Crash Bandicoot may not have reached the same console-mascot status that Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog have enjoyed for years, but he's apparently popular enough to have spawned a whole slew of genre-spanning and system-hopping sequels over the years. The latest in the series is Crash of the Titans, a new action game for the Wii, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, and handhelds that gets the spindly limbed critter back to his spin-attacking, platforming roots. Sierra showed off an early-in-development build of the game on the Wii recently to give us an idea of how it's shaping up.

　　Crash will turn Neo-Cortex's own minions against him in his latest game, Crash of the Titans.

　　If you're wondering why Crash is getting all heroic, well, don't--let it suffice that the dastardly old Neo-Cortex is up to his old world-conquering shenanigans again. But luckily, Crash has a number of new abilities to use across the game's 20 levels in his fight against the bad guys. There will be a few new platforming moves, such as a wall-run that lets you quickly move along ledges, and old favorites like the trusty spin attack are still here as well (along with an aerial variant that lets you float over chasms).

　　The big new addition to the gameplay, though, is "enemy-jacking." This feature works about as similarly to Grand Theft Auto's carjacking ability as it sounds like it does. When you approach any of the game's 15 primary enemies, you can engage in some light fisticuffs to pop up a meter over their heads that indicates how dazed they are (though this meter will deplete if you pause in your attack). Once the baddie is fully stunned, you can jump on top of it and take full charge; you can control its movement directly and use all of the same special abilities it was previously using on you. Sometimes you'll have to use a key enemy to solve a puzzle or bypass an obstacle, but other times the game will prevent you from taking a jacked enemy into a new area, so there will be some checks and balances to this system. Occasionally your job will be made easier, though: You'll find a power-up that gives you one "free jack," and you'll also be able to unlock enemy costumes that give you constant access to the type of enemy whose costume you have on.

　　Crash of the Titans will also feature a two-player cooperative mode, whereby a second player can pick up a controller and drop in and out of the action at any time. (Player two will simply get a different-colored Crash, not a new character.) From here, the co-op action works about like you'd expect, except for one twist the development team added to make the jumping puzzles a little more cooperative. When you approach a series of chasms, for instance, the two Crashes will grab onto each other and jump across each pit as one unit, and each player will have to perform every other jump, in alternating fashion, to make it all the way across. This is basically a controller version of leapfrog, so it will require precise timing between both players to pull it off.

　　Look for the Wii version to make extensive use of motion controls when you take over most enemies.

　　While all the versions of the game are identical in terms of basic content, the developers are working to make each one distinctive in some way. As you'd expect, the Wii version will feature a lot of motion control. The enemies' special moves in particular will require particular remote gestures to pull off (and each gesture will be indicated by an onscreen cue). You'll also use the remote to aim and fire projectiles for enemies with ranged abilities. In addition to implementing the expected graphical niceties on the Xbox 360 game, the designers say they're putting some real thought into the achievements, so you won't see a handful of lazy achievements awarding points every time you finish the game on a new difficulty level. Instead, the points will be keyed into specific and hard-to-do actions and feats within the game, which ought to give some nice extra replay value.

　　It looks like a lot of care is going into this latest Crash game; the developers' enthusiasm for the property is obvious on speaking with them, and it's said that the script writer penned more than 7,000 lines of recorded dialogue, such that no character has fewer than nine unique lines for a given situation. We'll update you on the game's progress in the coming months to let you know whether or not all this attention to detail will pay off.