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Crash: Mind Over Mutant Review - Xbox 360

Introduction

Crash Bandicoot has been a fairly long running platform series over the years, making an appearance on most platforms since the early days of the Playstation One. The spinning Bandicoot, Crash, returns once again in his second outing on the Xbox 360, in Crash: Mind Over Mutant.

Gameplay

The game starts with Crash's buddies being possessed by a mind-altering mobile PDA introduced by the evil Doctor Neo Cortex. This provides some humorous moments as your friend's spin out and lose themselves to it's mind-bending powers. There are also some subtle, and not so subtle pop references to iPods, Blogs, Blackberries, the Internet, and the other issues of today. The main task is to free your friends, but also eventually put a stop to Crash's chief protagonist - Doctor Neo Cortex.

While the environments are all very bright and wonderful in 3D, the first thing that is obvious is that the camera angle is not controllable by the player. This can be off-putting to those used to the more free-roaming camera of most recent titles, however to be honest, most players probably won't even miss it after a few minutes. There is probably a couple of awkward parts of the game where a free-roaming camera would be nice, but otherwise, it's no loss.

For those that have played pretty much any platformer in recent times, the game follows the basic formula, as you control Crash jumping from area to area, beating up plenty of bad guys, collecting power ups, and with cut scenes thrown in regularly. Larger Bosses also make an appearance now and then, to give Crash a mild challenge.

Scattered throughout the levels are "Mojo", which are basically coloured gems which allow Crash to power-up, and receive extra attacks. Multipliers for Mojo and other special modifiers are also located throughout all of the levels to be hunted down and collected.

Crash has a few innovative tricks up his furry sleeves to help him get by. His trademark bandicoot spin is incorporated - by rotating the thumb-sticks, Crash goes spinning like a top, allowing him to fly across the screen and bowl over enemies with ease. While sometimes the thumb-stick rotate on the Xbox 360 can be a bit of a fiddly one, in the game it's pretty easy to pull off. It's also an optional way to defeat most enemies, as Crash also has a good array of punches and kicks which can be used.

As Crash is a Bandicoot, and Bandicoots supposedly like digging, by spinning around on marked locations, he can also dig underground to find certain objects, and to burrow to areas he can't otherwise reach. It's a unique concept, but it's a little difficult to say whether it really adds anything worthwhile to the gameplay in general.

The "Mind" part of Mind Over Mutant refers to Crash's ability to take over Titans (large angry Mutants) once defeated. By pressing the B button, Crash ...

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