Crash Boom Bang! mobile preview
He's back, and more mini-gamey than ever...
Crash Bandicoot? He only does platform and racing games, right? Wrong. His new mobile outing, Crash Boom Bang!, is a breezy collection of one-thumb mini-games. Since he's taking over the Pocket Gamer site this week, it'd be rude not to see how it's shaping up.
In Crash Boom Bang!, you get 14 mobile games for your money, which range from silly to, well, crazy.
Examples? Well, Cow Shoot has you shooting as many fresians as possible within a time limit, while Infernal Tower has you piling boxes as high as possible without them falling over.
Good Sight is probably the first ever dragon-based memory game we've seen, while Balloon Burst has you popping balloons on an unfortunate blackbird. (Maybe he likes it, who knows?)
And that's just four of the games on offer. It sure makes chess look dull.
The visuals are colourful and cartoony, and the controls usually involve one button, to make the game as accessible as possible. And if some of them are on the simple side... well, there's plenty to keep you occupied thanks to there being so many of 'em.
However, it's clear that Crash Boom Bang! is as much about multiplayer lunacy as it is solo play. Alone, you can try any of the mini-games, or play through them in turn in Challenge mode. But in Multiplayer mode things change gear; you and a few friends get to choose a character each, from Crash himself, Dr Cortex, Coco, or Nina Corte (Crash veterans will know them all well).
The game then consists of taking mini-games in turn to see who gets the highest score, while spinning a wheel in-between rounds for score bonuses or forfeits. This is in Cool Mode, mind. There's also a Loopy Mode, which has you playing simultaneously on the phone, which looks set to cause some unseemly scrabbling for the keypad.
It remains to be seen whether hardcore Crash devotees will be tempted by this blend of casual mini-games but, Crash Boom Bang! certainly has the potential to make Mr Bandicoot famous among the kind of mobile gamers who don't own a PlayStation 2 or other console.
