Just 9 months into the life cycle of the game, it was officially announced by Activision that there would be no further support for Crash Team Rumble.
As a consequence, you're left with a product that is ultimately hurt by this decision and left a little bit exposed for it's lack of depth and variety.
That isn't a fault of the game. The long term vision would have been to continue to support the foundations with regular content updates to flesh it out and broaden the experience for the user. The decision to leave it hung out to dry just gives you a very simple concept that struggles to keep you engaged, and given the overall standard of recent Crash Bandicoot titles, this turns out to be a bit of a flop.
Crash Team Rumble is a 4 on 4 Multiplayer beat-em-up experience where both teams compete against each other to collect Wumpa fruit around the map and deposit it into their teams respective bank. You can collect Wumpa fruit scattered around the map and can also prevent the opposition from collecting it through attacking other players. The first team to bank 2000 Wumpa fruit wins the game.
If it seems like a simple concept, you'd be right. There are no other variations to the game in competitive mode, and this is where the prematurely dropped support hurts it the most. Whether they had plans to include different game modes post-launch will probably remain a mystery, but the fact you only have one way to play this game makes it stale and boring, and will hurt it's longevity.
There are also only 13 different playable characters to choose from, split across 3 different character classes. Scorers primary role is to collect fruit, Blockers primary role is to defend the bank and Boosters primary role is to capture relic points to increase fruit collection bonus. The usual cast you'd expect to see are all present, and each of them are given their own unique weapons and move-sets, but the shallow roster is also another big detriment to the depth of the game.
I do also find it a bit peculiar that the roster includes the lesser known likes of Catbat, Ripto and even Spyro the Dragon - who isn't even from the same franchise - where there are obvious omissions such as Papu Papu, Pinstripe and Tiny Tiger. Again, I appreciate there may have been plans to add these characters to flesh out the roster at some point down the line, but it still hurts the image of the game to not have some big characters present.
The strongest part of the game is definitely the selection of maps on offer. There are 14 in total, which is a reasonable amount. They're all based on classic Crash Bandicoot environments, and all come with their own mechanics that add interesting dynamics to matches. Aside from Wumpa fruit, which is always the primary objective, you can also collect relics, which can be used to activate power-ups within the map to support you and your team, and these can often tip the balance of a game instantly, adding a tactical edge at all times.
Activate Gulp in Artisans Arena and watch him rain fireballs down onto your enemies or trigger the giant Wumpa bat in Bogged Down and protect it whilst it carries bonus fruit directly to your bank. Multiple different points of interest are present on every map, and they can all influence the outcome of a game to the point where tactics play a big role in the difference between victory and defeat. This is definitely the strongest suit of the game, and you can see the amount of effort and creativity put into the arenas you'll fight on.
The combat is satisfactory. As mentioned, each character is fleshed out with it's own move-set and they all handle differently depending on who you're using and the abilities they come with. It's nothing to wax lyrical about, but it's functional, easy to learn and you won't take long to settle on your favourites. The class system works well, and although it can be frustrating playing with people who largely ignore the roles of their characters, that isn't a fault of the game.
However, the gaps left behind by the decision to drop dedicated support so soon are just way too obvious, and it actually feels like you're playing a beta version of the game that's only about 80% complete. Activision have nailed Crash Bandicoot games since they released the N-Sane Trilogy, but Crash Team Rumble is a big swing and miss as I can remember. I didn't hate it, but if I was aware that this was going to be the final product, I would have potentially skipped it.
To paint a bigger picture for this, the game fills empty player spots with bots if it can't successfully matchmake enough players into a game, and this is something you see fairly regularly. This is a damning inditement for a game that only requires 8 players in a lobby to successfully fill it to maximum capacity, and sadly evidences the effects of a failed project. People just aren't playing this game.
In terms of trophies, this a standard sized list, with 45 trophies to earn, including the Platinum trophy, and it's one of the easiest trophy lists in my entire collection.
To illustrate this straight off the bat, I had managed to earn a whopping 27 trophies within my first session of this game. Not a few days. Not a week. My very first session. The rate at which this game awards it's trophies to you is nothing short of phenomenal, and all I was doing was learning the ropes and getting to grips with the game. I hadn't even really actively assessed the trophy list in that much detail, and yet found myself collecting a trophy every handful of minutes.
Upon reflection, I'd also missed a couple of trophies that I grabbed later on for exploration of customisation options, so this could have very easily been more.
So, what makes this so easy? The list is full to the brim of trophies awarded for completing simple in-game feats, such as knocking out a certain number of enemies, collecting a certain level of gem boost and banking a certain number of Wumpa fruit towards your teams total. All of these trophies are stacked too, with incremental variants which mean you'll unlock all of them in one go if you complete the largest requirement. Collect 1200 Wumpa fruit in one game? You'll earn 3 trophies for it, due to separate trophies for collecting 500 and 800 Wumpa fruit respectively.
There are also 8 trophies awarded for winning a match using a specific character, and each of these characters also comes with an ability-specific trophy attached to them for fulfilling a requirement of one of their specified abilities. Another 16 trophies accounted for there, and where we've seen this sort of trophy from Overwatch, we are nowhere near those levels in terms of difficulty.
You also have 2 types of levelling system present in Crash Team Rumble. There is an overall Battlepass level and a specific character level. The former will gradually allow you to unlock various rewards, mainly customisation options, but will also allow you to unlock power-ups. These can be charged and activated in-game, and there are 7 trophies available for winning a match with these power-ups. You can tandem these with the trophies awarded for winning a game with a specific character, which is a good tactic to accelerate trophy list progression.
The "Playing Favourites" trophy, awarded for Reaching level cap with any hero, is the only noteworthy trophy in the whole list.
Each character's maximum level is capped at level 15, and levelling up a character is simply a matter of just playing the game. I personally didn't like the focus on a single character, as this choice to restrict variety, makes an already stale experience that little bit more stale. It would have been better to apply this trophy to your overall Battlepass level, and encouraged varied usage of the cast.
I settled on Ripper Roo to tackle this quest, mainly because I felt like the Blocker class was the most fun to use out of the 3 class options, and most of my time was spent sitting on the opposition's bank to prevent them from banking Wumpa fruit. It's a fairly mundane way to play the game in reality, but being able to single-handedly win games for your team by preventing the opponent banking fruit gives you a good sense of accomplishment.
It's also a fairly lengthy task. It takes 278,400 total experience points to reach level 15 with a single character. I'm not entirely sure on total timescales or my average amount of earned experience per game. The game's statistics tracking is incredibly basic, and the closest measure to determining time spent comes in the form of number of matches played, which totalled 241 for me. That's more than a bit of a light dabbling, and whilst a proportion of this will have been going for some of the character-specific trophies on the list, the majority of these games would have been spent working towards the trophy, and maximum level for Ripper Roo.
It certainly slows down the overall progress, especially after unlocking more than half the list within my first session with the game. You can also earn badges for in-game feats that can help you accumulate some decent additional experience points that go towards accelerating the levelling progress for your character, which is vital to take advantage of. These aren't unlimited opportunities though, and will eventually cease to give experience once you've earned a certain amount of badges, but they're worth striving for whilst you play.
Just to raise a few other footnotes - You can't level up (or earn any other trophies, for that matter) in private matches, which eliminates any possibility of boosting. Double experience weekends have ceased in line with the decision to halt support for the game, which takes away an accessible levelling option. Finally, the game does not use a balanced matchmaking system, which can make games incredibly one-sided, especially if you're playing against seasoned players. This would have caused huge challenges if the trophy list contained win-heavy or demanding performance-based trophies. My win rate was only 53%.
However, a lofty levelling grind is about as tasking as this list gets though, and you only need to achieve maximum level for one character. This feels like a generous approach, as I believe there could have definitely been scope to span this across a number of characters, if not all of them, at which point we'd certainly be talking about this Platinum in a different way.
It's rare to see games rated under the minimum baseline standard of 3/10 in difficulty, and I've only ever given this score out with extra consideration to how easy the game actually is. It's only happened on 2 occasions previously, and both those games had similar characteristics displayed to Crash Team Rumble - Minimally challenging trophies with a little bit of resistance in the form of slight time investment.
It's a story of what could have been for a title that has a solid reputation behind it, and the lack of depth runs straight through the trophy list. If you're willing to put a bit of effort into the levelling grind, you can cruise through the majority of this Platinum on auto-pilot.
Notable Trophies -
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| Playing Favorites - Reach level cap with any hero. |
Hardest Trophy -
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