Crash Boom Bang!

"And now I regret not killing myself when I was 5."

- Caddicarus

Crash Boom Bang!, known in Japan as Crash Bandicoot Festival, is a party game developed by Dimps and published by Vivendi Universal Games.

Why It Horribly Goes Kaboom!

 * 1) This game is a shameless rip-off of the Mario Party series, even in the gameplay.
 * 2) Awful, outdated graphics, even for DS standards.
 * 3) You start with four characters (depending on the version) but you need to pass the story mode to unlock them.
 * 4) Poorly written story.
 * 5) Crappy soundtrack.
 * 6) The game is SO SLOW. The minigames are slow, getting to the minigames are slow, taking turns is slow, getting what you need to advance is slow. The game has no flow or speed throughout the entire game.
 * 7) You could be stuck on a map for literal hours until everything is found in it.
 * 8) Whenever you start a mini-game, the instructions show you the controls on literally every minigame.
 * 9) For every single turn, you get told how to use items. Every. Single. Time.
 * 10) *What's worse is that the game tells you the unnecessary stuff, but doesn't tell you things you need to know.
 * 11) The Viscount is one of the worst Crash villains in the entire series; his main goal is not to take over the world but to get the wish-granting "Super Big Power Crystal" to make wishes.
 * 12) Poor ending; no matter what character you play as (like Pinstripe or Coco), the ending will remain the same, and while it is funny, it's not well-handled and is kind of trollish: Crash wishes for a whole supply of Wumpa Fruits.
 * 13) Frustrating gameplay, as all of the minigames use the mechanics of the DS, and they almost never work.
 * 14) Boring and terrible set of minigames.
 * 15) It is impossible to lose in Story Mode, as at the end of every game you get Wumpa Fruit which serves as both points and currency. You can get them in many ways, so no matter how many you have, and no matter where you placed on the leaderboard, you will move on. You can even have negative points, and there's no punishment at all. If you think about it, there's no risk of losing at all, so it's technically NOT A GAME!!! To add insult to injury, once you beat the Story Mode, you can unlock hard mode for the Story Mode.
 * 16) Pura and Polar have awful and unnecessary anthropomorphic redesigns, which contradicts their characters in the other games.
 * 17) Most of the characters in general have atrocious redesigns.
 * 18) The theme, the gameplay, the world and the plot have nothing in common with Crash Bandicoot series, so it's a Crash Bandicoot game in name only.
 * 19) Little to no English voice acting and only uses text-to-speech boxes, especially compared to most of the Crash Bandicoot games which had voice acting.
 * 20) It's entirely possible for the game itself to clear an entire board in Story Mode WITHOUT HAVING YOU PUT IN A SINGLE INPUT beyond skipping through the story cutscenes, getting through the betting screen (as the timer doesn't show up there for some reason) and leaving the end of board results screen to get to the next cutscene. Black Mage Maverick actually experimented with this when gathering footage for his review and not only did the game clear the first two boards by itself, but he actually came in first place on the second board!

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) You can play multiplayer on the same DS, no need to have a second copy of the game, though you need to unlock them all in Single Player Mode.
 * 2) Crash and Fake Crash's Japanese graphic designs are passable.
 * 3) The dice roll mechanic is pretty decent. Rather than taking turns, everyone rolls and moves at once.
 * 4) * This mechanic would be re-used and modified by - ironically enough - every Mario Party game starting with Mario Party: Star Rush.

Videos
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