Wow. Where did this game come from? Seriously, wow.

I was handed this game at the Activision PR event and thought to myself, “great, am I expected to write something for this shovelware piece of crap”? Even when I put the game in the Wii and turned it on I still wasn’t impressed. The intro movie looked nice, but the art direction on the menu screens looked awful. And then I started playing the game.

About twenty minutes into the game I turned to Edgar at the 4cr headquarters and said, “what the hell is going on here… this thing is fun… let’s look up some info on this game.” So we did. Get this; Crash: Mind over Mutants was developed for the Wii first and then ported over to the other consoles. And it’s being developed by Radical and published by Sierra. Who knew they even still existed?

Anyway, back to the game. It’s great. It’s influences are pretty much every cool game in the past few years and you can clearly see that. It’s got a fair dose of Mario Galaxy collecting, Boom Blox physics, Prince of Persia wall running, Super Mario World wall crawling, Kameo monster control (or apparently Crash: Titans monster control, but I never played that) and many other influences. But they all work. Some games try to pick and choose cool features from other games and it ends up a mess. With Crash: MoM it all flows together seamlessly. The camera is also great. You have absolutely no camera control, but that hasn’t once been an issue.

The writing and animated cutscenes are almost worth the price of admission themselves. I haven’t seen a game this snarky since the Earthworm Jim days or this clever since the old Sam and Max days. It’s silly and over the top,incredibly self-referential and wonderfully poking fun at all the current trends today. There’s also a part where one of the Mutants that you can control starts doing the Michael Jackson thriller dance just because. Sweet. Truly top notch. And you can tell that there are some classic animation buffs working on this, as every cut scene is a different, yet fitting, animation style realized perfectly. And while the plot isn’t super deep, it does drive the gameplay forward as to what you have to do next. And it’s just damn funny.

I’ve blazed through the first two levels designated as the preview levels. At this point I can’t talk about anything past that. But let me just say that if the game continues on like it started, this is going to be a great game. I don’t think the level design or puzzles are going to match that of the classic platformers, but I sure wouldn’t be disappointed about getting this game or giving it to a friend or friend’s kid. It’s like a super awesome version of the Pac-Man games on the Cube with really high production values. And I mean that in the best way possible. Easily accessibly, incredibly fun if not all that deep, and polished to a glimmering shine. I will say that at this point I wish the game were cheaper than the $50 price tag, but I guess that’s the price for quality.

Crash: Mind over Mutants Page at IGN