Crash Team Rumble is a unique ‘strategic platformer’ with a competitive four versus four element. A high intensity arena multiplayer gameplay system gives us another way to play Crash Bandicoot whilst keeping the marsupial active in our minds. Crash Team Rumble can be seen as the last part of the Crash Bandicoot five year plan, and may mark the current era of the platforming mascot. 

Crash Team Rumble is an interesting and unique game. The main gameplay loop involves collecting Wumpa fruit, returning them to your base and attempting to be the first team to score 2000 points. Working together with three other players, you attempt to navigate the array of traps and combat against the enemy team in order to be the winning side. The maps themselves are varied in heights and environmental dangers, so that there is always unique ways to approach the game. The maps themselves are relatively varied, without being too drastically different in that they are confusing to understand. The upside being that they are easily traversed with the character movement abilities, meaning that you can get to major control points and to enemy players relatively quickly.

This gameplay loop results in very high intensity and rapid fire matches, most of which resolve in five to ten minutes. As a result, bad matches don’t drag you down for you too long. It also means that if you are finding that your chosen character isn’t performing quite so well, you only have to make it through a five minute round to swap to a character that you may enjoy playing more. The high speed intensity lends itself to longer replayability, as the gameplay loop itself remains the same from the first game. As a result the constant changes of maps and characters is necessary to ensure that the game doesn’t become stale.

Currently the game is split into three character types. Scorers, Boosters and Blockers. There are three scorers, two boosters and three defenders currently in the game, all of which play completely differently to each other. You will start with one of each role, and unlock the others by playing as that particular role. For example, Crash is a scorer. To unlock Tawna and Catbat, you will have to play as Crash and perform well as a scorer to get medals. These medals contribute to the amount of experience you get at the end of the round, as well as contributing to unlocking the other Scorers. The same works for boosters and blockers as well. Perform booster actions, get booster medals and get closer to unlocking the other character. We see the return of series staples in Neo Cortex, Dingodile, N. Brio and the alternate reality version of N. Tropy that was introduced in Crash Bandicoot 4. Crash Team Rumble also introduces a brand new character to the series in Catbat. The first ever explicitly stated Non-binary and queer character in the series.

Each and every character plays incredibly differently to each other, and there is skill and difficultly differences for each of them to achieve optimal play. Crash and Coco are easily the most approachable characters, as scorer and boosters respectively. Crash plays as you would expect him to. Full of spins, dashes and quick movement. Coco uses her technological prowess to allow her to torpedo dive around, erect barriers that knock opponents backwards, to allow her to control and manipulate the battlefield. Things get progressively more complex, with characters like N. Brio and Catbat. N Brio is the second blocker you will unlock, but his gameplay loop is entirely different to that of Dingodile and N. Tropy. He works in moments of burst power. You can throw vials at distant enemies, throw green vials spawn Green Slimes that will chase down people and work as bounce pads. You can hover around by throwing vials under yourself after jumping allowing you to get around hazards much easier. N. Brio however has lower health that other blockers, and must balance his skills around that. You’re ultimate ability allows you drink your vials and turn into a giant mutated version of N. Brio, which increases your strength and defence immensely, whilst reducing your speed.

Just like all the character’s behave differently there are a few other mechanics that can make each round feel drastically different from the last. On top of the rotating maps (some do seem to come up far more often than others, however), there is different power-ups that can be unlocked on each map across the match. These range from similar feeling ones such as death balls and beach balls. Both of which put you inside a giant ball that allows you to ram into others and cause damage, without risk to yourself. To far more drastic upgrades such as spawning TNT boxes dropping from the sky or a UFO controlled laser beam that melts people. There is defensive upgrades too, such as barriers, that you can use to protect your own base or erect your own barrier to block the enemy team from returning to their own scoring base. The inclusion of these upgrade, all of which are unique to the different maps, keeps things from feeling stagnant and ensures each round feels drastically different to the last. Scorers and boosters are most likely to be collecting the masks to get the upgrades, but the upgrades also work on a cumulative system. So it is possible for the enemy team to score the last mask needed to unlock the upgrade and steal it away.

On the whole, Crash Team Rumble does a good job of ensuring that there is enough difference and competitive challenge in each round, to keep it from feeling samey. The problem however is that Crash Team Rumble is currently incredibly singular note. Whilst this is not foreign, games like League of Legends, Apex Legends and Warzone have been doing this for years. The problem Crash Team Rumble will face is that the gameplay loop becomes unfortunately repetitive far quicker, and with a smaller roster and a seemingly weighted system for map selection. After a few hours you’ll likely find it hard to continue to want to jump into another round. Crash Team Rumble will need to look at ways to ensure that the matches don’t become too predictable, stagnant and unbalanced. Currently N. Tropy can absolutely destroy any chances of scoring, and make it relatively unenjoyable to play against, with very little counter play. It will be important to ensure these discrepancies in power are ironed out quickly, and event modes are looked at. There is enough here to be enjoyable at first, and for those who want to max out the battle pass, the daily challenges will bring people back for a few hours every day. Which make be the biggest problem. Windows of playtime may only be when people are on for their one or two hours a day. Resulting in periods where there is a lull in player base. Currently this is not an issue, but may be something that could occur if there isn’t enough content brought forward quickly enough to keep the game from becoming stale too quickly.

Crash Team Rumble is an interesting step for the series. In the build, there was likely an expectation of the game being more in the vein of a Mario Party or a Crash Bash remake, rather than a competitive four-versus-four arena game. There is a decent amount of potential, with an interesting high intensity gameplay loop. The variety of characters keeps the game feeling fresh, and all the different abilities make every character feel very unique. A diversifying roster of characters will be needed to keep the game feeling fresh, as well as event modes to keep people coming back once the initial wave of popularity drops off. A solid start with a lot of room for the future.