Reviews VideoGame / Crash On The Run

It's...fine.

I actively avoid these sorts of games, especially by Creator/King, who are not exactly know for their relaxed monetisation. If anything, they're the perpetrator of such schemes on the mobile market. But I gave the game a chance out of curiosity. The Endless Running Game genre works a treat for the style of game Crash is, in my mind, and I wasn't disappointed.

When the game lets you play it, it's more fun than I'd give most King games credit for. The Battle Run levels are surprisingly well thought out, albeit a bit easier than what I'm going to assume most Crash denizens are used to, but that's neither here nor there. The bosses do get tougher to complete, and their projectiles harder to avoid. Fake Crash is when it gets to this point, killing me because of the projectile curves being hard to calculate on the fly than what I was previously used to. It didn't take long to adjust to this, so he was back in his dimension in less than 10 minutes. Overall, it was, dare I say it, little pockets of fun, when I was allowed to play it.

When the game allowed me play it.

The game runs on a load of in-game crafting timers for the weapons, which you have to use in the Battle Runs mentioned above right at the end to send them packing. And I mean Lots and lots and lots of timers. And while you can circumvent this with premium currency, of course (Purple Crystals in this case), as well as downplaying the amount of time you have to wait by unlocking more slots in the crafting machines (doing 2 potions at once instead of one at a time), this can only alleviate so much frustration. And to unlock more slots and to get ingredients, you need to go on collection runs. Lots and lots of collection runs.

Can you start to see the pattern yet? The game forces me to do menial ingredient collecting to get more gadgets and gear and potions to defeat enemies and upgrade slots, but the first two bits are so ingrained in how the game works that the player will eventually get sick and tired of needing to do collection runs, or they submit to premium purchases so they can play the game given to them (which, if you haven't cottoned onto yet, is King's whole deal; arbitrary resource management and timers to slow people down). As for the third part, without spending money on crystals, you either have to choose between fun gameplay, or upgrading the slots by grinding collection runs so you can be in the best position to have fun. Again, when the game lets you.

The only saving grace of Collection Runs is that the level layout, as well as crates, never change, and that means it's learnable. Which, if anything, makes it feel more repetitive, rather than flexing an exciting piece of knowledge to know what's up the track.

I haven't played the Survival Runs yet, nor have I touched the group feature (and I don't plan on it), so I cannot comment on that part of the game. Hell, maybe that mode is redeemable for you.

Purple Crystals can be used to get character skins (some with added benefits, like ingredient collection boosts), speeding things up mentioned above, and can actually be gotten at a steadily, albeit slow pace for free. Defeating the boss of a Battle Run group nets you about 8 - 12 crystals, while you can also watch an advert once per day to earn 5 of them. On a similar note, you can double the gained ingredients from Collections runs by watching ads too....on some ingredients. Because unlocking slots too early would make things too fun.

In summary, this game has potential, but it's been squandered and overrun by an ever-increasing number of Freemium Timers that one has to keep track of. And it's just....tiring to play. Tiring away to have fun is no fun at all.

Also Coco is really Peppy and fun here.