A video on Youtube brings us the first peek of Crash Landed – the unreleased demo of a cancelled
Crash Bandicoot game for DS by Renegade
Kid studios. Other games by the studio: Moon
an FPS that looks like a cross between Doom
and Alien Trilogy (PSX) and yet has a
very slick and cool feel to the movement, which elevates it somewhat from the
difficulty of making an FPS work on the DS. The Nintendo DS is not designed for
first person shooters. The screen isn’t big enough, the controls are too small,
the system was designed to be portable not cinematic. Dementium II - a horror FPS sequel, (with echoes of the House on Haunted Hill 1999 movie remake,)
has creepy and volatile visuals, but is lacking in freshness. By now you get
the idea of the kind of game these guys like to make - first person, walk
around and be engaged (shooting or jumping.) So not thinky games, like Braid and Limbo – which is surprising because the xbox would be a perfect
home to a cinematic FPS and the DS would be a good home for a cerebral 2D
platformer. These games were switched at birth.
As far as the video of the cancelled game, leaked by the
studio onto Youtube, Sonic springs to
mind – with the precision jumping, collecting objects, ricocheting enemies to
defeat them. The tone of a classic platformer, but with an added dimension. The
genre never really succeeded in transitioning from 2D to 3D back in the days of
the original Tomb Raider, where
navigating 3D space just feels awkward. Except in the PSX game Tenchu which simulated all the slippery
mischief ninjas enjoy – turning a rope and grapple hook into a flying fox,
sneaking up behind people and slitting their throat, creeping alongside walls
(somewhat reminded of another great game about creeping, Metal Gear Solid – especially in the VR Training.) In Tenchu, your ninja negotiates 3D space
with ease, but then movement is so important to the mechanics of that game. Tenchu is about moving like an assassin,
it would not have worked at all if its Japanese developer, Acquire hadn’t figured out a way to make the movement a fun
process.
The results of the 2D to 3D platform transition experiment
were the weird hybrids of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot which did manage to find
their own audience among a certain type of hungry gamer. This was before games
like Lego Star Wars began to address
the problem with navigation in 3D space.
Wall E DS would be an exception, but that’s because he moves slowly, wheel tracks instead of legs. Crash of Crash Bandicoot walks and runs faster than the time it takes to ingest the environment. It would require tiny taps of movement – small spurts to be as effective in 3D as Sonic is in 2D.
What do fans think of the demo?
There seem to be two schools of thought on the demo. One thinks that the demo is harking back to the classic platform style – which seems to be a good thing according to fans.
The other thinks that it looks drab, clunky and that only Naughty Dog should do Crash games. Which
I think is a little unfair, considering the demo was built in two weeks.
