Crash Twinsanity

So since PS2 and PS2 emulation are such a crap show, let’s have fun with some new software in cruel and unusual ways. This game has also came out of xbawkks, so let’s try xbawwks ‘mulator. So xemu 0.7.120 comes without even a warning that you must find four bios files, and then this shit does not work with proper .isos Damn deranged thing. It’s not just now working, every step of the way it never says what is the problem, or there even is a problem. For every stage you have to study bad forum posts on bad forums from the people in the know, who are not gonna explain it to you. And then watch a ton of videos on how to make the thing work, which aren’t too good either. This crap doesn’t read .iso, it demands .iso, and .iso is an entirely different thing from .iso, you clearly can see the difference between .iso and .iso

First i’ve tried 7615-c-xboxtool207 and it is a deranged redeye piece of shit. There’s no help and no instructions.

xdvdfs.exe is a deranged redeye piece of shit because it has no GUI. What is this, the fucking 1945? Hitler still has his command and holds the command line?

extract-xiso.exe is another redeye command-line piece of shit with no GUI. But at least if you drops an .iso on it, something will happen.

I work with command line for 11 years at work, and it’s the worst piece of shit in history. Fuck command lines, fuck everyone who thinks it is okay. My job has to pay me money to touch that garbage. You literally have to type the path manually every time. So you just vomit all the files into a salad on D:\ Because if you sort your crap and categorize it and neatly put it all in proper folders you will have to manually type the entire path to each executable and then to each file you want to use with that executable. XBox is worthless and has no games, the entire generation is worthless and has no games, all the generations past PS1 are worthless and have no games, there’s no reason to do this crap and watch hours of tutorials from indian guys on YouTube.

There are no hotkeys settings, the save-states are non-rebindable and limited. And after all that trouble, after wasting hours of my life, this crap runs at 5 FPS, at 1x scale. And even that there are extreme slowdowns below 5 FPS. Excuse me, 10900k and 3080ti running the tiny xbawks resolution. And then the game activation vibration broke the controls. I could not even play anymore.

I rate xemu as fuck this shit out of fuck this shit to death. Good thing there are no XBox exclusives. What, you gonna go play Toe Jam 3 you didn’t knew existed, or Kabuki Warriors?

So i went back to PCSX2 1.7.4277, the working one, and remembered that it works with mouse controls. Not perfectly, and the games are rarely fit for that, but it’s better than nothing. PCSX2 really pisses me off when it doesn’t work properly, but when it does — it does offer some necessary options.

This game literally has a widescreen option, on both platforms, yet deranged deficient idiots on YouTube are playing it in 4//3 and then stretched it to 16//9, both when emulating and when using the original hardware. People are really, really, really dumb. Imagine, half the population, has below average IQ. It’s not a measure of intellect, it’s the measure of statistics, that’s why it is perfectly applicable here.

So this is a direct sequel to Wrath. Three years more, after that previous one year skip, Cortex and the bad mask thaw from ice. The first thing Cortex does is undressing Coco. In the cutscene they show friendly Crunch, so Wrath secret ending is canon. There’s also Nitros Oxide in person, which means CTR did happen somewhen. There’s a new sanik friend Nina Cortex, who is a daughter of Cortex sr. there’s a joke of him pretending that it’s his niece. But knowing him it is possible that it’s both. She has a pretty good design, they gave her some unattractive features, but her demeanour overcomes everything that the designers did to her.

The game goes for joke writing, and with all its problems it’s the second best story after the minimalist first one. And it’s the most writing in the IP, offering a full story with characters. But it also takes priority over the world. They want you to see something “funny” like farts and ball-busting, but they don’t know how to make a logical progression to it, so they just write on the screen, “do this artificial stupid thing so we can continue”.

There are a lot of unskippable cutscenes, but like more than a half of them are undercooked. They end abruptly or some assets are missing. And somehow they all run a bit squished. They were rendered in 16//9 but then for no reason the videos were stretched to 16//8, and they are, obviously letterboxed, in the 4//3 mode.

The 100% completion video is not rewarded to you, but is hidden in a separate menu. Also it is not a secret ending, it’s a joke. The ending it seems, leads nowhere, and this is the last game in the old continuity. Crash of the Titans has no claims of continuity and it does have the familial characters, but come on, look at that crap and at how it looks. Crash 4 goes for the secret ending of Warped creating an alternative timeline to this.

Wrath is very stale and safe, so doing something fresher should be better than making Wrath 2: Warped 3, right?

A-a-a-and they blew it. This is new for this IP but this is not a new gameplay, it is stale as all hell and is several generations behind. All they did is they removed Crash’s identity of not-terrible 3D games for gamepads. Now it is a generic 3D roamer-collect-a-thon. So it has separate controls for camera, separate controls for movement, and separate controls for action. While you don’t have a third hand for this N64 gamepad paradigm. Making the third handle not stick out like on the N64 gamepad, didn’t remove the functionality issue. This is still the three-arms paradigm. And that’s why i was glad i remembered that PCSX2 can use a mouse. Gamepads’ design can be used with only two fingers at a time, very dexterous people with a lot of brain-hand coordination training can use two fingers more. Really dedicated people with modified gamepads can go for six fingers, but with unrebindable controls i don’t think there are games which benefit from it over four fingers. Gamepads were created for 2-button platformers, and that’s the only task they perform well.
Even in tractor players in tractor-optimized games had 10 fingers and tens of buttons, but when the mouse has combined the power of action buttons with camera buttons, all in the palm of your hand, the gaming has truly evolved into 3D space. Playing several proper gamepad games in a row made me forget that PCSX2 has inferior rendering, but superior mapping in non-gamepad-friendly games. Twinsanity still pulls your leg fiddling with your camera, and it is inverted, the mouse is just an emulation of a stick, but with PCSX2 binding i’ve created a proper keyboard+mouse profile that does work in this game. And this game really is not playable with gamepads.

One of the main mechanics, outside the platforming, is the pseudo-physics-based ball-fondling gameplay. You have to use balls to fondle them into holes, and not just pushing them, but also throwing. There’s no lock-on button, so if you need to turn the bollock — you can’t. You can’t easily disengage and run around, you can’t turn with it, and you do not control it with the absolute control scheme. Crash can’t change direction even alone — it does the entire half-circle, but now it has to fondle that bollock with those controls on moving spinning platforms and on the edges of cylinders. Kick in the balls doesn’t work properly either, it gives only a pathetic small bump that is very hard to aim. And of-course all the hitboxes are terrible, which includes the bollocks and the according puzzles. Not all of that is mandatory for the story, but it’s not all optional either. There are several segment where losing the bollock means losing a life. In this game that still has the never-good obsolete-before born lives system.

The bad hitboxes are complimented by bad rendering and bad feedback. Like, a standard swinging log obstacle kills you on touch, despite not even touching you. And it’s not like it is sending you flying in a comedic way into a wall. No you just magically die.

The game looks very flat and it’s super hard to judge the distances and depth, with best-case graphics, with the software rendering, and on the original hardware. That’s the issue with the game, not with the way you chose to play it.

The kinaesthetics are broken not only with inability to turn in place, they also basically killed the whole moveset. You start with a chunk of your abilities already unlocked, finally after 6(+) games, and you end with the same abilities. First of all Crash can stick the landing. Anything higher than a couple of metres forces you into an annoying incredibly long getting it up animation. Which is especially fun when you fail the same jump again and again. But if you get even higher that’s just treated as a bottomless pit, even if you can see the ground right there.

The recovery from slide happens only after a delay, it gives you no additional verticality, or speed. Crash 2 was overly relying on it, but here cannot chain anything, you just press the directional button and the best you can do is a mundane double jump. Which also always moves you forward a bit, so you can’t even do it in place. There’s no spin-glide, which to be honest never worked reliably, but still. The only good change is that you can slam after a double-jump, and in some places that’s the only way.

The mask is basically useless. It doesn’t protect against explosions, the ult doesn’t break boxes, doesn’t kill the enemies, and also doesn’t protect against explosions. Pathetic.

The game is separated into something like hub areas, which are not even true hubs, and often seamlessly into the branching sections. You think you are exploring one area, and then you turn back and there’s a wall where there was a tunnel. The gems are not rewarded for the boxes, which now are useless, but are hidden in mini puzzles. So if you want to get them all efficiently, you should know about them beforehand. These branches are not short levels from previous games, and often the gems are missablem so you will have to replay the levels from scratch, watching the unskippable cutscenes again and again.

In the first area you can commit war crimes by killing unarmed and surrendered enemies. The bomb near the column gem doesn’t respawn, so either restart the hub level or return to if after finishing another one. And that simple easy puzzle is not even easy. During the mecha bandicoot fight you can stand in a corner and the boss can’t reach you. Your only enemy is the bad depth depiction. The fighting-ball is a joke, but also it controls like crap, so if you go for the gems the unpredictable sucky controls are infuriating.

Players don’t know how to backtrack to the beach, there are a lot of questions about that and i had that problem too. All because the bad camera and poor level design. The entrance is very obvious and everyone visits it, but then there’s a tunnel that is entirely hidden from view. The boat from the snow island returns only to the second beach, from there there is that cave in the corner, and inside it there is a 270 degree turn to another cave, and another 270 degree turn, just in case you somehow found the first one. Still, it seems that to get to the third beach you have to replay the minigame and the bossfight. Which is not good with its hitboxes.

Generally the level design has wrong distances. Too long for a simple jump, too short for a double jump. And there are many places where it kills you. In the ice lab hub, in the yellow gem “puzzle” for example. With these controls it’s always a severe overshoot.

The Uka Uka fight is broken, the camera can easily get stuck in something and not follow you while you are falling off screen.

The slide levels suck. The controls are very bad and unpredictable, these physics can bump you one pixel above the ground and until you land your controls are unresponsive. There are a lot of bumps. And then all of them have gems hidden in absolute asshole places with these bad physics.

The ship stage has a pretty bad camera, and a bad bossfight. I won and the game killed me with the victory cutscene. After returning to the main ice hub there’s a new lift active. I saw people who didn’t notice it and were duped by the game into replaying the first segment. The stunned Coco is too hot to touch, she hurts you.

Then you travel to the academy and inside the balloon you have to shoot enemies, for like twenty seconds. When you finish the sewer level, getting anywhere near Cortex will unconsensually force you to do the whole thing again, and it’s one of those bollock levels with insta-death. Getting the stupid unskippable cutscene triggered on Aku Aku mask is one thing, but these traps forcing you to replay the whole sections is another.

The acid library level is terrible. You have bad controls, terrible camera, that intentionally ruins everything, the rubberbanding flood you can’t outrun, and bad hitboxes.

The cortex level sucks. It literally doesn’t work. It is based around the auto-aim, which never worked. There’s no time to learn the controls, you are instantly thrown into a running level, and you run out of ammo in seconds. Nina’s level is not good. Again, bad forced camera that swings mid jump and influences the controls on the fly. Forced camera suck in 3D gameplay, but some games at least have modesty not to change your controls during a jump. The director bossfight is all about auto-aim, so it just sucks big ass. Then you travel back, and this time you control Crash for twenty seconds inside the blimp, doing nothing. Something, something, the end.

The are slight tweaks to the designs. Not a fan of the new Coco, the rest is basically on point. Nina is pretty good. When you move the camera characters try to follow it. Looks great with Crash, looks very unfinished with Nina.
The game has no subtitles.

The entire OST is zany a capella / beatbox. People pretend that it is pure, but you can clearly hear some instruments, or filtres added, so basically instruments. Dingodile’s sound mixing sounds all wrong.

I’ve played it with emulation, with save-states and mouse controls, so i do not hate it. But playing this unfinished crapshow on the original hardware would be a torture. The game has a real story and “innovation”, even if it’s contentious and poorly implemented. This is not an empty re-hash of Warped. This game really needs a PC re-make. Not even trying to re-implement all the cut content and storylines. Just fix controls, properly implementing the mouse. Fix the hitboxes, add lock-on for the bollocks mini games. Tighten up the graphics for better depth perception and positioning. Add affirmative consent for replaying the levels. The cutscenes should be re-filmed, now in finished state. Remove lives, add “restart from checkpoint button” for missed gems, and you can get a pass for not having quick-saves.

Yes, a full re-make finishing the game would be better, but you can fix it with less work. That will be still a ton of effort, but less content — less effort. As is, even with emulation saving it, it’s an unfinished mess with bad hitboxes, bad controls, bad design.