Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

I recently attempted to play the first Crash game (because it was the first) and the third Crash game (because supposedly it was the best). And I strongly disliked them both. But before getting rid of this Switch N-Sane Trilogy collection, I figured I'd at least fire up the second game. As I've said recently, I've had this weird project going on over the past couple years where I'd attempt to pick up and play as many of the games as I could that were featured on the covers of Nintendo Power and Game Informer. 

The project has been interesting. See, the games featured on those covers weren't always the best games. But they were games that those publications thought were hyped up enough that they'd move issues. So in a weird way, it's a very specific time capsule of THAT MONTH in gaming. They're two long-running magazines. At least technically, as I see Nintendo Force as the spiritual successor to Nintendo Power. The NP covers were generally more Nintendo (1st Party) focused. And the GI covers tended to focus more on HARDCORE games. So it's an interesting mix of a list.

I'm rambling to fill some space here. Because the bottom line is that I very strongly disliked Crash 1 and 3. I had no reason to believe that I'd enjoy the second game. So I didn't fire it up with the intention to beat it or even to spend any serious time with it. Nope. Instead my goal was just to see how long it'd take to annoy me enough to just shut it off. Wanna take a guess?

20 minutes.

Yep. Twenty minutes is all I needed to confirm that this was just more of the same. It's another crappy 3D platformer sandwiched between two other crappy 3D platformers in the same series. Shocker, right? So I could reiterate the reasons I disliked 1 and 3, but  why bother? You can go read what I said about those two games. It wasn't very generous. So bottom line: the Crash series does not seem to appeal to me. At all.