With Mario getting his space adventure (Mario Galaxy) and Sonic getting a few second chances at being in a quality game (Sonic RPG for the DS, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, and not to forget the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl), it’s only fitting for Crash Bandicoot to appear back on the scene and throw his name in the mascot hat. What is Crash Bandicoot up to this time around? Radical Entertainment, who has developed such projects as The Simpsons Hit & Run and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, are pitting Crash against his arch nemesis again, Dr. Neo Cortex. Can this rivalry between Crash and Cortex produce another interesting storyline or will it drudgingly drag along at a snails pace boring players?

Let’s begin with the basics of the storyline: Cortex has returned to Crash’s beloved home and kidnaps Coco and Aku-Aku. For his return, he brings along mutated monsters that are set to destroy the island and everything Crash loves. This is where the story begins and in principle, Crash sets off to stop Cortex and get rid of the giant monsters on his island. I must commend Radical Entertainment for their title for this Crash video game; Crash of the Titans is fitting and catchy. With finishing my college course on mythology, and I am sure many high school students going through their mythology classes, people should know that the Titans are from Greek mythology. I absolutely love the title, but a title of a video game doesn’t provide quality in a video game, it’s the gameplay in my opinion that makes or breaks a video game.

The gameplay in Crash of the Titans revolves around the concept of jacking the monsters and taking control of them to fight off even bigger monsters. Crash, in his small stature, isn’t able to go mano a mano with these creatures, so Radical has provided the ability to jump on the back of the monsters and manipulate them to Crash’s own well-being. The monsters are susceptible to attacks (beware, they do block later in the game) and if an attack lands, they’ll be dazed for Crash to jump on board and gain control. With this all in place, it creates a combat-heavy platformer that focuses on eliminating all the enemies on the screen before advancing. I am not in favor of gameplay mechanics where it asks for the players to kill enemies before moving on and Crash of the Titans does just that. But there’s a lot more in the gameplay besides wasting your time fighting the same enemies with giant monsters.

Radical has given Crash the chance to collect mojo orbs and use them for his own benefit. Mojo orbs provide him with ability upgrades and stronger moves through combos. The combos aren’t complicated, but get the job done with providing Crash a maneuver set that is effective. As for the platforming, players will have the chance to double-jump to higher areas, but needless to say, Radical cut back on the puzzle-solving and platforming. Making up for the lack of platforming, there are hoverboard sequences scattered in, but it isn’t enough to give players a well-rounded experience.

If there’s anything that saves Crash of the Titans it’s the cooperative mode. The second player that joins the fray assumes the role as a clone of Crash. Both players will be on the same screen sharing the camera, which ends up being a problem with the first player attracting the camera more so than the second player. I’ll admit that this is one of the better cooperative modes in recent memory for platformers, but Radical needs to fine tune the camera and center the next Crash title on co-op alone.

Crash of the Titan’s visuals are decent in comparison to the last iteration. There are nice textures thrown into the environment, great lighting to illuminate the characters, and even some motion blur added in on the animations. While everything sounds dandy, the motion bblur is more of a detractor than anything; the new character designs haven’t won me over yet, and a lot of the up close environments look dismal. To go along with decent graphics, Radical put together a voice-cast that adds a lot of humor to the game. The rest of the audio is sub-par and isn’t anything special.

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Crash is still in an identity crisis but Crash of the Titans helps push him in the right direction to doing so. Radical has the right pieces to deliver a quality game, but Crash of the Titans doesn’t have enough to keep the attention of gamers outside of the 6-8 hours it takes to complete the storyline. If they decide to jump on board for another Crash game, they should focus on the co-op and deliver more puzzle-solving aspects that I love in my platformers.

Gameplay: 6.7
Following the path of repetition, Crash of the Titans becomes monotonous three hours into the game.

Graphics: 7.0
While not the prettiest game on the 360, the graphics hold up for the genre. Though, Radical needs to figure out how to effectively use motion blur.

Sound: 7.0
The voice-cast pulls through and delivers funny dialogue that will make players chuckle.

Difficulty: Easy
Centering on combat rather than puzzles, players will have an easy time running through Crash of the Titans and completing it.

Concept: 5.0
Is Crash vs. Cortex new? Nope. They need a new attitude and direction for Crash if they plan to give him a new life on this generation of consoles.

Multiplayer: 7.1
The co-op mode is the saving grace that gave me a lot of enjoyment allowing my girlfriend to jump in and tag along for the story.

Overall: 6.4
Crash of the Titans is nothing new or revolutionary. Players will find better platformers to play this holiday, so I’d say it would be best to find a different game to play this winter. Save for the cooperative mode, there’s not much here worthy of a gamer’s time that is devoted to buying and renting the best games.