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By Contributing Writer Jimmy Payne Rating: Crappy What do you get when you combine the best aspects of the greatest 3D platform games into one ground-breaking PlayStation game? Whatever it is, it's sure as hell not Croc 2, that's for sure. Control in any video game in a very delicate thing, and it is particularly crucial in action/platform games. Leave it to the developers of Croc at Argonaut to screw up even the most basic control functions. Jumping from platform to platform should be a very careless task, but instead the developers decided to make it un-necessarily difficult. The jumps aren't difficult due to any legitimate gameplay challenge; they're difficult because of the extremely irritating camera. At any given moment, the camera could get caught behind a wall or another object and totally obstruct your view, which usually leads to an untimely death. This happens often enough to drive even the most determined gamers insane. The graphics in Croc 2 are a mixed bag, but more bad things appear in this proverbial bag than good things. At first the graphics seem decent for a PlayStation game, with bright colors and very little background pop- in. The problem is that the graphics are almost identical to the original with little to no improvements made. It makes one wonder if the developers have been studying the Tomb Raider series a little too closely... Croc 2 also causes the PlayStation to reach its all-time high (or low) in cuteness. Besides the general bright and happy feeling of the whole game, Croc seems to find jumping up and down amusing. If I hear Croc giggle when he jumps one more time, I'm going to go insane. Why does Croc find it funny to be jumping over huge gaps in the earth or over lava pits? He could easily die and he’s laughing about it! Is there something wrong with him? The world may never know. The shameless marketing of Gummi Life Savers in Croc 2 might be the only thing worse than Croc’s constant giggling. If you thought it was a pain in the butt to collect meaningless items in other platform games, just wait until you’re forced to collect Gummi Life Savers. What the heck are Gummi Life Savers doing in Croc’s world, anyway? Did the makers of Life Savers think that they could entice me to buy Gummi Life Savers by putting them in Croc 2? If anything, their inclusion in Croc 2 would just make me run from the store screaming every time I saw a bag of Gummi Life Savers because they would bring back painful memories of playing this game. Even if you own and enjoyed the original Croc, you will probably be disappointed by this game anyway because it's just more of the same. Do yourself a favor and stay far, far away from Croc 2.
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