Crash Team Rumble Review - A Fresh Spin

There are few games that serve as better examples of the industry's changing landscape than Crash Team Rumble (CTR). Once a single-player mascot platformer at the height of the genre's popularity, CTR takes the heroes and villains of Naughty Dog's, and later Activision's, series and reimagines it as a 4v4 multiplayer game with live-service elements. To some, that might sound like a myopic deathblow to a once-proud series. On the contrary, Crash Team Rumble is a fun and surprisingly tactical PvP game, albeit sometimes held back by oft-seen growing pains of games-as-a-service.

In Crash Team Rumble, two teams of four square off in platforming arenas that, at first glance, each look a bit like wide levels from a typical Crash game. Enjoyably, the controls and feel of the game perfectly capture those of traditional Crash games, too, making it an instantly recognizable experience in one's hands.

Though the game has just one mode at launch, it's designed very well. The goal is to score 2,000 wumpa fruit before the rival team does. To do this, players will spin over, slam onto, and slide into crates and loose wumpas all around the arena to collect them. Moving them to a goal area will, after a moment, score them for the team permanently. But the exciting chaos of CTR exists in this in-between space, and often even on the goals themselves.