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Crash: Mind Over Mutant 360

Format:
360

Genre:
Platforming

Buy/Support:
Support Rowan, click to buy via us...

Crash: Mind Over Mutant is the latest game featuring the silent bandicoot hero, and you might find it slightly familiar. The games is like the previous crash games - jack mutants to gain powers and kick bad guy butt. Now you can also shoot at stuff and smash stuff up, you can even move stuff telekinetically. With all this Crash: Mind Over Mutant should prove to be an awesome game. Right?

The game looks alright, it's definitely very colourful. All the normal game areas are here, from deserts to ice caves to jungles. And a... erm... evil school for juvenile masterminds. Although things look pretty good, I was never really impressed. The graphics were at the level I would expect the Wii version to be at, although the cartoony art style kind of limits the graphical options. Where the game really does stand out is in the completely awesome cut scenes. They're always in a different style, from puppets to hand drawn and are usually pretty funny. It's strange though, that I found myself wanting more cut scenes and less action in places because of the quality difference.

The audio is also cool, with most of the characters spouting funny one-liners. I think that some of the humour would go over a young persons head, and some of it almost definitely went over mine. There are references to all sorts of obscure memes and pop culture, which made it more entertaining for me, as someone who's probably a little older than the target audience. However, the music fits in with the rest of the game, in that it stands out in no way and is easily forgettable.

This game is less on rails than previous outings, and now there is a more 3D, open world. It means that there are tons of hidden areas and collectibles to find, and also that the game is just more fun. However this is a mixed blessing, as the game now forces you to backtrack to and from areas. This is a really annoying the first time, and it only gets worse. There's rarely even an effort to make the levels interesting for a second run through, with the occasional area that needs a new mutant move to access. It seems almost as though the developers have realised that there isn't all that much play time to be had, so they had to fill it up with some boring replay sections.

The co-op section is a bit weird really. Some sections of the game are meant to have challenges that can only be completed in co-op mode. They involve some kind of balancing game, where one person stands on one side of a platform and balances it so that the other can get the reward. However it seemed as though I could complete the puzzles I came across without getting my little brother to help me out, simply by moving quickly and timing my jumps well. Playing through the game in co-op seems kind of pointless. One of you can transform into a tiki mask, and fire exploding chickens (Why? I don't know), whilst the other just plays as Crash.

When I played with my brother, he usually played as the chicken, because he likes being invincible and throwing exploding chickens. But as the mask he couldn't move, he just hovered near me, so he quickly got bored and wanted to play as Crash again. Because of the fixed camera, whoever drops in can't change the camera, so it's up to me to go where he wants me to go. Although playing with him was a lot of fun for a while, eventually we both got bored of not being able to go where we wanted to. Sometimes he wanted to move ahead, but I wanted to work on my mojo collection. Because of this, it ended up more fun simply to play on our own. Maybe some kind of versus mode, where we could battle to collect the most mojo or complete other challenges would have made co-op more interesting, but as it is it's simply more of the same.

Plus he annoys me normally, so playing with is a pain!

Crash: Mind over Mutant is a pretty awesome, but mindless, adventure game. It's great for a quick blast and you'll have some fun with the humour and the mutants you can jack, but after a while you'll get bored. I enjoyed the game, but I don't think I'll be playing through again for the collectibles!

Written by Rowan Brown

You can support Rowan by buying Crash: Mind Over Mutant



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Rowan Brown writes the Teen Gamer column.

"I write about my favourite games from a younger person's perspective. It's often surprising how different this ends up to other more grown up reviews."

Here are the games I've been playing recently:

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