For the longest time, I wasn’t sure what kind of game Crash Team Rumble was, but I also couldn’t be bothered to find out. A competitive online multiplayer game where Crash and his friends compete to earn battle pass XP sounded exactly like something Activision would twist Toys For Bob’s proverbial arm into making, whether the fans were asking for it or not. I’ve got enough live service slop on my plate already. Did they bring back the fruit bazooka and make Crash a third person shooter? Is it in a new Crash Bash? Does it include the best Crash Bandicoot character, Chick Gizzard Lips? I didn’t know, and I wasn't convinced I should care.

However, curiosity got the best of me this weekend. Thanks to a closed beta test for pre-orderers, I finally got a good look at gameplay. In Crash Team Rumble, two teams of four players run around a small map collecting wumpa fruit and depositing it in their respective goals. The map is filled with obstacles, power-ups, and optional platforming challenges that can give your team an advantage. The first team to deposit 2000 wumpa fruit wins. That’s about all there is to it.

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Combat is encouraged, and there’s a few role archetypes or classes that each character fits into. Crash and Coco are Scorers, they’re meant to focus on collecting fruit, since they have the best mobility. Dingodile is a Blocker, and his large health pool and high damage output makes him well equipped to cover goals and fight opponents to stop them from scoring. Boosters, like Cortex, focus on collecting and using relics, a consumable resource that’s used to unlock power-ups and turning on gem pads, which boost how much fruit your team can collect.

Crash Team Rumble is, in the most literal terms, a multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA. While it doesn’t seem to have much in common with League of Legends or Dota 2, its class-based team compositions and match structure are clearly inspired by the MOBA genre. It’s a new take on MOBAs that stays true to the gameplay Crash is known for, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to understand what makes MOBAs so captivating.

A character using the Beach Ball power-up, while N. Brio attacks Coco in Crash Team Rumble

I’m all for games that aspire to reinvent the MOBA format. Despite my many complaints about it, Pokemon Unite remains one of my favorite games, in part because of the way it plays with MOBA conventions in order to deliver a unique experience. Unite is missing a lot of the deep strategy and build complexity that League has, but it maintains the match flow and the team-based gameplay that makes MOBAs so satisfying.

Whether you’re playing League, Dota, Unite, or one of the several Paragon remakes, there’s a certain pace and timing to each match that you play. For the first few minutes, every match looks pretty much the same. Depending on their roles, each player moves to their intended position to fight for control and farm experience. As the match progresses and objectives start to spawn, teams have to make choices about where to go and what to prioritize. Map awareness, coordination, and teamwork will always give you an advantage over pure mechanical skill in a MOBA, which is a big reason why they are so popular.

Crash Team Rumble doesn’t have any of those qualities. Matches are only a few minutes long with no power curve or experience to gain, so all you ever need to do is collect fruit and deposit it. The goals and gem platforms are meant to give teams an objective to fight over, but the best strategy I’ve found is to simply run around collecting fruit and ignoring all the other players, including your teammates. If a Blocker is guarding your base, it’s best to just wander around until they get distracted by another opponent, then walk, make your deposit, and head back out to collect more fruit. There’s no escalation in the match, no reason to join together for team fights, and no way to gain advantages, other than temporary power-ups.

This leads to most matches snowballing in one direction or the other, since there’s no way for a team to catch up once the other starts to pull ahead. League and Pokemon Unite have catch up mechanics that increase how much XP is available to the losing team to help even the playing field, but Crash Team Rumble doesn’t have anything like that. Whoever runs around collecting the most fruit wins, and it seems like those that waste time fighting each other always lose.

I’m not saying Crash Team Rumble is a bad MOBA, because it’s a very different game than League, and even Pokemon Unite. But I think it has adopted the structure of a MOBA without understanding what makes those kinds of games work. Grinding a battle pass and collecting new costumes for Crash and his friends may be enough to hook some players, but the simple gameplay loop of collecting fruit isn’t particularly compelling, especially for a live service game that’s meant to be played frequently.

Rumors are that this was supposed to be Crash 4’s multiplayer mode, which makes a lot of sense, as it doesn’t feel like there’s enough here to warrant a standalone game for $30, not to mention the seasonal battle pass. It doesn’t necessarily need lanes, towers, or a jungle - though Crash is known for running down lanes in a jungle, admittedly - but it needs a stronger focus on teamwork and objectives. I like spinning crates and collecting wumpa fruit as much as the next fella, but I’ve been doing that by myself for 25 years, so I’m going to need a pretty good reason to start doing it with other people - even if Chick Gizzard Lips is in the mix.

Next: Crash Team Rumble Already Looks Like A Trainwreck