[Throughout this project, I will be handing over to the viewpoints of others for guest posts. This one (including the gifs!) is by Joshua Minsoo Kim, who previously wrote about Sam and Max Hit the Road, The 7th Guest, and Olympic Summer Games]
There’s little enjoyment one will derive from playing Croc: Legend of the Gobbos in 2020. I say this with confidence because it’s hard to imagine how much fun someone could’ve had playing it in 1997. Finding its roots in a 3D Yoshi racing/platforming demo in 1995, Croc exists because of a falling out that Argonaut Software—the British company responsible for the Super FX coprocessor utilized in Star Fox (1993) and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995)—had with Nintendo. In The Minds Behind Adventure Games, Croc co-designer Nic Cusworth claims it was likely the cancellation of Star Fox 2 that caused the rift between Argonaut founder Jez San and Nintendo. Argonaut eventually created their own intellectual property with Croc, which was their own stab at a 3D mascot platformer. Unfortunately, it’s infinitely worse than Super Mario 64.
To compare a game with Super Mario 64 is perhaps unfair, but it’s hard not to do so when the number one reason that Croc fails lies in its clunky controls. Unlike the free-roaming movement of Mario, the crocodile we wield uses tank-like controls, only really able to move quickly in the direction the character is facing. Even Cusworth wishes they were better: “I think if it didn’t have that control scheme it would have been remembered far more fondly,” he says. Part of the reason these controls exist is because the game was developed specifically for the D-pad, largely prior to Sony’s implementation of analog sticks on their controllers. Consideration for analog sticks was consequently nonexistent, Cusworth explains. “It was something that we bolted on in the last few weeks of development.”
In addition to the poor controls, the level design leaves much to be desired. The primary goal for the player is to reach the end of every map by hitting a gong, with the optional choice to collect colorful crystals and the titular Gobbo creatures to access new areas, levels, and world. Such A-to-B linearity in level design proves increasingly bland since assets are reused but reskinned to simply match a world’s theme (“Forest,” “Ice,” “Desert,” or “Castle”). The challenges remain the same as well—inevitable given the limited moveset, which includes little more than a simple jump, ground pound, and tail whip.
There are smaller details that make the game unenjoyable, too. The game relies on a Sonic-like health system in which players collect crystals, lose them all when in contact with an enemy, and die if they touch an enemy without having any crystals. When a player falls into lava or water, they’re not allotted any invincibility frames; if you lose crystals from falling into these terrains, you’ll more than likely die a second after. Less pressing but nevertheless odd is how the game’s enemies don’t provide crystals, and also reappear after their death, encouraging players to simply avoid them if granted the opportunity. Killing bosses is also anticlimactic as neither cutscenes nor death sequences really appear—the screen freezes, reveals stats for one’s collectibles, and the game unceremoniously moves onto the next level.
Given Croc’s shortcomings, the only real way to enjoy the game is to view its flaws as a serious challenge worth overcoming. The game does ramp up in platforming difficulty, so there’s an enjoyment that arises in wanting to beat something that can remain continuously frustrating. The issue, however, is that the difficulty feels artificial since it’s largely a result of ugly controls. This, in conjunction with the banality of the design and look of every level, makes Croc an endlessly tedious affair. It’s certainly of its time—I mean that in the most negative way possible.
