more frustrating, as the problems in the mechanics rear their ugly heads in. slippery climb and the high road specifically were some of my least favorites, the former due to the shoddy hitboxes and the latter due to the jumps being far too tight for the game’s newfound acceleration.

the worst part about the level design is that i see how everything could be really cool! if the acceleration had been tweaked, the camera angle wasn’t so far behind crash, and the hitboxes weren’t so bad, these levels could be a really neat challenge. it’s a case where the mechanics of the game fail the level design, and not the other way around. i’m used to games that aren’t fun due to really terrible level design. lots of sonic games are plagued by this - sonic 1 and sonic rush are the most notable examples - where they’re mechanically rock-solid but fail to capitalize on it. crash 1 is one of the rare examples of the opposite.

i do quite like the bosses, at least!. they’re quite fun, especially pinstripe potoroo, which has a pretty unique theme compared to the rest of the game. there’s some really cool fights throughout the game, as the problems that plague the platforming levels don’t factor in as much. they’re pretty easy, but hey! i’ll take easy and fun over hard and frustrating.

i also quite like the style that the game exudes, it’s very goofy and over-the-top without being too much, i guess. my only real issue with the style is its tendency to laugh at the player’s failures, which, for a game so challenging, is pretty annoying. the most noticeable example is the game smashing all of the boxes you missed on top of crash at the end of each level. i guess it’s supposed to incentivize 100%ing the game, but it ends up feeling more condescending than inspiring. outside of that, the cutscenes look really nice, filled to the brim with personality, and there’s some great tunes musically. lots of percussion is used, with bongos taking the forefront, which provides a great background to the theming of the levels here.

there’s no real story here, outside of crash just trying to stop cortex’s antics. it’s cute, though, and adds even more to the cartoony, silly style the game wants to lean into. cortex is a really fun villain, with a ton of personality and a surprisingly intricate goal. either way, the story didn’t play a huge part in my experience with the game.

crash 1 isn’t the worst thing i’ve ever played. there’s some fun moments here, and i see how the game could be an absolute blast, but the problems tend to overwhelm any fun moments i have with it, y’know? it feels mechanically sloppy, and that sloppiness and lack of clarity makes each level more of a chore than a good time.