In 2020, the release of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time was a long-awaited and triumphant return to form for one of gaming’s most recognizable mascots. Tragedy struck less than a year later, however, and it was announced that the game’s developer Toys For Bob was being moved into a supporting development role for parent company Activision Blizzard’s favorite bloated property: Call of Duty. I didn’t think we would see another Crash game for a long time.

Thankfully, I was wrong, and Crash Team Rumble was revealed to the world at the 2022 Game Awards. Yet, I’m sure I wasn’t the only Crash fan that saw the reveal trailer and thought that a 4v4 competitive MOBA wasn’t exactly what we wanted to see our spin-happy bandicoot doing next. Now that I’ve actually had my hands on the game, I can gladly say that this is a multiplayer spinoff that’s well-worth any Crash fan’s time.

Every character controls like a dream, and Toys For Bob’s exceptional art and animation is on full display.

Crash Team Rumble is a competitive multiplayer game that sees two teams of four players compete to gather the franchise’s famous Wumpa Fruit—2000 pieces of fruit, in fact. As one of eight characters you need to run around the map gathering Wumpa by running into it or busting open boxes before slamming it into your Bank. All the while, you’ll have to prevent enemy players from gathering their own Wumpa by bashing them around, using abilities, and creating various hazards on the map. Hazards that your enemies can also create.

There’s a lot to wrap your head around when you begin playing. However, the game’s perfectly brief tutorial and crystal clear UI design help everything come together fairly quickly. What you’ll notice right away is that the game feels amazing to play. Every character controls like a dream, and Toys For Bob’s exceptional art and animation is on full display. Simply drinking in the game’s artistically detailed environments and delightful character designs is a true highlight. However, you’re here to fight! You’re here to win!

You could strongarm your way to victory simply by gathering enough Wumpa and knocking out the competition, but wins will come much easier to those that capture Gems and gather Relics. Gems are groups of two to four platforms that will temporarily boost the amount of Wumpa you’re carrying if you and your team can capture said Gems. Some of the most brutal and drawn-out battles I’ve seen in Crash Team Rumble were fought for control of Gems, and for good reason. Getting a Gem boost to your Wumpa has the potential to quickly change the tide of who’s winning, and that’s especially true when a team manages to capture more than one group of Gems because their boosting effects do stack.

The fact that each map has completely different Relic Stations is one of the game’s greatest strengths and only bolsters the already great map design.

If you’re unfortunate enough to continue losing control of Gems, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all is lost. Scattered around each map are Relics. These tiny, blue doodads can be deposited at Relic Stations to unlock some powerful abilities for you and your team. Well, some are powerful. There are smaller Relic Stations that can cost two to eight Relics to activate, and there are enormous Relic Stations that cost a whopping 30 Relics. These Relic abilities range from encasing your character in a big beach ball that bounces baddies away with a single touch to calling upon the power of series villain Uka Uka to make your team not only invincible but surrounded by hellish showers of fire and brimstone. Yes, it’s terrific and awesome when you have it, and, yes, it’s terrifying and awful when you’re running from it.

Relic Stations are different based on the map that you’re fighting on. The aforementioned Uka Uka Relic Station is a permanent fixture of Tiki Towers along with the smaller Relic Stations Bandicootapult and Bombardment. The fact that each map has completely different Relic Stations is one of the game’s greatest strengths and only bolsters the already great map design. Tiki Towers has lots of verticality, and you can carefully out maneuver your enemies with the Bandicootapults while also raining down damage on their Bank using Bombardment. Over on Calamity Canyon, however, you can roll around in a lethal Junker Ball while protecting your Bank with an impermeable Force Field. Or, if you’re clever and evil, you can deposit your Relics at the Force Field near the enemy team’s bank and make their lives ten times harder.

Reacting on the fly and carefully choosing when and where to activate Relic Stations and capture Gems is what kept me coming back to Crash Team Rumble. When you’re starting out, everything seems pretty simple, but the constant ebb and flow that can happen thanks to strategic use of the powers on each map opens up the possibility for plenty of experimentation. Some might not love that Crash Team Rumble consists of only one, Wumpa-seeking game mode, but the wildly different map design and combination of unique Relic Stations make that one game mode incredibly replayable.

That replayability is bolstered even further by the characters themselves. Each is put into one of three classes: Scorer, Blocker, or Booster. Scorers are quicker and can hold more Wumpa, Blockers are built for combat, and Boosters are specialized for capturing objectives. While they’re divided into these roles, it’s not wise to neglect cashing in your collected Wumpa when playing as a Blocker or completely ignoring Gems and Relics as a Scorer.

Each character feels distinct from one another and finding out which ones you gel with is great fun.

Whatever class you choose, there’s fun to be had. Each character feels distinct from one another, and finding out which ones you gel with is great fun. At first, I thought the entirely new character Catbat was pretty boring. After learning that they work best when used in an entirely different way than I’d been using Crash and Tawna, I started to have a blast soaring through the sky to surprise enemies with carefully aimed dive bombs. Things get even better when you decide which character you like using on which map and what Power you want to couple them with. Powers are mini-ultimate abilities that you equip before a match begins, and using the right one at just the right time can pay off in a big way.

Of course, some characters and Powers feel much stronger than others, but I won’t say any names. Okay, fine it’s Dr. N. Tropy.

If the core gameplay loop isn’t enough to keep you playing, you might be interested in progressing through the game’s Battle Pass and Character Progression. Then again, you might not. This is where I start to have issues with Crash Team Rumble, as the XP grind is real. Churning through the Battle Pass is enormously time consuming, anything that’s not one of the awesome skins is pointless filler, and there’s not a lot of ways to make it go faster. There’s also individual Character Progression that gives rewards, and there are more options for leveling up this set of XP via Challenges, but they’re awful.

If you’re playing as a Scorer, you’re required to earn Top Scorer badges with your character in multiple matches. This means you have to collect the most Wumpa on your team multiple times. Blockers have to earn Top Blocker badges, and Boosters need to earn Top Booster Badges. Additionally, every single character has a Challenge that specifically requires you to win matches. These are the absolute worst challenges to encounter in any multiplayer game. I understand that there’s likely a game design philosophy behind them saying that they’ll encourage players to play the objective and try their best, but they’re simply not fun nor accessible. Turning the fun game into a “I have to win or I’m not progressing” situation sucks. Some people may not be that good either, and they can have a really hard time earning those wins. Additionally, some people could be working really hard to win and personally deposit 1623 of the required 2000 Wumpa Fruit and still lose! I’m only one man! That loss only felt worse knowing that it meant another failed attempt at significantly leveling up my character.

Aside from the XP grind and completely terrible XP Challenges, the other big bummer for Crash Team Rumble is that it’s not free-to-play. Is it worth the price of admission? I think so, but trying to convince one’s friends is going to be a lot harder than telling them to find and download a free alternative.

Gripes aside, Crash Team Rumble is a successful experiment that Toys For Bob should take great pride in. They’ve created a unique, colorful, secretly strategic, and highly replayable MOBA with a stellar cast of characters to duke it out with. Toys For Bob seems to have taken some valuable live service lessons from their time supporting Call of Duty as the game’s first season has already been outlined with a roadmap promising a new map, power, and characters. Hopefully, there will be plenty of exciting bandicoot action to keep players coming back far into the future.

Pros:

●     Stellar map design

●     Deep gameplay that rewards strategy

●     Wonderful character variety

●     Feels great to play

●     Toys For Bob makes beautiful games

Cons:

●     Battle Pass XP is a grind

●     Character Progression Challenges are largely unfun and inaccessible

●     Most rewards and cosmetics simply aren’t worth it

●     Not being free-to-play makes it a hard sell for friends

Score: 8.5/10

Reviewer played on Xbox Series X.

Crash Team Rumble is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC.