It’ll have a beta from April 20 to 24.Ĭall of Duty made Crash Team Rumble a better multiplayer game, says devĪctivision has just teased lots of new details about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which launches this November. It may not be Crash Bandicoot 5, but it might just be the smartest use of the IP since its early PlayStation days.Ĭrash Team Rumble launches on June 20 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. If it can nail down a steady stream of post-launch support that keeps it fresh from month to month, I get the sense that it’ll turn those initial skeptics into fans. Will moments like that be as thrilling when you’re playing solo online with strangers? It’s always hard to say, but that alone sold me on the idea of Crash Team Rumble as a legitimate multiplayer contender. It was an exhilarating moment that even had the developers on hand scrambling to figure out how to save gameplay clips on a PlayStaion 5. It shot up just a split second before the blocker could reach it, allowing everyone to bank their fruits and run away with a lead. As they approached the bank, a teammate made an absolutely clutch play by spending their saved relics to generate a force field in front of the bank. Naturally, a blocker from the enemy team gave chase. When a win was within range, my teammates started rushing back toward our base to bank all our fruits at once. In a particularly tense match, both teams were tied up near the end. That adds another layer of risk/reward strategy, as a crafty team might stock up on fruits, but wait to unload them all at the height of a multiplier.Īll of these little ideas really came together for me during one specific moment. Its fruit-collecting goal is clear and is easy for a new player to pick up, but the extra nuance gives it much more depth.įor instance, if a team activates a series of gem platforms by jumping on them, they’ll give their team a bonus multiplier that increases the value of fruits. But even without that, Crash Team Rumble really accomplishes something special here. Admittedly, my experience was positively colored by a room full of enthusiastic players who hooted, hollered, and smack-talked one another. When demoing multiplayer games like this, it can sometimes be hard to get an unclouded feel for how fun a match is. When my team spent some prep time picking our characters carefully and calling out what we were doing, it truly felt like we were prepping for a serious esport. They eventually decided that the metagame should just be in the game itself, and that was the right call. It only came about because the developers kept unofficially breaking their teams into those roles during playtests. Toys for Bob representatives tell me that the class system wasn’t in the game originally. All characters can also equip a special ability, like a healing locker or a plant that slows enemies by spitting venom at them, adding even more to the team-building aspect. Support heroes like Coco will find double relics throughout the islands, so their focus is more on activating those abilities. Other maps let me spend them to launch myself up to high places or place force fields around my bank. When I collect five on a beach map, I can stand on a round platform to cash them in and turn them into a beach ball that speeds over the sand. Relics are scattered around the maps and can be used to unlock different abilities. His high health meant that I could sit on the other team’s bank and block anyone from depositing their fruits – a true jerk.īoosters are a little different, as they tie into the game’s relic system. In one game, I played as Dingodile, who has the ability to vacuum fruits away from other players. Blockers, on the other hand, can be used to get in the other team’s way. Characters like Crash Bandicoot are “scorers” who specialize in racking up points. For one, it has a character class system like Overwatch that fits surprisingly well. There are several layers on top of that, all of which add depth without making matches feel too complicated to grasp. Its closest parallel is perhaps Destiny 2’s Gambit mode, where Guardians fight to bank motes, but even that doesn’t really explain it. Here’s the basic gist: It’s a 4v4 competitive game where teams run around a small map, collect as much Wumpa fruit as they can, and bank it in their goal by standing on it for a few seconds to raise their team’s score. Developer Toys for Bob has invented what feels like an entirely new genre altogether here. I’m tempted to call Crash Team Rumble a “genre mash-up,” drawing comparisons to sports games and MOBAs, but that description undersells it.
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