Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped Review

By the third game the studio had nothing left to prove about running and jumping, so it went sideways. Warped is a variety show: motorbike races with rubber banding, a biplane shooter, jet ski courses, underwater levels and a tiger cub who gallops through the Great Wall. Most of it works, which is the surprising part, and the motorbike stages in particular are a real racing game rather than a minigame with a timer.

The progression is the other change. Beating a boss grants a permanent ability, so a double jump or a speed burst retroactively opens routes in levels you already cleared, and the relic time trials give the completionist run genuine teeth. It is also the easiest of the three by a wide margin on a first pass, and the difficulty only appears once you chase gems and platinum relics. The Egyptian and medieval stages recycle a lot of geometry, and the boss fights remain forgettable. Nobody made a better mascot platformer on the hardware.