What got me interested in Imaginators was that, for the first time in 6 years, there was a Crash Bandicoot game buried inside it. At least that’s what I thought at first before realizing that the entire game included tedious grinding elements popularized by games like Destiny. Yes, for some god awful reason the loot drop system follows the same rare and common trend that we’ve seen come up in plenty of today’s games. Now I wouldn’t really mind this had the game actually been fun.
For starters the level design is absolutely garbage and doesn’t offer anything remotely exciting or memorable. They literally serve as a means of adding drops for players to continually grind their characters and unlock more drops. Boss fights even fair less so with their spamming and repetitive actions that just feel like they’re taking forever to die. There’s no strategy to them other than dodge, and keep spamming attacks. Even controlling Crash isn’t fun, his movements feel rigid and slow, and there’s just no momentum to his jumps or attack moves. A far cry from his PS One days. His inclusion almost feels like an afterthought and is basically a way of Activision telling us that they still own the IP.
Crash feels unresponsive and uninteresting like the majority of this game
The cherry on the pie has to be the amount of micro transaction pop ups the game gets. It basically begs you at times to make you skip the grind and get to the good parts. Except there aren’t any.
Of course there is the charm of owning and collecting those Skylanders figures. But again, when actually using them it just falls apart. The challenge or wonder of exploring a different worlds just isn’t there and overall it’s just a massive let down even if you are into expanding your library of figures.
I remember enjoying my time with Superchargers levels and power ups, or Skwap Force’s unique use of blending two figures. Imaginators on the other hand, ironically, lacks imagination. It can at best be considered as Skylanders filler which sadly happens to be the start of Crash’s return. I sure hope Activision learns from this and doesn’t mess up the Crash remasters.