In a nutshell:
Crash has another bash at throwing his own mini-game party, with plenty of games and four player action ??? even if it is all about quantity rather than quality.

The lowdown:
With every video game mascot worth their salt appearing in a Super Mario Kart clone, a second port of call for jobbing platform stars tends to be a riff on the popular Mario Party games. None ever seems to have got the balance between mini-games and board game action quite right though, with too much emphasis on the board and too few mini-games of any worth. Although there are 40 mini-games to play here, few are any fun and having to travel round a pretend board game to get to them only makes things worse ??? especially if you haven???t got four people to play with.

Most exciting moment:
Not all of the mini-game are rubbish and the one where you have to shoot basketballs into a moving hoop is a lot of fun, as is the one where you have to paddle a canoe and grab fruit at the same time. These also happen to be the games that make the most interesting use of the touch screen, something many of the other games fail to do.

Since you ask:
This isn???t the first time that Crash Bandicoot has been "inspired" by the Mario Party series. The game Crash Bash for the original PlayStation owed a considerable amount to Nintendo???s game, although it wasn???t quite so blatant a copy and included less mini-games.

The bottom line:
Crash just doesn???t seem to be much of a party animal in this limp Mario Party clone.-HARRISON DENT

DO NOT WASTE MONEY ON THIS GAME!!!

AWFUL, you have little control over the characters, the games are dull and frustrating.

would give no stars if had the option!!

Let me first say that this game isn't QUITE so bad as they say but still...i bought this game cos it was crash, and i needed a party game for my DS. this game could have been a whole lot better, and i can see why everyone hates it, but there are some fun parts, and there is some multiplayer fun potential in this game somewhere if you are patient.
you start off with 4 characters to choose from, then you can unlock 4 more after you complete the game, but to be honest it doesn't matter which character you choose as it makes zilch difference. usually in crash multiplayer games choosing different characters will change the difficulty or the storyline, but in this game, whatever character you choose doesn't change anything one bit.
there are 40 minigames in this game, most of them are boring, pointless, and contain no challenge, but if you're lucky, you'll find a handful that are actually quite fun, usually with a sports theme.
motion panel messaging- i never bother!they are just annoying, and i know their purpose is to distract you, but come on! so many times i've lost a minigame because the computer keeps sending them to you in a constant stream, and there isn't even an option to disable them!
completing this game won't take you very long at all- a couple of hours, then you get hard mode that doesn't seem any more challenging than easy mode.
all in all, this game could have had a bit more challenge, but you might be surprised. the first time i played this i hated it after 10 minutes and turned it off, but then when i started again it didn't seem so bad as i first thought and i played it non-stop for days over and over. truthfully though this game is more fun with friends. i play my favourite multiplayer games with my younger cousins who have the game and they love it.
so if you are planning to buy this game, expect a very easy game, but give it a chance, you might find something fun here

Let me begin. Last Crash game was best of all [apart from Twinsanity] and now crash comes to ds. I thought this was gonna be good. Playing through the first level was awful! I quitted twice before I got on with it. And it's lifespan? Let's just say 4 hours wasn't my time. But it had to be. Once you complete, it just unlocks HARD version. Belive me, it is just easy, it just has a name that's all.

Now onto the mini-games. Really when it comes to mini-games, Mario Party really slaps crash in the face! Because Chash has say, 40 mini-games. Big whoop. Mario Party has I think, 70? Crash's mini-games dont' persicly have a nice ring. Mario party infact, does. Not quite surpising, eh? The mini-games, which are rubbish [some a bit good,] seem to only appear on special boards. Take crash hurdles, which I played on that board 50 MILLION TIMES! They keep repeating and repeating, until you get so frustaited, it only gets chucked in a river! Yeah, that was what I was going to do, but lets not get on that. That said, lets rack out the points: 3/5 Mini-games are dull basic, and have stupid names. [Like Crash Pony Racing, which is so stupid].

Now the boards. Frist one, is in the city. By the seaside. With a pirate ship by the dock, [which is the end of the board. Please, who is responible for this garbage!?] And once you finish? Drum roll please. A stinky mini-game. [This game haters:Booo!] It is a boss battle. But is is dull, with the same guy over and over again. And through out the boards you can send measeggs to people. But the computer goes to far and will start to bug you out. The game has 6 boards, but just 5 bosses. Now for the score. 4/5 Because, they are coulerful [made up spelling] basic [which I hate] and wait... There is only one thing I like about the boards.


Charaters are the same. Crash, Coco, Aku Aku [which isn't playable] Dr Nero Cortex, Twana, Pura the cub, fake Crash and Crunch. And the new one, The Viscont. Story: Stupid man [aka:The Viscont] wants a gem. Sends a letter to Coco. Everyone comes. Starts. The more you progress, the more here bores you with things. Story points: 1/5 BORING! NOT A STORY! Stupid name for a race [ World cannible race].


The game it self, including it's rating, weather you should buy it, and if there's something better.

Lif spand: 4 hours if you are a blast at games like this, but longer if you can't play or get around to this game.
Graphics: Top notch. No the the best, but is full of colur.
Gameplay: No that good. But plays like Mario Party.

3/5!

Any Mario party is better than this.
Maybe one Mario party is badder than this.
Wait for: Mario Party 8 [Wii]
Best price: &29.99

Crash twinsanity or Tag Team Racing is better but, This has sunk. And first time Crash was develped by a Japeneese componay. [Hence the party mode and design, Hence the mini-games]. I am going to keep it, just to play some mini-game, and story mode, which is kinda bad. When it comes to party games, Crash just isn't a party animal.

I am a massive crash fan and have all the games and was so excited at this coming out but was so disappointed once it loaded up and i began to find my way around (which is not that easy in itself!). Gone is the multi level play and instead is a clumsy boring game which has made me resale on ebay already at whatever i can get for it.

Please come back orignial designers and give us a game with some playability.

When it comes to Mario Party knockoffs, the most important question is whether or not the minigames are any good. A company can stockpile its game with minigames galore, slap on a familiar mascot, and come up with a unique board game concept to organize everything around it, but no one is going to want to play the thing if the minigame challenges are dull. That's the main problem with Crash Boom Bang!. Although it lets you wander around a game board and participate in various multiplayer challenges as your favorite Crash Bandicoot characters, the game ultimately crashes and burns because the majority of its minigames are lifeless and uninteresting.

Crash Boom Bang! sticks close to the classic Mario Party formula. You can compete against CPU opponents or link multiple DS systems and copies of the game together to compete against your friends in 40 different minigame challenges. Minigames can be played individually or as part of a larger board game-style competition. Even when you're not personally involved in a minigame, you can wager prize points on the outcome and increase your total that way. You can even pester other players by covering their screens with pop-up chat messages. The flow of the board game is highly dependent on how dice rolls and item pickups turn out, but it's usually a fair and tolerable method of doling out the various minigame challenges.

Unfortunately, the minigames themselves tend to be crummy. They're all easy to grasp, and the stylus-oriented controls make them just as easy to participate in, but only a few of them are genuinely fun. Many minigames take simplicity to the dullest extreme, such as those that involve tracing lines, tapping a moving target, or keeping a feather suspended midair. Others are just uninspired rehashes of the same four card monte, memory, and maze tasks that we've seen countless times before. At most, there are four or five noteworthy standouts that beg to be played over and over again. One in particular is the free throw challenge, where you shoot basketballs into a moving hoop by dragging the stylus across the screen. Another good example is the canoe challenge, where you have to paddle a canoe and try to grab floating fruit by alternating strokes with the stylus. These examples work because they're less simple and manage to present familiar concepts in ways that are interesting. Sadly, standouts like these are the exception rather than the rule.

The whole product has a slapped-together feel and only incorporates the Crash Bandicoot license in a cursory fashion. Ultimately though it's the quality of the minigames that makes or breaks a Mario Party wannabe, and the minigames in Crash Boom Bang! are generally lame.