Picked up this game and two analog controllers (had to shop
around for the controllers around these parts ;) yesterday, and I've
finally found a game that even my fiancee will play...!

The storyline is typical of a platform game. X lived peacefully in
happyland until Y came by and kicked everyone's asses. Z got
angry/hurt/confused by this and decided to go beat Y senseless to save
X.

The difference here is the storyline is hilarious. I was laughing
before I even put the game in from reading the instruction manual.
When I got to the explanation of "the Year of the Soupspoon" I almost
hurt myself laughing. 

Enough about the storyline. How about the friggin' game?

You're all going to hate this and probably start another system war
but I'm gonna draw a few comparisons between Mario 64 and Croc here.
It makes it much easier to explain how this game works, because we've
all (hopefully) seen Mario 64. You'll live. It won't hurt a bit, I
promise ;)

Graphics: Take Mario 64's framerate, take away its anti-aliasing, and
add a butt-load of detailed textures and environments, and you've got
Croc. I actually think the framerate is a bit snappier than M64's. All
the blurring effects done by the N64 are obviously not present, but to
be honest it doesn't detract from the visuals much at all. No
anti-aliasing, no mip-mapping, and no bilinear filtering, but the game
still looks damned good. Croc, the main character, is vividly animated
with all sorts of different movements, and all the enemy characters
are animated equally well.

Sound: This game levels a flamethrower in Mario 64's direction and
lets loose. The music is substantially better, and actually fits the
area your character is wandering around in. As for sounds, everything
that happens in the game has a noise associated with it, from Croc
walking around (pitter-patter) to his attacks ("Kersplat!" "Kerpow!")
to the enemies wandering all over, nothing is silent. It's actually
pretty damned funny when the little red guys at the beginning notice
you. They laugh like a maniacal dwarf and start running at you. Noises
echo in caves, and get muffled underwater. Very good job.

Control: Croc "handles" differently than Mario does. Unlike Mario 64,
where you move the analog stick in the direction he wants to go, you
use the left stick on the Sony analog controller to move Croc and the
right stick to control the camera. But, you don't move the stick where
you want the little guy to go. It isn't as intuitive, but does offer
better control over your character in the long run; you move the stick
left and right to make him turn, and up and down to make him run
forward or backward. The stick is _not_ relative to the camera, it is
relative to the character. Croc's moves are easily executed. He has an
incredibly convenient 180-degree flip. If he's running, he does a
flip. If he's standing still, he pulls an about-face. If he's
swimming, he quickly turns himself around.

Fun: It's strange to be playing a game with my fiancee in the room
without hearing "that's stupid," "how cheesy," or "this game is
annoying." Instead I kept hearing things like "oh, he's so cute,"
"*giggle*," and "I should try this." She's right. Not very much is
capable of making this 19 year old guy proclaim something is cute, but
the antics of both Croc and his enemies are just adorable. That adds a
lot to the game, and makes it a blast to play.

Annoyances: All the good stuff having been said, there are a few
gripes I have with the game. None of them are terrible, just
annoying...

Life and death - All over the game world are these little crystal
things, which Croc can collect. He starts with no crystals, and builds
his collection from there. Players of Sonic the Hedgehog remember how
the rings thing worked. If Croc gets hit, he drops all his crystals
and they get scattered about. Annoyingly, even if he has 99 of the
things, only about fifteen get thrown out. If he gets hit when he has
no crystals, he drops dead. On the plus side you do get put right back
into the area you died in (unless you're out of lives, then you have
to start the level over). It's just a tad annoying -- it's quite
possible to go through three lives in less than ten seconds if you
rush through an area (I know, it happened >%-).

Load time - First off, the load time isn't bad. It's fairly good. It's
just a bit annoying. Each level is sectioned off into rooms, or areas,
connected by doors. Doors open when you get near them, and if you want
into them far enough you end up in the next area. Now, on a side note,
the music in the game isn't MIDI, and it isn't in any audio tracks on
the disc (there's just one track), so it's streamed off the CD as the
game runs. Of course, since the game has to load each area, the music
stops. This transition typically takes less than three seconds, but it
does get a tad annoying.

Control - With the analog stick, it'll take you a bit to get used to
controlling Croc. After you get used to it, he's a breeze to control.
Until then, be prepared for the game to kick your ass.

Difficulty - Now I'm gonna sound like an idiot because I just said
above the game will kick your ass until you get the controls down. I
played the game for less than three hours yesterday and already I'm at
level 2-3 (there's four islands, each having six normal levels, two
secret levels, and two boss levels). The first island is completely
finished (all secrets, boss levels, and standard levels). The game
isn't incredibly difficult. Maybe it's not as difficult because it
doesn't use Mario brand(tm) cheese tactics to kill you quickly. As
long as you stop and think about something before you go do it,
typically you'll survive. You just don't get the impression that the
game is unfairly cheating you. If you die, it's because you did
something stupid.

Regenerating enemies - Admittedly Mario 64 did something like this; in
Mario 64 if you killed an enemy, wandered far away enough from his
general area, and came back, he'd probably be hopping around ready to
kill you again. If you stayed in his area after killing him, though,
he wouldn't come back. In Croc, though, enemies regenerate both after
you've wandered out of an area and come back, and after a certain
amount of time even if you stick around. I imagine that since,
according to the story, the big bad guy that did all this is magical
in nature, and could probably make enemies reappear, it's more
annoying than neat. Imagine barely killing some enemy because of a
screwup, and you lost all your crystal things. Just as you're trying
to get to some mysteriously floating pedistal (see below ;) to get
more crystals, the dang enemy zots back into existence, touches you,
and kills you. Ugh.

Floating stuff - I know this isn't specific to Croc; this applies to
all platform games, but _why_ in this era of 3D platform games where
these machines can churn out hundreds of thousands of polys per second
do they continue to put in mysteriously floating things around in
platform games? Just hanging there, not supported by anything. You can
even stand on them, jump on them, stomp on them, etc., and unless it's
a collapsing object (they do exist in Croc), it won't go anywhere. Why
not put it on a post or something?!?! Oh well... then there's that
whole bottomless pit thing, but I'll leave that one alone ;)

On the whole, this game rocks. It is a lot more fun to play than Mario
64 was. The secret areas are enough incentive to play through the
levels again (if you rescue all six of Croc's adorable, fuzzy pals in
each level you get the secret levels). It's definately worth its
purchase price (since it's never above $49.95, right? ;) If you spend
over $50 for a PlayStation game, you need to beat the hoser who set
the price that high. Well don't just sit there...go get it!