If one monster is fun, than more monsters must be even more fun, right? That’s the design philosophy taken by Radical Entertainment and Sierra in making the latest Crash Bandicoot game, Crash of the Titans. As the central point of this game is Crash’s ability to “jack” huge monsters and wreak havoc on them, being able to jack as many monsters as possible should lead to more fun than any normal human should be able stand. While it didn’t turn out quite that way, namely due to a short playtime and some repetitive combat, Crash of the Titans does have plenty of humor, enjoyable multiplayer and plenty of mutant bashing mayhem.

Dr. Cortex is at again and has turned his sights upon Wumpa Island in hopes of destroying it and its most famous inhabitant, Crash Bandicoot. As the game opens, Crash, his sister Coco and the rest of their Wumpa island entourage are putting the final touches on a butter recycling machine when Dr. Cortex shows up, proclaims his intentions to get down with his evil self, kidnaps Coco and Aku Aku and makes off in his blimp. As Crunch is trapped in ice, it’s up to Crash to recover Aku Aku, rescue Coco and stop Dr. Cortex’s Doominator from destroying Wumpa Island.

To do so, Crash has a number of combats moves up his sleeve, er, fur, including a light attack, a heavy attack and various combo moves obtained by collecting mojo, mystical crystals dropped by fallen enemies. Once Crash is reunited with Aku Aku he also gets a block attack and the ability to use Aku Aku as a hover board. Aku Aku also provides Crash with the ability to “jack” the large, mutated beasts created by Dr. Cortex as part of his nefarious plans.

To jack a mutant, Crash basically has to beat it senseless. Hit the beastie enough times and it will become stunned. Once it’s stunned, Crash can jump on the mutant’s back and ride it around, using its unique light and heavy attacks to beat up on Dr. Cortex’s minions and solve environmental puzzles. There are 15 different mutants, however three of them are boss beasts that never appear again in the game, but the 12 remaining beasts all boast a creative design to them and provide for some real fun gaming moments. There’s the giant bat that shoots tornadoes to stun victims, the volcanic tiger that can roll up into a ball and crush opponents, the bipedal eel with its long range electrical attacks and the Scroporilla, a gorilla/scorpion hybrid with a massive melee attack and extremely fun, chest beating special move.

While the ability to jack beasts is fun, unfortunately the flow of the game is pretty repetitive with Crash entering an area, smacking around some minions until a mutant appears and then jacking the mutant and using it to smack around more minions and more mutants until Crash can leave the area. Boss battles all involve jacking a low level mutant and using it to move higher up the food chain until you can gain control of the big boss you’re currently fighting and use it to destroy some pieces of nearby equipment. It would have been nice to see some more variety, especially in the boss battles, but at the same time, the combat, particularly when fighting a room full of mutants, is a tremendous amount of fun. Using a monster’s special attack to stun a room full of beasts or just generally wreaking havoc with a massive, flame spewing mammoth overcomes the repetitive nature of the game play.

Crash also has some platforming to do to mix things up, but it’s nothing all that complicated. He has the typical jump, double jump and hover move to help navigate through his environment. Occasionally he’ll come across some ledges to hang from and some springboards to propel him to lofty heights. Crash will also find some hover board tracks populated with various gaps and mines that require timed jumps to navigate. None of the platforming or hover boarding areas are particular difficult, with the exception of some vine swinging late in the game made excessively difficult by the static camera, so they provide a nice distraction from the combat.

The game sports a nice progression system whereby Crash can collect mojo from fallen enemies and smashed items and automatically get upgraded attacks, a lengthened health bar and more lives per level. You start each level with three lives, however from collecting mojo you can very easily get extra lives up into the double digits in time for the boss fights. The game uses a pretty generous save system, allowing Crash to save progress such as defeated enemies if he loses a life, including in boss battles, which comes in very handy when you’ve destroyed two of three widgets before dying. Once you use up all your lives, you need to start from the beginning of the level, which can be annoying, however most of the game’s 20 episodes can be completed without restarting, and the ones that can’t can be handled with proper mojo management.