Wii Gamers Crash: Mind Over Mutant Game Review
Screenshots
The Good Parts (4 out of 5)
Crash Bandicoot has finally been revitalized after a decade on the side lines by Radical Entertainment to provide Wii gamers with a large world overrun with challenges. Crash: Mind Over Mutant comes with a punchy and surprisingly satisfying battle system that will have you crashing into enemies and leaving them in your dust.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant contains many rolling-in-the-grass hilarious moments in its surreal story line and game play. Its colourful humour in cinematic scenes of comedy made me smile and laugh continually.
In Crash: Mind Over Mutant, you can store multiple mutants in Crash’s arsenal at any time during play and then cycle through them at will to find what you need when the moment arises. You can even upgrade your mutants’ strengths and weaknesses as you progress through the game.
The Bad Parts (4 out of 5)
Crash: Mind Over Mutant is too similar to last year’s Crash of the Titans to improve the experience. They should have made more of an effort to make this game different.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant falls short of entertainment greatness, especially for veteran gamers from a decade ago who have seen this content done better.
The Graphical Presentation (4 out of 5)
Crash: Mind Over Mutant has a well-known visual style that is still compelling after years on the shelf. This time, Crash Bandicoot gets a little help from mutants that in many cases are even more fun and enjoyable to play with than Crash. Vast landscapes with shimmering transparent streams and reflective surfaces that help create shadows and light to confuse and confound. Crash smashes through crates that shatter nicely into a cascade of textured particles, rides on top of horned mutant-beasts, and even inside a mutant or two.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant includes character animations that are fluid and smooth in motion, which is important with platforming game play. However, the frame-rate tops off at about 30 fps and often dips well below this, which is really noticeable on the Wii.
Sounds in the Game (3 out of 5)
Crash: Mind Over Mutant has cute but sharp and clear sound effects that are distinctive and easy to tell apart. They add wonderfully to the energy level and help to immerse you in the game play. The background tracks are energy-filled tunes designed more to keep the pace of the game at a level in tune with the action, but they do their job well.
The Story Line (3 out of 5)
Crash: Mind Over Mutant begins at Crash’s home as he’s leaving to explore a large world that’s the backbone of this adventure. This isn’t an open-world design that allows you to wander freely, however. Crash: Mind Over Mutant is a scripted affair that takes place in a linear fashion; you must complete task A to get to part B. You head out and complete a number of traditional platforming challenges and take care of obstacles that are in your way.
Playability (4 out of 5)
Crash Bandikoot has always been the poor man’s Mario the Plumber or Sonic the Hedgehog, but Crash: Mind Over Mutant is every bit as playable as either of these games. Crash controls amazingly, all his moves work perfectly. Double jump, charge kick, his combo-filled melee is the best part of this experience. You use the Wii remote to activate Crash’s spin, dodge attacks, climb walls and even dig under things easily and quickly. All the motion-controls worked pretty well, they were responsive and worked consistently, which is nice to see considering many of the control issues with Wii games these days. They also included a co-op mode along with the single player experience that allows two players to play as Smash and Coco that was actually less fun than the single player mode.
The Final Word (3 out of 5)
Crash: Mind Over Mutant is recommended for kids and even adults who like a fun and satisfying experience and don’t already have last year’s Crash of the Titans. Entertaining, engaging and totally satisfying, this title has an eye-pleasing visual style and a pedigree that makes it worth a look.