What’s more, the most frustrating challenges are hidden in bonus levels. By the time this game came out, Naughty Dog had gotten a lot better at level design, so all the challenges seemed fairer than before. While there is debate around whether Crash Bandicoot: Warped is the best in the trilogy, there’s not much debate about its difficulty: it’s by far the easiest of the three. If you can't do it, good luck breaking the boxes. Getting Clear Gems with the Warped Motorcycle Enjoy dodging the UFOs. In fact, some sequences of nitro crates feel like Naughty Dog just expected you to have Aku Aku mask on or die.

To get 100% on Cold Hard Crash, it involves controlling Crash sliding through ridiculous traps, deadly penguins, and worst of all, nitro crates – and going through this path more than once. The ice physics for this level make Crash ridiculously hard to control. Controlling Crash on Ice Sometimes you can't even see the ice you're slipping on.Īnother challenge in Crash 2 which will be the bane of any players aiming for 100% is Cold Hard Crash. Made worse is when a second route is a death route, so if you lose a life backtracking and make that death route inaccessible, have fun restarting the level, or no clear gem for you. This is infuriating as the camera doesn’t adjust when you’re walking back, so unlike boulder run levels, it gives you too little room to view what dangers or pits you may be running into. Levels like Diggin’ It, The Pits and Piston It Away split off into two routes, and require the player to finish one route, backtrack through it, and finish another to break all the boxes. A death feels more like your own fault than the fault of the game’s design. Most of the challenges in Cortex Strikes Back are a lot better than the first game, because they feel much fairer. Backtracking for Crash 2 Gems You will have to go through this route, walk back through another, to break all boxes.Ĭrash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Backprobably has the best balance of the three games. Good luck avoiding every trap this level has to offer to do that. Worse, Slippery Climb has the red gem, which requires you to not only break every box in the level and its bonus round but to not lose a single life. Recently, Vicarious Visions brought Stormy Ascent back as an extra for any player brave or stupid enough to try the maddening challenge (seriously, it took me 60 lives).īut just because Stormy Ascent is extremely hard doesn’t mean Slippery Climb’s retracting stairs, clumsy bird jumping, moving platforms, and dangerous lab assistants aren’t still very hard. In the original game, Naughty Dog made a level that was super difficult and fun for them to play but it was so hard that they decided to hide it from play. Getting the Red Gem on Slippery Climb Don't be fooled - this is before it gets hard. Adapting to this is one of the most infuriating moments of the Trilogy. Now, it is possible right at the end of the level to jump behind the wall and avoid much of the last segment, but it punishes any player who thought they were in for an easy ride. Then Native Fortress hits the player with its ridiculous flaming bowels, natives pushing Crash off the cliff, and spikes that punish players who dare jump at the wrong moment. Up until that point, most levels haven’t been too challenging, and the first boss, Papu Papu, was also pathetically easy. There are levels much harder in the first Crash Bandicoot than Native Fortress (we’re looking at you, Slippery Climb), but what makes Native Fortress so rough is the steep difficulty climb. Sane Trilogy that left us yelling words at the screen that our innocent younger selves wouldn’t have even known existed when we first played. So, here are the eight most infuriating moments in N. Sane Trilogy also reminded us of the maddening difficulty games had back then. It reminded us of a time when games were so much more straightforward, with no long, complex narratives, just a simple goal of getting from point A to point B, beat a boss, repeat.

Sane Trilogy reminded us what we loved about our childhood – a time when games didn’t take themselves seriously and when the main character felt like it came straight from a Warner Bros cartoon.

Crash bandicoot 2 cold hard crash