‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ is a platformer about a young crocodile who was raised by these strange, fluffy creatures called ‘Gobbos’ after finding him in a basket in a river. Croc is basically Moses at this point. So they raise him, train him in the fine art of tail whipping and live on a lovely, peaceful island until he's absolutely huge due to his condition of being an crocodile. Or maybe he's an alligator, either way, he's not a Gobbo. The peaceful existence of the furballs is ruined when an enormous ogre creature called Baron Dante shows up and ruins everything, just for the fun of it. I'm not being dramatic, there really is no reason for him doing this, he's clearly just a dickhead. Baron Dante releases a load of his evil underlings into the land who run riot, capturing Gobbos, pillaging and scampering around with evil expressions in a truly destructive manner. The King Gobbo is also captured and locked away in some dark, isolated place far away from everything and since Croc is the only creature left unscathed it's his job to get things back to the way they should be. This game has a fairly robust 45 levels, including bonus levels, but you shouldn't think this is a walk in the park. I died a lot in this game but rather than it being due to the difficulty level its more down to a camera and control scheme that clearly work for Baron Dante as they are most certainly not on your side. Compared to how much I used to struggle with the simple task of jumping between platforms I’ve definitely improved at gaming since 1997.
Developer: Argonaut Software
Genre: Platformer
Release date: September 29th 1997
Platforms: PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn
ESRB: E – Everyone
The strange thing about this title is that you can sense that it’s a combination of elements from many popular platforming games but, despite this, I still found it to be one of the most memorable and enjoyable games of its time. What ‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ lacks in originality it makes up for in personality as I found the characters, storyline and style to be very endearing and its pioneering efforts at a freeroaming 3D world to be well envisioned. In terms of gameplay it’s your traditional platforming game but with the added challenge of a 3D environment. White crystals litter the game worlds and by collecting 100 of them you gain an extra life but this is a surprising challenge as whenever you are hit by an enemy you will lose them all, ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ style, and only have a brief moment to grab as many of them back as possible. Frustratingly, the enemies you’ll find wandering about the place will respawn quite quickly after you kill them by either tail swiping them into the next realm or bouncing on their heads with your stomp attack. Killing them offers no benefit to you however as all it will do is get rid of them for around ten seconds before they’ll return with a puff of smoke. One of the most annoying enemies is a worm that crawls about beneath the earth, crossing its path will result in you losing all of your crystals and until the worm pops its stupid head out the earth you’re unable to harm it in retaliation. There are quite a few bosses in the game, one every five levels or so, but they were only really difficult based on the dodgy camera and tank controls. Mostly they consisted of hapless creatures who had been turned ‘evil’ by the Baron guy such as a duck and a ladybird. Generally, they weren’t much of a challenge but I did enjoy the way in which each boss fight was different and often quite quirky, the ladybird fight for example was set in an enormous, multi-coloured boxing ring where the aim was to dodge attacks, knock Flibby over then jump on her stomach to cause some damage. A little bit of fun like this is what makes ‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ a good game and I did enjoy its light-hearted, cutesy approach to everything.
As well as progressing through the levels by smashing open crates, grabbing crystals and killing enemies you’ll have to navigate the levels. This is easier said than done because the controls and camera angle in this game are by far your worst enemies. Frequently I found myself running into walls or mistiming jumps and falling into the black abyss or pits of lava. Often when you hit a wall it’s very difficult to turn around nevermind see where you are going and in a game where expert control of where you’re running and jumping is expected it really cranks up the difficulty level. You’re not just dealing with stationary platforms either and often you’ll be trying to time your jumps onto moving or breakable platforms where lingering a second longer could result in your death. At times it was easier to just run ahead and avoid all the intricacies of the game as the likelihood for death was just too high and this is a sure fire way of missing out on all the bonuses the game has to offer. Bonus levels, for example, exist on every level in the form of doors you may only open with five coloured crystals. These coloured crystals are scattered about the levels and can be found disguised as white crystals, hidden in chests or just sitting out in the open though usually in areas that are not part of the linear level progression. What this game does well is its freeroaming style of play as usually platformers of this era were very linear. In ‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ you will automatically have access to different areas such as underground caverns that can be accessed by stomping on the tops of wells or other top ground areas that can be accessed through doors. Usually you can bypass these places and head straight for the dong which you hit to end the level but by doing this you miss out on the other side mission of the game; saving the Gobbos.
In a traditional ‘Rayman’ style form of play you’ll encounter Gobbos who are either stranded on ledges or trapped in cages that you must find a way of unlocking. Keys can be found in adjacent areas usually but they’re not always evident and I’ve often had to return to levels to find all the Gobbos and coloured crystals. There’s actually a great deal of playtime to be had in ‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ as not only do you have your regular 40 levels that span across five different islands, each with unique challenges such as a slippery icy world, but the numerous bonus levels give you something to strive for. Sadly the level design is pretty uninspiring as apart from the odd new feature such a waterfall, or lava waterfall, the levels are very much areas of flatland with mountainous walls and hazardous pits of stuff. In terms of things you can interact with the game is fairly varied and there are quite a few different things going on such as collapsing bridges in caverns, mini-games, jelly you can bounce on and structures you must climb up or along such as climbing walls and overhead netting. Unfortunantly it’s the scenery that’s lacking in diversity and really there’s never anything to look at as you’re going about your running, bouncing and climbing tasks. Graphically it’s quite poor for the late 90s and you’ll encounter plenty of seams, even in the overhead sun, but generally I enjoyed the animation style as everything was very colourful, bold and cute. The music was also rather endearing and I was surprised at how it didn’t become irritating as, even though the same general tune seemed to be used, it was altered for the themed areas and for boss fights.
‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ is a very enjoyable game whose controls, camera angles and bland environments let it down. There’s quite a bit going on if you dig under the surface and I enjoyed the range of obstacles I encountered such as platforms that you have to control yourself, buttons to jump on, jelly to bounce off, walls to climb, slopes to slide down and those weird purple stretchy platforms that would grow and shrink continuously. It’s all quite busy but it’s such a shame that this is all going on in such drab places and some more detail would really have brought the themed worlds to life. As it stands it is very much a case of forest; green floored area, desert; beige floored area, tundra; white floored area with slippery bits and so on. The camera is a real nightmare to control and can cause a huge amount of frustration to the point where I had to put the game down several times to come back to later. Despite everything I did enjoy replaying ‘Croc: Legend of the Gobbos’ and even though it’s pretty dated I can see why it became popular; it’s quirky, cute and full of innocent fun to be had yet providing enough challenge to appeal to older or more accomplished gamers. It may not be in the league of Sonic, Crash, Mario or Rayman but it’s still a good old classic that few can forget.
The Good:
- Decent number of levels to keep you busy
- Quite a lot of different obstacles and interactive elements
- The bonus levels are a little quirky
- A nice, catchy soundtrack that is altered slightly depending on situation
- The overall appearance and animation of characters is cute and cheerful
- The storyline is simple but decent
- The mini-games you can find in hard to reach areas mix things up a bit
- Awful, awful camera control that often means you cannot see where you are going
- Clunky, tank controls that are difficult to master
- Bare environments that are boring to look at
- Bosses offer little to no challenge
- Enemies respawn and give nothing for defeating them
- You will lose every single gem after being hit once and it is impossible to retrieve all of them
Final thoughts: "The game has a lot of issues but it's still really enjoyable and with a little cleaning up here and there I reckon it could easily become popular again. You can tell it's ripped off so many previous platformers though."
Side note: This game was originally supposed to be a Mario spinoff featuring Yoshi but Nintendo rejected the proposal and ended the relationship between the two companies. Seeking new publishers they settled with Fox Interactive, MediaQuest and THQ. This may be why there's several similarities between the Mario series and the gameplay of Croc. Hey ho.
By: Rambling Fox Reviews
Post a Comment