Crash Team Rumble is surprisingly good but destined to fail as a paid title
Crash Team Rumble is the latest game in the long running Crash Bandicoot series, and as you would expect it’s a four vs four multiplayer battle arena game, and a surprisingly fun one at that.
I don’t blame anyone who saw that the next game from everyone’s favourite orange rodent (and maybe blue rodent depending on how you feel about Sonic The Hedgehog) would be a battle pass-laden platformer / MOBA hybrid rather than, a new platformer or kart racer the series is known for and immediately fobbed it off. Especially when it's not free-to-play. But Crash Bandicoot 4 developer Toys For Bob’s latest – against all odds – works really well.
The game revolves around two teams of four doing battle in a specific arena, with the goal of collecting as much Wumpa Fruit as possible and taking them back to your home base to score them with the first team hitting 2000 Wumpas winning (Pokemon Unite is the closest game I can compare the system to).
However, it's not as simple as collection, each map has it's own roster of zany power ups which are activated by collecting Relics, making every map feel wholly unique. While one map will have Akano, which acts as a forcefield spinning around the player and knocking back enemies, while another will have barriers to protect your goal from enemies (which can also be used by enemies to block off your goal). Meanwhile, each stage has a mega power up that requires 30 Relics to activate, these can change the course of the game in an instant, however both teams are putting relics into, making for a tense sub-game to the main event.
No two of the 10 included maps feel the same, one map has both teams goals right next to each other which causes pure chaos towards the endgame, while others are across the map requiring teams to split their efforts between scoring and blocking. Which brings us onto the games class system of Scorers, Blockers, and Boosters. Scorers can collect – and thus score more – Wumpa, have the most agility, but are a bit weaker. Blockers are hulking beasts who can manhandle enemies and prevent them from scoring. Finally, Boosters are your support class, being able to pick up more relics at once and activate those all-too-important power ups.
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Currently eight characters make up the base roster, with three scorers, three blockers and two boosters, with all of the Crash Bandicoot faces you'd expect. Crash, Coco, Tawna, Cortex, Dingodile, N. Tropy, N. Brio and a brand new character Catbat, with N.Gin and Ripper Roo coming as a part of the Season One Battle Pass (which is included in the price of entry). No two characters feel similar with an exception of Crash and Coco (and even then, they play different roles).
Cash Team Rumble
Crash Team Rumble has all the makings of a free-to-play hit, except for the fact that it costs £24.99 / $29.99 / AU$44.95 to play it. The team at Toys For Bob are an extremely talented bunch, and Crash Team Rumble is a lot of fun, but it's a hard sell to the Crash Bandicoot fandom to say 'instead of a platformer, here's a MOBA' and for it to catch on. The concept just doesn't sound appealing, even if the game turned out to be a lot of fun.
Not every multiplayer game needs to be free-to-play, but such a drastic change for a franchise probably would've benefited from players being able to give it a go without spending money.
Although, it feels like an eventual shift to free-to-play could be in the cards considering the base version at £24.99 / $29.99 / AU$44.95 includes the Season One Battle Pass, while the Deluxe Edition priced at £34.99 / $39.99 / AU$64.95 also includes the Season Two Battle Pass so if Activision feels like pivoting to free-to-play down the line, they can just act like the paid copies were the price of the battle passes and throw some free swag to those early adopters.
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