Vicarious Visions Addresses Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy’s Jumping, Physics & Difficulty

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In a blog post addressing Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy’s handling, physics, and difficulty, developer Vicarious Visions said their goal for the trilogy “was to reduce any points of frustration while preserving the challenge of the originals, and we feel we’ve done that.”

Starting with Crash’s handling, Vicarious Visions said they made the decision to unify the design of each game “so that players could have a cohesive experience across all three games.” As a result, they chose the handling from Crash Bandicoot 3 as their starting point, because it represented the most improved and modern approach.

They added:

We went through rounds of internal testing, user testing, and iterations to get each game’s handling to just the right place. In the end, we ended up tuning jump differently for each game, so that the jump metrics are the same as the originals. However, there are a few subtle differences in Crash Bandicoot, chief among these being the fact that you fall more quickly upon release of the X button than you did in the original first game.

Moving to collision and physics, Vicarious said the N. Sane Trilogy engine “features a different collision system than the original game, and combined with the addition of physics, certain jumps require more precision than the originals. Much like the handling, we iterated on collision and physics throughout development to make it fair to all players and as faithful to the original games as possible.”

Finally, when it comes to difficulty, Vicarious mentioned that the modernized save and checkpoint systems make the first game more forgiving than the original, while the dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) grants Crash Aku Aku masks and checkpoints after a certain number of failures in a level.

They continued by saying new players might want to start with Crash 2 or Crash 3 before Crash 1:

An increased precision is now required in the first game, which makes the gameplay experience different. Particularly if you are a new player, you may want to start with the second and third games first, and then come back to try Crash Bandicoot after you’ve had more practice. For those of you who played the originals and acquired a fair amount of muscle memory, re-learning the handling in our game may present an additional challenge you weren’t expecting. But we’re sure you up to the task.

At the Crash Bandicoot panel San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, Vicarious Visions says “there will be some news that you won’t want to miss!”

In our review of the N. Sane Trilogy, we mentioned that “hitboxes and perspectives can feel off.”

If you haven’t grabbed it yet, there’s a free PS4 theme available through the PlayStation Store.

[Source: Activision Blog]

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