Crash Bandicoot & The Walking Dead

Crash Bandicoot - Review

(Naughty Dog, PlayStation Game, 1996)

Alan returns to the very first instalment of the Crash series

In the 1990s it was impossible to review a platform game without mentioning a certain Italian plumber or a blue hedgehog. Their respective titles demonstrated that there are certain elements that are a prerequisite for such a game to be successful. It should be simple yet challenging. The levels must offer variety. It shouldn’t be possible to be killed by something that was previously unseen. The central character should be cute and appealing. It must look great and the levels should be clear and well laid out. It needs that ‘one more go’ factor and, above all, it has to be fun. Seemingly a straightforward list, but the halls of gaming history are littered with those that tried and completely failed to repeat the formula.

A very naughty dog

Crash Bandicoot was released for the PlayStation in 1996, produced by Naughty Dog, a game developer who have since produced some stellar titles for a variety of platforms but at the time were relatively unknown. You play as Crash, a bandicoot (no, I didn’t know what a bandicoot was either; if it helps - he looks quite like a fox) that has been blasted by evil Dr Cortex’s Evolvu ray. You must negotiate a series of levels set on a number of fictional islands, avoiding or killing baddies and collecting apples by jumping and using your spinning attack. Your aim is to eventually defeat Dr Cortex and win back your Bandicoot girlfriend who he has imprisoned (Ed – “Oh, original then?”).

As you play you can break crates which are scattered throughout each level, either by spin-attacking them or jumping on them. A broken crate will reveal extra lives, apples (every 100 collected awards an extra life), or Aku Aku masks - which provide protection against a hit from a bad guy.

Other crates can be bounced on to reach higher parts of a level and some (marked with “TNT”) explode following a three second countdown after being touched. Each level also contains ‘Continue’ crates which, once broken, act as restart points. It isn’t just about completing the levels though. You can earn bonus crystals for completing extra tasks, such as breaking every box on a level. Winning a crystal on one level lets you return to another and open up areas that were apparently unreachable the first time around.

Maps? I don’t need no stinking maps...

The levels are quite linear and you always know where you are going. The game was marketed as being in 3D and, while this is the case, you never have true three dimensional freedom of movement. The developers have been clever though, because each level utilises different dimensions. The first couple see you working your way into the screen. But then you come to Native Fortress which is predominantly played left-to-right and up and down vertically. Boulder Dash on the other hand is a frantic level in which you are running out of the screen followed by a huge rolling boulder, Indiana Jones style. Hog Wild is a delightful stage where you ride a small warthog into the screen, avoiding pits, natives and spiky poles. This constant variety ensures that each level presents a new challenge and the three-dimensional illusion is maintained.

First impressions

The graphics are crisp and colourful although some of the larger characters can be a little blocky. The animation is very good with some lovely touches; if you leave Crash alone for a while he will pull out his yoyo and start entertaining himself. The sound is great and the music is extremely catchy. Movement is sharp and easily picked up and controlling your character soon becomes second nature.

Harder and harder and harder...

This game’s tour-de-force however is the difficulty curve, which is close to perfect. At the start things are quite relaxed, the first level doing little more than acclimatising the player to the controls. The second level appears to be almost a rehash of the first but is just a touch trickier. But, before you know it, the difficulty starts ramping up and you will be losing lives regularly.

You can rack-up lots of lives by collecting fruit, breaking extra-life boxes and completing the bonus levels (which can be accessed by finding three secret map pieces on a level) and this is just as well because they are soon badly needed. Timing becomes increasingly important, with levels containing long sections that have to be negotiated with precision before a safe spot appears.

The reason the difficulty curve is so special is that no matter how much you struggle with a level, the next one always seems harder. There is no respite. You reach Road to Nowhere, a massively challenging level where you have to negotiate a rope-bridge with missing and wobbly slats and you think it can’t get any worse. But by the time you reach High Road, a very similar level but much, much harder, you realise that Road to Nowhere was a doddle in comparison.

Make no mistake; this is a tremendously tricky game. It gets tough pretty quickly and then just turns the screw relentlessly. But it is fair. There is nothing that kills you that you can’t foresee. All moving platforms and bad guys, including the bosses that appear at the end of each island, move in predetermined patterns so their positions can always be predicted. But nevertheless you will die, a lot. Consequently you will frequently want to put the controller through the television screen, but your frustration is always with yourself and not the game, and you will always want another go. It continually offers a challenge and never gets boring.

Where have all my lives gone?

If I have to find a negative it is that the save-game feature doesn’t work well. You can save you progress to memory card, or generate a level code (if you don’t have a card) each time you complete a bonus level, but while your progress is saved, your accumulated number of lives is not. Restarting a long way through the game with only your standard allocation of five lives is woefully inadequate and unfortunately this means that the only way to build up the number of lives you need to tackle the later stages of the game is to play from the start each time (this was changed for the re-mastered version so that your accumulated lives were saved).

Almost perfect

At the start of this review I gave a checklist for the ideal platform game. This ticks them all. It is a fantastic, captivating, hugely challenging game, offering a great variety of level and producing an enormous degree of satisfaction as you progress. It will make you laugh and cry and it will frustrate you to the point of screaming, but it offers a platforming challenge the like of which I haven’t seen before or since.

In gameplay terms this is about as good as it gets. Better, in my opinion, than the second and third instalments, because the level design is tighter and the difficulty curve is just perfect. It might not quite have the same looks, but in terms of pure gameplay this is the equal of any Mario game that I have played and I can’t give a platform game higher praise than that.

Indisputably a must-have game for any fan of the genre.

Graphics - 88%

Bright, colourful and vibrant, some larger characters are a tad blocky though.

Sounds - 93%

Brilliantly catchy music and great effects.

Grab-factor - 93%

Once you have the controls mastered this is a hard game to put down.

Playability - 96%

Quite simply one of the best platform games ever made. Simply wonderful.

Verdict - 93%

AG 08/06/2018

Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 21

The Walking Dead

And this is true, to a point.

This is Lee. You try and be a good guy, you really do...

We join Lee on the way to prison.

"...half rabid chipmunk in a baseball cap..." but Kenny is a good ally.

This is Clementine. Protecting her becomes your only focus.

As the undead descend it might be time to move on...

Items of interest are helpfully highlighted.

No one said your choices would be easy...

The Walking Dead - Review

Alan discovers where emotions go to die (and sometimes turn into zombies)

Publisher: Telltale

Year: 2012

Platforms include: Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One

Imagine this: one minute you are heading to prison and the next you are staggering from a car crash, only to wind up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The dead have risen, society has imploded and you find yourself morally obligated to care for an eight-year-old girl who is, rather embarrassingly, better at surviving than you are. Now that is a bad day! Welcome to The Walking Dead – a horror survival game that’s part interactive drama, part nervous breakdown; guaranteed to destroy you emotionally over five increasingly turbulent and traumatic episodes.

First encounters

For those not familiar with The Walking Dead, the franchise began life as a comic-book in 2003, created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore. The television series starring Andrew Lincoln ran from 2010 – 2022 and is very well regarded (until, perhaps, the final seasons). And in 2012 Telltale gave us this – the first of the game series, which eventually spanned five games (or seasons), the last released in 2018.

At first glance, The Walking Dead could easily be mistaken for your typical zombie-survival game. But it isn’t - not even slightly. You don’t rack up high scores picking off the un-dead, or craft crude medieval axes from biscuit tin lids and gaffer tape. Instead, your task is to make choices – both in selecting potential courses of action and also in choosing your character’s dialogue and responses.

More often than not your choices are far from easy. Do you save the guy who has been kind to you, or the girl who has a gun? Do you lie to protect the child, or tell the truth and watch her fragile faith in the human race disintegrate like a sandcastle at high tide? Do you kill your friend’s son who has been bitten, or stand by and make him do it? There are no right and wrong answers, just a labyrinth of consequences. Some are bad, while on the other hand others are very bad...

You play as Lee Everett, a college professor turned convicted murderer turned apocalypse foster parent. It’s perhaps not quite the career arc you imagined, but hey, this is the end of the world – you have to roll with the punches. Lee’s task is to look after Clementine, an eight year old girl with big eyes and a heart so pure it tears you in two when she cries (which is often). Clementine's parents are missing, so it falls to you to protect her from the chaos.

Gameplay: all roads lead to Damascus (or the final scene anyway!)

The Walking Dead isn’t so much a game as an emotional roller-coaster cleverly disguised as a choose-your-own-adventure. Remember those books where you made a choice and had to turn to a specifically numbered page to see what happened next? Well it’s kind of like that.

It owes a huge debt to those early point-and-click adventure games (LucasArts – I’m looking squarely in your direction) – but with helpful on-screen prompts highlighting things of interest. There is little trial and error; once an item has been collected it is automatically offered as an action choice when needed.

So it’s true that there’s a fair degree of hand-holding going on in the gameplay department and you know what? It doesn’t matter. Whatever might be lacking in gameplay mechanics is more than made up for by the plot, offering moral dilemmas that will leave you questioning the very essence of being. Every decision feels crucial, probably because the game tells you it is. “Clementine will remember that.” That sentence will haunt you long after the credits have rolled.

The big difference from those early point-and-click adventures is that they used to only provide an illusion of non-linear gameplay, whereas The Walking Dead actually delivers it. Kind of. If we take The Secret of Monkey Island as an example, it doesn’t matter how many silly questions you ask the pirate leaders in Scumm Bar, the correct dialogue choice that allows your continuation will remain until you use it.

In The Walking Dead however, you get one shot at selecting each response from (up to) four options during every conversation. And you have to select it under the pressure of a countdown timer. Regardless of which you choose, things will carry on – leaving you to handle the consequences. Fail to respond in time and the conversation will continue and your silence will be interpreted. And remembered...

Now it might be suggested that this is all smoke and mirrors. It could be argued that the player is still only offered an illusion of free choice because, regardless of your dialogue or action selections, you will always reach the same final scene, and your fate (and that of Clementine) will remain as certain as the sun rising tomorrow. And there is no getting around it – this is true.

But, here’s the thing. Your final destination may be set in stone but the route the story takes along the way can vary and is governed very much by your personal moral compass. Does it alter greatly? Well, no not really. Some choices don’t seem to change things much at all, but others do matter. While they don’t alter the finale, they do affect how the other characters relate to you. Whether they like you, whether they respect you and whether they offer help when you need it. And in some cases, quite literally whether they live or they die.

Variety is the spice of life

It’s not all dialogue choosing and basic point-and-click puzzle solving however. Periodically, action sequences will interrupt the dialogue. Bash away on the ‘A’ button like you are playing Track and Field all over again, or Lee will get eaten. Pick off a series of zombies with accurate head shots or a comrade in arms will fall. These sections can be tough, but on the plus side (yes, there are plus sides, honestly!) there is an intelligent auto-save that kicks in when you die and enables you to quickly pick things up again at that precise point when things got tricky and everything went sideways.

Supporting cast: friends, foes and Kenny

The characters with whom you interact are a mix of reliable friends, cautious strangers and the odd genial farmer who seems like a regular, helpful guy – right up until he tries to feed you human stew. Everyone has a past. Everyone has a personality. All those around you are mentally on the edge and you’re the one trying to hold it all together.

And then there’s Kenny. This man is half best friend, half rabid chipmunk in a baseball cap. He’ll be your wing man one moment and hate you the next, simply because you didn’t back him up during a pointless argument. He’s the human equivalent of a spectacular electrical storm – you love him, but he will cause property damage.

Clementine is the natural focus of the game. Protecting her becomes your reason for being, and her quiet “Okay...” when you have to deliver bad news can crush a man’s soul.

You try to be a good person. You really do. You treat people with respect and empathy. You pick the kind, caring dialogue options. But then someone dies. Or betrays you. Or dies while betraying you. And suddenly, you're screaming at your screen like you have lost your mind: “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, KENNY? WHY?”

Graphics and sound: impressive and slick

The art style might trick you into believing that this game is going to be a jaunty romp. Of course - it's not. But the stylish visuals pay a terrific homage to the story’s comic-book roots and manage to fit the mood perfectly.

The voice acting is simply sensational. Dave Fennoy’s portrayal of Lee is perfect; deep, warm, strong, confused and scared, often all at the same time (yeah – you try pulling that one off!). Clementine’s voice, provided by the impressive Melissa Hutchison, offers an insight into her vulnerability but also hints at a calm determination. The music is perfect and sounds like it was penned by someone who has been through a similar emotional implosion at some point.

Writing: award-worthy despair

But perhaps more than anyone, it is the scriptwriters who should be taking the accolades. Every character has real depth and a genuine, believable back story. Each of the five episodes that make up this first ‘season’ play out as if you are creating and starring in an unfolding blockbuster, with a cast of completely relatable characters. The writing and voice acting is so good that you will very quickly start to care about these people. So much so that when things go bad, you’ll mourn them in a way you wouldn’t believe possible from a video game.

The story builds slowly but relentlessly, leaving a wake of chaos and death, often triggered by your actions. But here’s the thing - there is never an easy option. There is no optimum play-through. Whatever choices you make, someone will suffer – and ultimately it’s you that has to choose who and then live with that.

Approaching the end

Finally, just when you think that you’ve kind of done ok, just when you start to believe that you have navigated the worst and your heart has been ripped out and put through the blender for the very last time, the game drop-kicks you squarely into misery city. The climax may be powerful and beautifully constructed, but getting there is traumatising. Some scenes in the last episode will rip you clean in two and you will find yourself lying in the dark whispering, “Why, Telltale? Why?”

But you’ll thank them for it.

Perfection (or bloody close...)

The Walking Dead is a masterpiece. It may be a little short on action but it more than makes up for this with a kaleidoscope of rich, convincing characters and a story that grips you from the first minute to the last. I don’t play too many games to the finish. I have far too many sitting on my shelves waiting to be played, so something has to be pretty damn special to deserve that kind of commitment.

I finished all five episodes of The Walking Dead within a week.

You will cry. You will scream. You will restart episodes because you just have to find out what happens if you side with Doug instead of Carley (spoiler: more pain). And at the end, when the final credits roll and your defeated soul has curled up in a corner somewhere, you’ll realise something terrifying...

You’d do it all again.

I did.

Graphics – 94%

A distinctly gritty cartoony approach provides a perfect and unique feel.

Sounds – 98%

Great music and voice acting that is off the scale. It’s the quality here that makes for such an emotional and engaging experience.

Grab-factor – 99%

I’m only avoiding the 100% mark because I don’t believe anything can be absolutely perfect. But the grab factor here is so, so close. You will lose sleep to play to the end.

Playability – 92%

Wonderfully playable. The point and click mechanics are perhaps a little old-school but that’s a minor quibble, this is one of the best video games I have ever played.

Verdict – 96%

AG - May 2025

Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 30.