Crash Bandicoot's next adventure may be a PS2 throwback

Have you seen the Activision leak? A host of potential upcoming releases have "leaked" from a previously reliable source, and one of them is so mad that I had to write about it. There's stuff about new Call of Duty, sure. A Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remaster, cool. But apparently their big follow-up to the excellent Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is... er... a remaster of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, a game nobody likes. Okay, that's a touch harsh, but Wrath of Cortex? The PS2's inaugural Crash Bandicoot game widely criticised as a by-the-numbers retread of Crash's previous-gen outing Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped? Why remind people of that hot mess?

If it's a "remaster" in the sense that they're making radical changes to the level design and general game feel, I guess I'd be interested. Let's face it, I'm probably going to buy it anyway. But if they must give us a do-over of this bad game, I'd like to see them take the opportunity to make it good. Cut or completely remake the tedious underwater stages, rethink the pointless mine cart sections, Coco levels, airplane levels, Monkey Ball rip-off rolling levels... er, about 80% of the game basically would need redoing from scratch.

An extremely poor level from Wrath of Cortex.

Maybe that's what's actually happening. Maybe it's gonna be Crash 4 the way it always should have been. Ooh, I'm all excited now! I've managed to trick myself into being excited about Wrath of Cortex. Great.

Best case scenario; this rumour is completely false and the game won't happen.