redrum_9

I was and I'm still am a huge fan of the original Crash Bandicoot series on the PS1. They were great, challenging games that never managed to be repetitive. I knew about this game beforehand, seen stills of it, some gameplay videos, and the cover looked very promising, since both Crash and Cortex are on it, both are crazy in their own manner: what more do you need? Well, a better game for sure. Is it that bad? Yes, and I'll explain why:

-The character design: it's not only different, but absolutely horrible. They look like bland, soulless plasticine puppets who are the originals' poor man's copy-paste work. Cortex looks arguably the worst. But it's OK...skip the cut-scenes, play the game, and realize: Crash moves differently as well. Why? Well, it might not be how he moves, it might be because of the design, but he unarguably looks different, when he runs and spins. "Different gen, different design, idiot" OK, then tell me why do I feel like the whole character's dynamism, which maybe could have single handedly give life to an original Crash game, if it didn't have fun characters, levels, humour and other great stuff, is completely gone? He runs and spins like he doesn't want to do all this. Why should I go fight Cortex for the sixth-billion time? Why should I spin at enemies, when I can just go home and chill, do I care about all this stuff? No, he doesn't. The Crash character was definitely re-designed by one of the creators who had the same attitude towards the game he was programming, and put his personal feelings into the character.

-The levels: I can imagine the programmers' boss: "Ok, we are done with the game, we just need some levels there. Anyone to do the levels? Matt, could you do the levels, please? Just do the levels please, and then you can go home. Just try to do something that looks like the original games. But please put no effort into it. What? Oh yeah they were some snowy levels in the second game, just put some snow on the levels. What you have an idea of a Mine Cart level? Yeah, it probably gets boring after a while. When it happens make him jump out of a cart, and put that half-level after it, that you put in the Recycle Bin yesterday and you're done for today" I hope you understand how much passion they put into the game. The level I mentioned is actually an existing level in the game: you start off in a mine-cart (on which you can only lean left and right, there was maybe time to add a jumping and crouching option, but since there was no time, or no care whatsoever, about making obstacles or boxes, there was no need for it). After a while it gets boring, but it still goes on for like a minute (which is believe me a lot when playing a game as boring and uninteresting as this) then Crash jumps out of the cart, and you land into a......some kind of factory....or like a....something maybe related to Cortex, maybe not......who cares, just run, go forward....but hey I'm astonished by how detailed is the design of this whole levels, oh no wait they are just bland, grey walls. I always remember with a smile the Egyptian levels , the "fantasy" levels , the sewer levels. They were all very well-thought out and specific. The creators back then had something very precise in their mind, and they just made it, and gave the best out the each level. It was never boring due the dynamism, the funny enemies and details, the challenging level-design (Tomb Wader in Warped for example: went on for hours, and still never got bored even if many times frustrated). In Wrath of Cortex, the levels have no soul, and frankly I can't make a difference between any of them! It's all the same, just some background stuff, to have a level, otherwise it's an unfinished game.

The humour: something the creators clearly didn't have. The original games used tons of clichés, but used it impeccably. Killer bees, frogs that turn into prince, evil wizards and so on. They even put twists one them sometimes: a pharaoh with a flamethrower for example, hilarious. Not that I'd pause the game, and laugh for hours, but they were little jokes, that were present in each levels and it played an important role in giving the game a soul. The creators here, they have no sense of humour...a medieval castle? Let's have a dragon! Oh these tall thin Cortex henchmen guys, they were funny looking....but what should they do? Oh just .......just make them stand there and shoot.....like..........i don't know things.

-The bosses: the story, which I frankly don't care about, because it doesn't have seem to have anything interesting in it, has something to do with...like masks, corresponding each to one of the fifth elements. And like...who cares? The bosses are like....big....scary.....things each representing one of these elements. OK, why did N-Gin, Dingodile, N-Tropy and the others go on a strike the same day? The bosses are extremely boring. I don't want to go into details, it's just boring, uninteresting and far from the feeling of the epic boss battles that were set in the earlier games. Except for the last boss...Cortex! Finally we are going again against this crazy maniac ..... oh no it's that Bandicoot clone Crunch and Cortex is there but he's like... Oh, whatever.

I could go on, but it all comes down to what I've been trying to explain and convey with these points: the game has lost the dynamism, the fun, the humour, the feeling and basically its whole soul with this episode. It LOOKS like a good Crash game, but when you play you'll probably be deceived.

This is more or less an answer to one of the reviewers here who was not so enthusiastic about the game, as I am. Since he described how the game works, I'm not writing it down again.

"Control is awful, camera is painfully bad, sound is poor and game-play is all over the place, random and barely making sense" The controls are not awful, you just have to get used to it. They are not the greatest controls ever created, but for example the slide option, and the high jumps make it easier for you to navigate Flik throughout the levels. The camera is indeed bad, I don't think that's something anyone can argue on, but sadly with the transition to 3D at that time, many games of that generation had terrible camera angles and control. It just "helps" that the PS1's right analog almost never has any function in PS1 games, and with the N64, the camera can sometimes be controlled with some of the buttons, which is needless to say, anything but comfortable. Sound effects are great, so is the music, which fits the mood of each level perfectly.

"Since I haven't seen the film, I can't say if the story faithfully follows it, but from what I've been told, it seems fairly accurate." The game follows the movie very well. Some levels are exaggerating the importance it has in the movie, making full levels relying on "smaller" scenes from the movie, but during a movie-game transition this is almost unavoidable.

"The game-play is pitiful, with most levels simply being about finding the way to the end of the level" Many games, dare I say most of the games are about going from point A to point B, the question is how well the game succeeds in making the player not feel this obvious fact. I think this game does it pretty well, mainly because of the seed and berry system, on which you have to improve on each level, making logic and smaller backtracks essential to the gameplay.

"I'm not kidding, this game has some of the most confusing levels I've ever played through, which doesn't really make sense, since it's a children's game." I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as you make it sound. Levels are more or less labyrinthic indeed, which is a thing I don't like either therefore my dislike for games like Metroid, but this game is a smooth version a real video-game labyrinth, which is, to me, perfectly enjoyable.

"If you collect all the corn in a level, you get full health. So?" That aspect of the corn collecting is just a small bonus. Collecting all 50 corns on the levels serves to -traditonnally- complete the game 100%, same goes to the FLIK letters you later mention.

"Most levels are either easy enough for you not to get hurt or has a plant that spawns endless supplies of health" These plants can be planted as well, if you have reached a certain seed levels, so therefore they are on every level, and it does make the game easier, unfortunately, maybe fortunately for smaller kids.

"If you collect a special weapon, a golden berry(more about them later) and kill every enemy in the level with it(enemies re-spawn when killed by any other means), you get a bonus clip from the movie. Wow! What a treat, huh? Really something you want to fight hard for, especially if you don't have the movie itself" To my knowledge, you have to collect the berries, the letters and the corns to unlock the bonus clip. Not a huge treat indeed, but you have to keep two things in mind: . 1. Back then, the PS1 was unique in many ways, including the fact that it could play clips from movies, and that was an easy way, to exploit this feature. People were more enthusiastic about it back then, even if they didn't have an orgasm or whatever because of it.* 2. A bonus level would have been nice, yes, but many games not even does that, because they know that many gamer's goal is 100%, and that will make them happy until they start playing a next video-game.

"The real problem with these is that the variations are often used as poor excuses to create levels around. " It's not an excuse, this is how the game works. Seeds are key elements to the game. At this point some can say shooting portals in Portal is an excuse to create levels around, but that's just its aspect, it is what's is the game is built on. Portal is of course a far superior game, but Bug's Life has its own aspects, and if you don't like the way the game works, then that's fine...but it certainly doesn't feel like an excuse.

I'd like to add, that I got this game for Christmas at a very young age, and didn't like it back then because of the seed system. The only thing you can do is try it and see if it's your cup of tea. A negative point for me is that during the boss levels the game just doesn't want to let go of the seed and berry system. In THAT case I CAN tell, that the bosses seem like an excuse, but they are still highly enjoyable, as the whole game is.

I'm incidentally a huge fan of both Miike and the Ace Attorney game series, but I believe people who want to see this film, are mostly Phoenix Wright fans, so I'll try to review the movie from this point of view, to show fans what they need to expect.

Adapting a game like Phoenix Wright might seem easy at first, but in fact, it's something you have to be careful with: the game is basically like a comic book, a series a images well put together, with often intriguing, other times funny but never uninteresting dialogues and characters. Like a comic (or even a novel for that matter) most of the world is created by the reader (or in this case the player) who links these dialogues and images in a way, to create a motion picture in their mind. I loved exploring the crime scenes, and such (=the non scripted parts of the game), but it's the story and the characters that had a bigger impact on me. Each player has a different way of imagining this world while playing the game, and for that the film has to work in a way that it ruins the least amount a fans' expectations. Every single imagination can't be pleased, but this film tries its hardest.

First, what I liked about the film, is the attempt itself to create a Phoenix Wright movie. Second, the fact that this "distopic absurd world" of the source material is portrayed in the movie without the creators shying away from ideas that an average human being would find acceptable in a video game, but not necessarily in a film. In fact, that is a very strong aspect of the movie: it has a world without rules, limits, it's crazy, dark and fun, just like the game. It doesn't want to be just a movie, it wants to be THE Phoenix Wright movie. In other words, one of the films biggest values, is that it wants to translate the least amount of video game logic to film logic. It embraces video game logic, plays with it, and uses it to show the craziest ideas on screen. I mean for example by the trials with holograms, which is of course not like that in the games, but the idea is brilliant, because it translates the game's epic moments perfectly, when somebody pulls out the definitive evidence and shows it to the court. Third, the film is not only made by somebody who knows the source material throughly, but from the film's attitude, is a big fan of it as well. The most possible elements are compressed in these 90 minutes to please all the fans' needs: for example some unexpected characters from the series make short appearances (which, I'm not going to tell you of course) and many similar surprises..

All that being said, the movie has a few downsides for me: First, the Gumshoe character: I love him in the games (my second favourite character after Godot) and I'm sure many of us do, but he had a lot less screen presence that I wanted him to have. Because of that, his style, his whole presence could not be felt as much in the film as in the game. Also, I think it was bad casting: although the actor does a decent job, they should have gotten somebody with a bit more weight on him to do it, after all he's the big guy in the games. Second, even if I didn't care as much for the Maya character in the games, as much as for several others, I always loved his relationship with Phoenix. Here, the chemistry between the two can hardly be felt, Maya seems more like an assistant than a true friend/partner of Phoenix. Also, I think bad casting here as well, since I think the actress was a bit too old for the role, but that wouldn't have been a big problem if the chemistry between the two worked. Third, the judge character. In the game we discover two sides of him: a strict (but old and tired of it) and a humorous naive judge (the way I see it). Here, I felt that he is left only with the first, and frankly least interesting side of him. And here again, I know this is tiring, but I think the judge having hair was a bad decision (I'm sure many of you think of this as astonishingly stupid nitpicking, but hey, the bald bearded guy: it's one thing that made him memorable for me, and if you make him have a beard, then cut his hair as well) Last, but not least, is a key scene which has been slightly modified by the writers. I'm not going to say which scene it is, all I can say without spoiling is that this key scene, was moved to another location in the film (the location in the game was one of the aspects which made it great). I think it was an easy choice, but they might have had a reason for it.

Although I devoted the bigger paragraph to negative aspects, I wouldn't call them flaws, more like things, ideas I would have done/solved differently. To end this all, and to clear all misunderstandings (if any happened): i loved the film. I think it's an absolute treat for fans, and a very well made piece of work, in terms of cinematography, screenplay, direction and everything else. Although I thought that the problems I had were worth mentioning, they didn't affect my viewing, since I was blown away by seeing Ace Attorney as a movie, and I thoroughly felt that only passion has been put in the making of this film and little to no laziness, which is sadly rarely the case of films nowadays. Does the film work? Absolutely. And that is what matters.