Where later games would refine the design in places - with safe areas and the very means of movement expanded on - rarely was there an instance where players were hopping from one flying/floating/moving barely-big-enough-to-fit space to the next.

Stormy Ascent follows in much the same vein as the original Crash Bandicoot’s uncanny restriction in space. Difficulty and challenge is of course a subjective thing what one might find an uphill struggle, another might deem it a cakewalk, but from brief glance, the consensus is in the camp of the first game standing out among the three releases, perhaps in ways that are not always beneficial.Īs if the original Crash Bandicoot wasn’t enough, Vicarious Visions just had to add to the discussion with what was then a surprising announcement that Stormy Ascent - a level previously cut by original developers Naughty Dog - would be included as a free download, having been bundled in with other iterations when Sony’s one-year exclusivity finally ended and players across Xbox, Switch & PC (be they newcomers to Crash’s antics or not) could now bear witness to not just one, but two tasking levels of pure, precision-based, platforming bliss. I, along with a fair few other writers, mentioned it upon review and even went as far as to deem it one of the trilogy’s lower points. The original Crash Bandicoot has understandably taken most of the trilogy’s hub of debate. More specifically, the unintended “challenge” permeating a large part of the original game, but more prominently, its two free DLC levels: Stormy Ascent and Future Tense.

Sane Trilogy took a mere two days to become the biggest-selling release of June last year - not to mention one of Sony’s best first-week launches for a first-party IP and now one of the fastest-selling games in the UK as of late - perhaps the biggest talking point to take away from the experience has been the difficulty.

So much so to the point that even the most passive of discussion regarding sold-out stock and record-breaking sales is being associated with a remaster/remake of this ilk. It’s doubtful even Activision would have believed that allowing both time and space for one of their beloved properties could result in a commercial and critical success. It’s unlikely that even the most zealot of players could predict Crash Bandicoot’s return via the N.

How to play stormy ascent