PS: Which level was worse for platinum IYO, Stormy Ascent or Hog Ride (the Crash 3 motorbike level, not one of the Crash 1 hog-riding levels)?
1) hell no lol. Plats are enough
2) Hog Ride was a pain in the ass but I didnt even think it was the hardest Crash 3 plat (once you got the timing down, it came pretty easily). Might be recency bias as the last thing I did, but Future Tense 100% earned being my final boss. Hell of a level. Stormy Ascent was no joke either but the timer was MUCH kinder.
Interesting. I consider Hog Ride the hardest in the entire trilogy, yes, even harder than Stormy Ascent (however, Hog Ride isn't even close to the hardest if you're settling for just gold). Also, Hog Ride was actually a frustration-fest where the failures didn't feel fair at all; Stormy Ascent was at least an actual test of skill. I spent a similar amount of time on both (about 8 hours each - by comparison, no other levels besides these two took me more than 2hrs or so, not even The Lab or The High Road), although Stormy Ascent was a matter of "the first time I made it to the end in time trial, I got platinum".
I didn't find Future Tense too bad. Tight time requirement for sure (when I got the platinum, I literally hit the required time exactly), but aside from that it wasn't too bad.
I found that first time I actually survived, I got plat was true for most of my time with all three games, because I went balls to the wall constantly,
This was especially true of Crash 1 and probably why it ended up being my favorite. I didnt like needing to spam slide jumps and hold down a sprint button to make a good time. I really enjoyed the straight up no nonsense platforming murderers row that was Crash 1.
I think I got plat-first-time on about 60% of levels, with almost all of the remainder being golds at first. There's exactly two levels I ever got sapphire on - Turtle Woods, where I tried the time trial before getting the Sprint Shoes so wasn't likely to get gold; and Hot Coco, which was a legit "I didn't do well enough for gold the first time" (though I likely would've reset that attempt if I knew what the time requirements were).
My biggest rage moment was when I finally got to the end of The High Road, and missed platinum by less than a second. Fortunately, within a few more attempts I got the platinum - it's one of those levels that's actually not that bad once you get used to it, even though it seems horribly difficult at first. ---
