Today, the developers of the Crash Bandicoot remastered trilogy confirmed what many players had suspected: The physics are very different now. And it makes the game more difficult.
Speaking through Kevin Kelly at the Activision blog, the folks at Crash Bandicoot: N.Sane Trilogy developer Vicarious Vision explained that their remastered version of the game has an entirely new way of handling Crash’s jumping, falling and moving. “Our game engine features a different collision system than the original game, and combined with the addition of physics, certain jumps require more precision than the originals,” they said. “Much like the handling, we iterated on collision and physics throughout development to make it fair to all players and as faithful to the original games as possible.”
This change has been received poorly by some fans. Earlier this month, game streamer DingDongVG made this comparison video showing off why some Crash players have felt frustrated by the new trilogy’s physics system:
the reason jumps feel harder in the n.sane trilogy isn’t really due to falling a bit faster but because collisions can be wonky upon landing pic.twitter.com/jxbvijNU6c
— Ding Dong (@DingDongVG) July 3, 2017
The developers appear to be fine with this decision, saying they helped alleviate the difficulty by improving the save system and offering extra checkpoints to players who fail several times on the same level.
“An increased precision is now required in the first game, which makes the gameplay experience different,” they said. “Particularly if you are a new player, you may want to start with the second and third games first, and then come back to try Crash Bandicoot after you’ve had more practice. For those of you who played the originals and acquired a fair amount of muscle memory, re-learning the handling in our game may present an additional challenge you weren’t expecting. But we’re sure you up to the task.”
Comments
12 responses to “The Crash Bandicoot Remasters Really Are Tougher Than The Originals”
Certainly explains why in Markiplier’s videos Crash kept sliding off some objects. Even crates and ledges.
As for myself, I still think the majority of the difficulty for me is my lack of skill.
The physics in CB1 were always horrible compared to 2 and 3.
They’re even worse now. There’s jumps now where you have to actually be slightly off the side of the box to make the jump with any degree of certainty.
Really? Fuck, that’s so terrible
The more detailed explanation other than “Because physics” is that the modern engine uses a pill shaped collision box around Crash whereas the old engine had a rectangular prism so while there was some space in front of and behind Crash it still registered as him being on flat ground. With the modern engine, he has a sloped shape in front of and behind him which means he will slide off an edge.
Which is kind of a dumb design choice. A “proper” physics engine is often not a great choice for a pure platformer, especially something like the original Crash games that have no dynamic objects.
At least they fixed the saves in the first game. Making you earn save points through hidden areas was insane, coupled with a restrictive lives system and the fact that when you did finally earn a save point it also saved the number of lives you had left. That game was unnecessarily punishing, even for its time.
I just used cheats to unlock every level when I wanted to “load” and then played through the levels in order. This had the added upside of allowing me to skip bullshit levels 🙂
I flippin knew it. Game was making me rage so hard when you land on the edge of a platform and then slide off. So frustrating
here’s something that happened to me a few nights ago in Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy.
https://youtu.be/j3AEIIiKuoM
I finished Crash 1 finally on the weekend. F you The High Road!!!!!
Ive watched a few videos explaining in great detail that the new game is actually harder and showing examples of the changed physics and you still get people desperate to feel superior saying things in youtube comments like “Gamers these days are just coddled and the game is exactly as hard as it used to be”.
The examples were shown in the video you are commenting on, what the hell is wrong with you!