You see, Crash of the Titans is a parody of Clash of the Titans, and well…okay, I'm all out of witty today trying to come up with a clever segue to transition from an opening paragraph to the heart and soul of the preview. Isn't it enough just to praise the fact that Crash is back in an honest to goodness platformer? With Crash of the Titans, the lovable orange bandicoot is back, and proves that if someone isn't picking on someone their own size, it's time to even the odds and fight back.

Not much of the story of Crash of the Titans was given to us in the preview, other than the fact that Crash is the hero and Cortex is up to his evil schemes, stealing a page from Doctor Evil's playbook and attempting to pilfer all of the mojo. Why? Eh, beats us, but at least it gives us someone to beat up on, and that is all that matters to us.

Crash of the Titans harkens back to the old days of Crash Bandicoot, when it was all about the marsupial running around and jumping. Crash of the Titans is very much split into two distinct parts: the platforming and the fighting. During the preview there were numerous chances to practice the platforming, as we were often needed to leap up over blocks that protruded from a mountain, climb up barely there handholds on the face of cliffs, jump across a gap, double jump to the next safe location, or helicopter spin a greater distance for those really long jumps. The camera system always seemed to be in the right place, meaning that if you failed to complete your jump you only had yourself to blame. The platforming wasn't too difficult early on, though there were some points where we died, namely the first instance where we were supposed to helicopter spin between two platforms and couldn't figure out how to do it (you double jump and then keep tapping the A-button to have Crash slowly spin down into a descent).

Equally important to Crash of the Titans seems to be the fighting and combat aspect of the game, as there was a bunch of fighting, and one of the key features of the game is tied directly into the combat portion of the game. During combat Crash has a staple of combo punch flourishes and head-butting jumps, and though they can handle the scientist with ease, when it comes to the big animals, you better make sure you have a helping hand. You see, the draw and gimmick of Crash of the Titans is that Crash now has the ability to place a mind-warping mask on certain enemies and gains the ability to ride and control them, ordering them around to punch and deliver special moves. In order to gain control you have to dizzy the enemy, and then when the B-button icon comes on, simply hit it once to automatically make Crash jump up and take control.

While in control of the beasts you can use the X-button for standard attacks and the Y-button for a bit of a lunging attack (just like Crash), but when it comes to the animals they can also use an area effect attack, such as one creature that shoots rock spikes up from the ground to stab nearby foes. The animals often play into the puzzle aspects of the game, such as you have to ride a mammoth in order to knock a wall down that is blocking your path or using a magic shooting cheetah creature to shoot projectiles at objects you can't reach normally by yourself. It was amazingly quite simple and fun to put an animal under your control, use them for your purposes, fight another animal, and then switch between them when the other is spent. Crash loses the ability to command the animals after switching between them, using all of their move energy, or depleting their health down to nothing.

Graphically the game is very cartoony, such as the Taz the Tasmanian devil appearance that Crash has seemed to adopted, to the overly big-headed munchkin scientists running around with vials of green junk in their hands. The environments are simply structured, but they still manage to impress with their visual clarity and bright colors that dazzle and transcends the dreary haze many games have found themselves falling under in terms of graphical styling. The characters and enemies were also cleverly constructed and Crash had some very nice animation as he ran about, jump, fought, and did all the other moves in his repertoire. Sound work also seemed good, and quite hilarious we might add, as we found ourselves laughing quite a lot at the small scientists who we often overheard jabbering to each other in a mock Professor Frink/Jerry Lewis impersonation.