The Save Points!

Hey everyone, I haven’t reviewed anything lately.  Trying to get back into this, now.

Before anything else, this game is awesome.  Think Contra meets Unreal Tournament.   If you want a quick adrenaline rush, look no further.  So if you’re wondering why Crash Commando is awesome, take a look after the jump!

This game came out the same day as Soldner-X.  While that game at a first glanced looked more interesting, given my likings to shmups, I overlooked Crash Commando and thought it was just a Bionic Commando knockoff or something, using that game’s momentum to make a few bucks.  Oh boy was I wrong.

From what I was told, this game is a lot like Soldat on PC, so some of you might know that game and won’t need to read much more into this review to know if they’ll like this game or not. I personally never tried Soldat though, so I can’t compare it directly.

Presentation

The game looks and feels great. The graphics looks like an upscaled and smoother version of Contra shattered Soldier on the PS2 that lives up to any other PSN game standard.  Just like Unreal Tournament, it’s hella bloody, so that’s always a plus (for this kind of game).

There is little story to the game, simply your usual red vs blue deal. (Except each side has a name I don’t remember)

While online  supports up to 12 players, there’s no multiplayer offline, which is probably the game’s only fault.   You’ll still be able to play with and against up to 11 bots, both offline and online.

Gameplay

This is an action game at its core. More then 95% of any other game that calls itself an action game.  It’s a drop-in, drop-out, Free for All/Team VS/Objectives, shoot down your  opponents into bits kind of game.  So here’s how it works.  You join a game, before spawning, you choose between 6 types of weapons, all with their ups and downs.  In example, the Sniper is powerful and easy to aim with, but takes a lot of time between shots and has a very small hit radius.  The Machine Gun gives you a fast but weaker attack and other weapons like the usual shotgun, a type of heat gun they called CAB, a grenade launcher and a rocket launcher.  There’s also some secondary weapons and some explosives that you can pick from.  During gameplay though, you’ll find yourself finding 1 of 2 special weapons, a minigun and a blue laser gun if I remember right, anyway those are awesome and will have infinite ammo but only last you for a time limit.  There’s also some body armor you can grab and some additionnal ammos.

The game is not an FPS, and is not a 3rd person shooter either.  It’s in 2D, with two layers.  You aim around you with the right analog stick while moving with the left one.  That also mean that I can be on one side, then go into a door to go to the other side of the battlefield.  From some spots, you can also see people on the other side, so you might see them coming and plan your attack/defense against them.  Some maps even have turrets and other types of on the field weapons to be used on the other side of the map.  There’s also a bunker you can go in to launch a missile, which you have full control of, and will even go through doors (they are more like open pathway then door though).  When those blow up, they’ll take out everything in the screen around the missile, even your teammates.

But you might say something like, “but Dave, this game lacks something important: vehicles!”, and to that I’d tell you, shut up! There are vehicles.  You can ride in a tank that shoots rockets or ride a jeep that has a machine gun.  The fun part about them is that you can run over people easily and you’re much harder to being taken out while in them.  But you’ll die if they’re blown up while you’re still in them.  Also, you mostly have to follow a rail with the vehicles, which limits it a bit, but that’s not that bad, and I’ll tell you why.

EVERYTHING HAS A JETPACK! You have one on your character, and vehicles have jetpacks too! Now that’s awesome.   They’re also semi-unlimited.  Meaning that there’s a jetpack gauge, but it fills up whenever you’re not using it.  So you can use it carefully and fly off for a decent amount of time, or enough to dodge that sniper with ease if you have the skills.  Another skill that comes with the jetpack, is the ability to spin and dash, letting you cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time.

At this point, you’d think that’s enough features for  a $10 game.  Heck no!  You can also upgrade your character if you stay alive long enough and make enough kills.  You’ll lose these upgrades upon dying though.  But getting them can make you godly if you know how to.  The three upgrades (which you can grab in any order), gives your jetpack spin the ability to kill any opponents in its way. That’s my favorite, it’s plain badass.  The second I always pick is the auto-regen one, which heals you back to full health if you’re not hit for a small amount of time.  This one helps you stay alive when there’s no health pack near you.  The last one is a speed boost, which you could alternatively pick second, but I highly suggest the jetpack spin upgrade first, as it’ll boost your killing free really fast.  Another wink to UT, the game will tell you stuff like “DOUBLE KILL”, “MULTI-KILL” and some others.

Online

I didn’t play much online, there were some people lagging (not everyone), there were some idiots (probably farming trophies or something) and that’s about what I’ve ran into.  Although it’s nice  that the game will fill with bots until they are replaced with real people.  So it’s easy to create a game and get it started, unlike the typical FPS were no one will join your 1-man game.

Verdict

Buy it and don’t look back.  (so I can head-shot you with the sniper)

Seriously, you don’t get more fun for $10 then this.  It’d still be worth it at twice the price.  This is the game to get on PSN while waiting for Fat Princess.

David A. Games, Review