Raku Okoshu sighed because it's still the weekend and he is glued inside his tiny room in Tokyo, stuck between being a broke college student and being a complete idiot whenever ZAGE releases a new game. He doesn't really have enough money to go outside like his richer friends—no arcade, no fancy food, no wasting cash—so most of the time he's supposed to stay home and "be responsible." But when it comes to ZAGE games, responsibility disappears. He bought the new release anyway, like his hands moved by themselves, and now he's sitting in front of his TV playing Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back with the kind of frustration that makes his forehead sweat.
And the worst part is, it's not a small frustration. The game is hard—stupid hard—like it's designed to punish him personally. Right now he's already on Stage 16: Cold Hard Crash, and he's still stuck here even after almost three hours. Raku isn't even that good at platforming games, he knows it. His timing gets shaky when he's nervous, he becomes greedy for crates, and then one tiny mistake turns into death. But he loves the challenge, and because of that he refuses to quit, even when he's already tired and his thumbs are sore.
Raku smacked his own face and forced himself to breathe. "One more time!" he shouted, half-mad, half-determined. "If I give up on just this, then I'll never work at ZAGE in the future!" That dream isn't a joke to him. He's studying hard, trying to improve, trying to think like a developer, and even playing ZAGE games seriously like it's training—because he believes if he can survive their games, he can survive their workplace. So he doesn't stop. He doesn't back down. If something blocks him, he keeps smashing his head into it until it breaks—or until he does.
Raku grinned, then restarted from the early part again, and this is exactly what makes this game so hard: he can't ever let his guard down even for one second. Because Crash isn't the kind of game where you only need to focus on the "hard part." No, the moment Raku gets stuck in one area—usually some platforming section filled with TNT and tight jumps—and he fails it because he's doing it too hastily, the game punishes him again in the most humiliating way: he dies on the easy area before that. The area he already cleared ten times. The area he can pass while half asleep. But because his mind is already angry, his hands start moving sloppy, and suddenly he slips on the simple jump, or he spins too early, or he clips one stupid box and the TNT chain explodes like fireworks and he just dies like an idiot.
And that is what makes him want to swear the most, because it's not even the "hard part" that kills him anymore, it's his own impatience. He keeps thinking, "I already passed this, I already know this," and then BAM—Crash falls, or gets blown up, and Raku just stares at the screen like it personally insulted his bloodline. It's so annoying because it feels like
The game is teaching him one cruel lesson: if you rush, you die. If you get greedy, you die. If you get emotional, you die. And the more he dies, the more emotional he gets, which makes him die even more.
"Not this time," Raku muttered, inhaling deeply like he's about to swim underwater. He wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts and forced himself to slow down. Okay. Carefully. No greed. No panic. He moved through the stage step by step, challenge after challenge—jump spacing, tiny platforms, the pit with those green TNT crates that look harmless until you touch one and the whole area becomes a bomb. Then the seals—those annoying seals that pop out at the worst timing, like they're waiting specifically for him to jump. Raku kept his eyes locked, sliding when he needed to, stopping when he needed to, even letting a few crates go just so he doesn't mess up the rhythm.
And after what felt like forever, he finally reached that "hell" section again—the ice corridor filled with TNT, where everything is slippery and the timing feels one frame tighter than it should be. The ice makes his movement feel like he's on soap, the TNT makes every mistake fatal, and the camera makes it worse because sometimes it hides the danger until the last second. Raku's jaw tightened. He tried. He died. He tried again. He died again. Again and again and again, like the game is farming his anger for energy.
But finally—after a couple more tries—he did it. He passed the arena. "YEAGH!!!" he shouted so loud his throat hurt, even though the stage wasn't finished yet. He was smiling like he just won a championship, then he immediately forced himself to calm down. "Okay… okay… don't celebrate too early," he whispered, because Crash loves to kill you right after you feel proud.
So he moved forward carefully, trying to keep the same clean pace… and then it happened. One tiny mistake. The ice hedgehog. He saw it late, his slide input was not quick enough, he hesitated for half a second, and Crash touched it.
Dead.
Raku froze for a second, then exploded again. "AAAAAH!" he shouted, the kind of shout that isn't even words anymore—just pure rage that comes out of the body when the brain can't handle it.
"DAMNNN!! DAMN!!" He stared at the screen in disbelief because that was his last life. Last life. Meaning he needs to start from early again, from the safe part that he already passed a hundred times, the part that now feels like an insult because he knows the real hell is waiting later. "When I passed the hard shit I die to some ice-ass hedgehog?!" he yelled, voice cracking. "Damn you, Crash—are you made from fucking paper?! Why just a simple touch makes you die like that?!" He groaned, "Even I could 1v1 that hedgehog and win—damn!"
He threw the controller onto the futon—not hard enough to break it, because he's not stupid and he's not rich—but hard enough to make the plastic clack loud. He rubbed his face with both hands, palms dragging down like he's trying to wipe the anger off his skin. His chest went up and down fast, like he actually ran a marathon, and his eyes were still wide because he could still see the moment he hesitated. Half a second. That's all it took. Half a second of "maybe I can slide late" and the game just executed him.
Raku lay down for a bit, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm himself before he does something even dumber. The fan kept spinning, warm air hitting his face like it didn't care. He could hear the ZEPS-3 still running, that quiet confident hum, and it almost pissed him off more because the console is smooth and fast and ready to restart immediately, like it's saying, go on, try again, suffer again. He clenched his teeth. "Okay… okay… breathe…" he muttered, then swore again under his breath because even breathing felt like a challenge right now.
He sat back up slowly, looked at the screen again, and the worst part is he didn't even want to quit. He wanted revenge. He wanted to beat the stage not because of fun anymore, but because his pride got stabbed. "One more," he whispered, then immediately corrected himself like a liar, "no—ten more. I don't care."
That's Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. The game is really hard, and it's mainly because in this world Zaboru enhanced the difficulty—like he took something that was already cruel in his previous life and made it even more demanding. And because of that, Crash Bandicoot in ZEPS-3 era is already known as the "hard platform" king. Crash Bandicoot 1 on ZEPS-3 is already famous for making players rage, so now Crash 2 feels like it's doing the same thing but with more tricks, more traps, and more moments that make you scream at a cartoon bandicoot like it's a real enemy.
But players love it, because in this sequel there are so many new things and new types of gameplay, and it still has the same DNA—tight corridors, crate patterns that tempt you to get greedy, enemies placed exactly where your brain wants to jump, and that constant pressure of "one mistake and you're gone"—but now it gives you more tools and more reasons to come back.
A huge part of it is the new gameplay flow: the slide, the body slam, and the higher-jump combo make Crash feel more expressive. You're not just hopping from platform to platform anymore—you're learning a movement language. The game starts simple, then it quietly asks more of you: timing slides under enemies, chaining momentum, using slam to break certain crates, and reading the stage like a puzzle. And because the game is built around crystals and warp rooms, you're not stuck in one straight line forever; you can bounce around stages, retry stuff, chase a gem, then take a break and do something totally different, which makes the difficulty feel addictive instead of exhausting.
The level design is the real hook, because Crash 2 keeps surprising you while still feeling "Crash." One moment you're doing classic platforming in ruins or jungles, then suddenly you're running toward the camera with a boulder or snowballs chasing you, and your hands are sweating because the path is full of mines and fences and you can barely react fast enough. Then it throws you into sewer stages where timing matters more than speed, or snow levels where your jump spacing changes, or those jet ski stages where the gameplay completely shifts, or the absurd polar bear rides—adorable but secretly brutal—because the spacing is tight and the camera and speed make everything feel like a trap. It's a variety, but not a random variety—it's all still built around the same core idea: you're navigating danger in a narrow space where the game dares you to stay clean and keep your rhythm.
And yeah, it's hard—sometimes hilariously hard—but that's why people love it. Crash 2 isn't hard in a "cheap" way most of the time; it's hard because it demands consistency. The crate/gem structure makes you replay stages with a totally different mindset, and the secret exits and hidden routes make the game feel deeper than it looks, like there's always one more thing you missed. Even when you get mad, you still feel the pull to go again—because when you finally clear a nasty section perfectly, it gives that pure satisfaction: you didn't just survive, you mastered it. That mix—polished controls, smarter pacing, wild variety, and relentless "prove it" difficulty—is exactly why Cortex Strikes Back shows how a challenging platform game should work.
To be continue
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