Well, Kroc is a half-baked piece of -beep-ing -beep-. Maybe I am being a little hard on our hero. He is cute, cuddly and makes funny noises. Platformers have been all the rage since the dawn of video games, and often when the genre made the jump to 3D, early attempts were less than stellar, save for Nintendo’s excellent production quality. But this isn’t Nintendo- Fox cast their lot with Sony and the Playstation.
It paid off- Kroc sold a fair number of copies, but it could have done better and could have been so much more. Since the game is below average, I can’t put it in the greatest games list. It is low enough to be put into the POS category, but it barely escapes it for the half-baked category. This game is clumped together in quality with the likes of Dragonball GT Final Bout, Terminator 2 actually scored slightly higher, Mario is Missing!, Robotic Alchemic Drive and the infamous Mary Kate and Ashley games. That is one group of games you do not want to be associated with, especially in production value. This game needs to be given props where props are due however. For its day and age, the music is well done.
It’s repetitive and loops around a track, but the track that the game does use is well done. It shouldn’t be a surprise since the creator of this game is faux corp. I was mildly interested, but to be perfectly honest I would rather pop in Spyro the Dragon and play that. When I was younger I was hooked onto that game for a good one or two months. Rightfully so- Spyro gained acclaim, and I am sad that this franchise isn’t being expanded upon. Perhaps people are too engrossed in their Call of Duty games to even care about anything else.
And yes, I will harp on Call of Duty on this channel. The older games are good, but the entire franchise feels orchestrated, and the multiplayer bland. Back on topic. The controls are mother -beep-ing horrible. They are so slippery that it makes jumping onto tiny platforms nearly impossible. This is an issue that should have been fixed in Alpha, but made it to the final version.
Even for a PS1 game, that’s kind of inexcusable. The restarts aren’t too bad- it will place you in an area close to where you died, and for the game’s time I can’t complain about that. Dare I say, this game’s restarts are of higher quality than Blizzard’s Diablo III. One thing that is very annoying is that if you touch lava, it’s an insta-death. For -beep- sake, at least give me two or three -beep- burning hops after the loss of crystals before you deny the -beep-.
The gameplay really isn’t all that innovative for a platformer, you have your attacks, your ground pounds, etc. I would have liked to have been able to interact with the environment more, but that is something new for the platform in its time. If you like the Kroc series I suppose this is replayable, but the franchise feels short and doesn’t leave you satisfied for long. I think I would get a longer run out of Spyro than Kroc. Everything feels right from a button layout perspective, it’s just the -beep- slippery controls.
As for the bosses… well if the first boss is this dull, I think I’ll have to pass. The quality of the game screams for more time in the microwave, and I am very disappointed in that this game could have been much more than it is. Still, if I was stuck on a deserted island with the choice of Kroc or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, I would take Kroc everytime. I hit this game real hard the last time I gave it a score.
With the new analyzer I have though, it’s a little more friendly to Kroc. I’ll give the game a 60.2/100. Could have been so much more Argo and Fox. So much more.
60.2/100
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