Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back Review

Until now I never 100% this game. Mainly because I never owned a copy and when I borrowed it, I had trouble getting all the gems. But I'm older and more experienced now so lets see how it is.

Story
Cortex, after his defeat in the first game, finds a powerful master crystal but in order to use it, he requires twenty-five slave crystals. I order to fulfill his obvious evil plan, he tricks Crash to gather them for him. That's pretty much it. Yes they introduce new characters and flesh out out a few, but it's mainly an excuse plot.

Gameplay
The game is a basic platform game but is in three dimensions. The goal is to find the crystal in each level and get to the exit. out of all the crash games I played, this one encouraged you to use Crash's new basic moves as some enemies, boxes and obstacles can only traversed by sliding, body-slamming, and just plain spinning. The controls might need some getting use to as this was before the analog stick, but you'll get use to eat, maybe before the first boss.
You also get to use a few vehicles like a jet-board which is fun enough that doesn't drag, Polar, which are fun levels which you only control left and right, and the jet-pack which isn't that fun becuase of hard and boring it it to control.
Besides getting the crystals and beating the bosses, there are also gems to collect and this is the hard part. To get one you must break all the boxes in a level, find a secret, hard path or find the secret levels. However this is where my problems with the game lie. Not so much the box collecting because it's a huge improvement from the first game, but how...lackluster some of the secrets. One secret entrance to the sixth warp room for example only led to a small bit of platforming with some boxes as a reward. ad the whole thing felt like half a minute long.

Presentation
One thing I know Crash games are known for are it's animations, mainly the death animations. while most of them in this game are the angel death, some of them can be quite funny, like all the different crash animations with polar.
Sound effects and voice acting are really good but music is a mixed bag. The main level and boss music is really good but I found the bonus and skull music to be quite meh.

Verdict
While not as good as I thought it was, it's still a well done platformer.
7/10