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[BossDarkseid]

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

Ymmv. Not the highest poly/texture res game I've ever seen, obviously, but it feels like what Crash would roughly look like if it was made nowadays. It doesn't look half-assed : /

Although since they said their engine can go 60fps (some people thought the engine was like GGs Decima Engine and designed around a frame lock) it'd be nice to get a toggle option on Pro at least.

 

[HardRojo]

Well the music certainly wasn't missing; Josh Mancell is always posting the pre-console mixes on his soundcloud. Makes me wish they got him back for the N. Sane Trilogy 'cause the redone music is definitely one this game's weaker aspects.

Yeah, this is what I don't get and I hope they speak about it, the music in stages like Orient Express is... well... rather disappointing, other stages are completely fine, but it would've been nice if they worked with the original composer.

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

Yeah, no, "really underwhelming" is an exaggeration no matter how you want to put it. It looks great in my opinion, but I know some people might not like the style as much. "Really underwhelming" hardly applies in this case.

 

[Falchion]

I love how they basically just handed them a bunch of hard drives with the meshes on them. That's pretty hilarious.

 

[Blam]

I love how they basically just handed them a bunch of hard drives with the meshes on them. That's pretty hilarious.

I mean thats how its usually done.

 

[Leatherface]

from what I've read it isn't even 60FPS. shame.

 

[Brandon F]

Seriously? How many games of this style look better than Crash?

Ymmv. Not the highest poly/texture res game I've ever seen, obviously, but it feels like what Crash would roughly look like if it was made nowadays. It doesn't look half-assed : /

Although since they said their engine can go 60fps (some people thought the engine was like GGs Decima Engine and designed around a frame lock) it'd be nice to get a toggle option on Pro at least.

Admittedly what I wrote was a bit harsh. I think the lighting mostly looks really unnatural(kind of non-existent really). Was hoping for more mood in the stages through various sources and that doesn't exist or is altogether flat. Otherwise they seemed to have done a solid job.

 

[pixelation]

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

You crazy mijo o que?

 

[_woLf]

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

what the fuck were you expecting? the style looks perfect and fits the game.

 

[_Ryo_]

Yup. It is a REMAKE. Not a remaster. Calling it a remaster is a diservice to the fans and developers alike. A ton of research and talent went into making this game. Its not just PS1 crash with a new coat of paint. Its 3 entire games, meticuously and faithfully recreated.

 

[giancarlo123x]

Physical version is out of stock on Amazon at the moment. Crap.

I just pre-ordered on best buy from fear of it selling out.

 

[JaseC]

This right here makes me think its a full on exclusive, why would Sony hand them over said data if they were also going to use it to put the game on other consoles?, i know i wouldn't.

Denying Vicarious what source assets it still had because Acti refused to sign off on hard exclusivity would have been tremendously petulant, potentially harmful to the final product (which, at the end of the day, is launching exclusively on the PS4), and, perhaps most importantly, wouldn't have gained Sony anything at all but some ruffled feathers. Granting a small favour rather than doing something that would be tantamount to "I was going to invite you to my birthday party but now I'm not" is simply good business sense.

 

[DriftingSpirit]

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

Nope.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

Can't agree with this at all, the remake looks great

 

[pretty done]

Yup. It is a REMAKE. Not a remaster. Calling it a remaster is a diservice to the fans and developers alike. A ton of research and talent went into making this game. Its not just PS1 crash with a new coat of paint. Its 3 entire games, meticuously and faithfully recreated.

Yea I think most people can see that. It looks great, no way could it be mistaken for a remaster. A bit disappointed it's not 4K but eh, what can you do. And besides PS1 games don't usually get remastered, it's mostly the PS2 gen and beyond.

 

[Ooccoo]

from what I've read it isn't even 60FPS. shame.

Not everything needs to be 60 FPS

 

[DangerMouse]

That's why I don't get why they keep calling it a remaster.

It's a remake, Sony/Activision.

Yup.

Looks like they did an amazing job too.

Yup. It is a REMAKE. Not a remaster. Calling it a remaster is a diservice to the fans and developers alike. A ton of research and talent went into making this game. Its not just PS1 crash with a new coat of paint. Its 3 entire games, meticuously and faithfully recreated.

This.

 

[samred]

Was it playable at E3? Any hands on impressions?

Story author here. I was given access to a generous slice of the game after my interview w/ Vicarious staffers, but it was set up on a TV with perceptible input lag. I played long enough to confirm 1) it looks GREAT, 2) it feels incredibly authentic at first blush, and 3) it's still faithfully tough-as-nails. Then I stopped so that I could actually enjoy it at home whenever it launches. Vicarious seems serious about input lag, but until I have final code set up on my home office's G2G screen, I'm withholding judgment in that respect.

I'm very curious to see if it is as friendly to OG series speedrunners as Vicarious has advertised. No way I'm good enough at Crash to answer that faithfully.

 

[K' Dash]

Not everything needs to be 60 FPS

Correct, 60fps should be the bare minimum, theres 120, 145 and 200fps.

 

[fhqwhgads]

I don't see a problem with the music. It does a good job even if it isn't as spot on as the recreated levels are.

 

[kadotsu]

Correct, 60fps should be the bare minimum, theres 120, 145 and 200fps.

Thank you for bringing the most boring discussion you can have about games into this thread.

 

[Grim Patron]

This right here makes me think its a full on exclusive, why would Sony hand them over said data if they were also going to use it to put the game on other consoles?, i know i wouldn't.

It isn't imo. If it is a full exclusive (and doesn't release on other platfomrs in a year), ill take a perma ban. I'm that certain it will be on other consoles.

 

[Neuromancer]

Story author here. I was given access to a generous slice of the game after my interview w/ Vicarious staffers, but it was set up on a TV with perceptible input lag. I played long enough to confirm 1) it looks GREAT, 2) it feels incredibly authentic at first blush, and 3) it's still faithfully tough-as-nails. Then I stopped so that I could actually enjoy it at home whenever it launches. Vicarious seems serious about input lag, but until I have final code set up on my home office's G2G screen, I'm withholding judgment in that respect.

I'm very curious to see if it is as friendly to OG series speedrunners as Vicarious has advertised. No way I'm good enough at Crash to answer that faithfully.

Hey Sam. Thanks for the article. I have a somewhat related question. Do you know if there will be any kind of easy or beginners mode? I never played the Crash games back in the day, and the Crash sequence in Uncharted 4 kicked my ass.

 

[samred]

Hey Sam. Thanks for the article. I have a somewhat related question. Do you know if there will be any kind of easy or beginners mode? I never played the Crash games back in the day, and the Crash sequence in Uncharted 4 kicked my ass.

that is a very good question. Vicarious talked about the difficulty levels being faithful to the original, so I didn't ask a follow-up about any Nintendo-like assists or level skip options; I don't see those coming. I'll confirm if I hear otherwise.

 

[chronic_archaic]

Ymmv. Not the highest poly/texture res game I've ever seen, obviously, but it feels like what Crash would roughly look like if it was made nowadays. It doesn't look half-assed : /

Although since they said their engine can go 60fps (some people thought the engine was like GGs Decima Engine and designed around a frame lock) it'd be nice to get a toggle option on Pro at least.

Don't understand why it's not targeting 60fps anyway. You'd think that would be really doable with games from the PlayStation. Not using the original source gives no excuse either, meaning that there is mo "the engine is locked at 30fps"

 

[Vertti]

They sound fine to me. The only thing that comes off somewhat is the Crash 2 warp room where the guitars or whatever are replaced with more subtle bass.

Huge nitpick but that sound comes from electromagnetic keyboard called clavinet or clav.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavinet

It's definitely underused instrument. I love its sound!

 

[RootCause]

They did a fine job.

 

[Wamb0wneD]

But the original composer was literally throwing music at them and they were like "I don't know him"

Wait what? WHAT?!

 

[Napalm_Frank]

Don't understand why it's not targeting 60fps anyway. You'd think that would be really doable with games from the PlayStation. Not using the original source gives no excuse either, meaning that there is mo "the engine is locked at 30fps"

Tales from my ass but I feel one likely reason would be that they have been very busy just getting the game out (for example they have commented that Coco wasn't originally planned to be added because they didn't think they could make it in time) that they would rather settle for 30fps than have to fret about reaching 60 while still looking good enough.

 

[Creaking]

Hey Sam. Thanks for the article. I have a somewhat related question. Do you know if there will be any kind of easy or beginners mode? I never played the Crash games back in the day, and the Crash sequence in Uncharted 4 kicked my ass.

To be fair the Crash 1 bit in Uncharted 4 forced strict d-pad control (with the DS4's somewhat uncomfortable d-pad) and had some slight control differences from the original game, which was the worst-playing crash to begin with. According to our Crash experts here on GAF, Crash 1 in the collection has had its controls tuned up to be more on par with 2, minus new moves like the slide.

Also, outside of time trials, there's no time/score system (unless you count collecting all of the crates for a gem), so you can relieve yourself of that pressure.

 

[Spiritwalker]

Yep, that's why I call it a remake.

 

[Off-Kilter]

That's been obvious since its reveal. You can't uprezz PS1 games and have it look like that lol.

Even the language Shawn Layden used when unveiling it "remastered from the ground up" was a clue that this is indeed a remake and not a simple remaster.

 

[peanutbutterlatte]

And yet it still looks really underwhelming for a visual overhaul.

I mean... what do you people want from a Crash bandicoot game? It's hardly as if the originals were popular for their graphical prowess.

 

[dh4niel]

Not using Josh Mancell's work is shitty but I've heard a different story regarding that.

With there not being any original source code for the games makes me wonder if any developer keeps anything for archive purposes. I remember hearing after the Killzone HD remaster came out that some guy found the original source code in a shoe box?

 

[AuthenticM]

Not using Josh Mancell's work is shitty but I've heard a different story regarding that.

Are you going to share?

 

[wrestleman]

Mmmm, I really don't think the music situation is quite as simple as you guys here on GAF are making it...

 

[Ivan 3414]

I mean... what do you people want from a Crash bandicoot game? It's hardly as if the originals were popular for their graphical prowess.

? The first 3 PS1 Crash games looked phenomenal for their day; they still hold up even now. ND pushed the PS1 nearly to its limit for Crash 2 and 3.

 

[Napalm_Frank]

I mean... what do you people want from a Crash bandicoot game? It's hardly as if the originals were popular for their graphical prowess.

Crash games were arguably the best looking games on PS1 that didn't use pre-rendered backrounds.

Not that I think the remaster looks bad.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

I highly recommend watching the Crash Reunion from this E3. They talk about some the the crazy shit they had to do to make the game run and why they didn't use the engine for PS2.

Andy Gavin goes into even more depth on his multipart blog series on how Crash was made and how they squeezed as much performance as they possibly could from the PS1. Here's what he had to say about the meshes "compressed in some wacky format that [Vicarious] had to decode"

Since the soul of good Animation, is…. drum roll please… animation! We were obsessed with making ours look like that really good Disney or Looney Tunes stuff. In those days, most people used a simple skeleton system with “1 joint” weighting, and very few bones. This gives a very stiff look, so we went instead with vertex animation. This allowed us to use the more sophisticated 3-4 joint weighting available in PowerAnimator, which the Playstation had no hope of matching at runtime (until the PS2), instead we stored the location of every vertex, every frame at 30 frames a second. No one else had the guts, as while this was easy to render, it required inventing some totally hardcore assembly language vertex compressors. First me (three times), then Dave (twice), then finally Mark took a crack at it. Mark’s was the best — being the best assembly programmer of us three — but also the most complicated.

 

[Lylo]

Was it playable at E3? Any hands on impressions?

Yes, it was. I am far from being a Crash Bandicoot fan, i never really liked the original, so if that's the case for you, this remake won't change your mind, but if you are like my wife, who grew up with Crash and Playstation and have good memories of the original games, you'll absolutelly love it, she was all smiles while playing the game at E3.

In another note, i believe that the guy wearing the Crash costume was high on coke because he was really excited...

 

[Wiped89]

It IS a remake. The term is 'faithful remake' because it stays very true to the original games.

 

[almostjuliuscaesar]

Makes what they've done even more impressive

especially the eyeballing part

 

[IronicSonic]

Incredible work of VV. I was on the fence in this one but they that work deserves 1day money I think

 

[Piggus]

from what I've read it isn't even 60FPS. shame.

It's unfortunate, but the originals play just fine at 30 fps, and the remake will play fine as well.

 

[KiNolin]

They are remakes, but priced like remasters. Fine by me.