Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (2020)

I am uninstalling the game and calling it quits at 102/106% for the sake of my own sanity before I try to get all of the platinum relics. I'm lowering my score a star out of pure spite. My judgement is going to be taking the completionist experience into consideration because ignoring that experience will feel like ignoring how the game is designed. If we are just talking about seeing the credits, this probably would have been my favorite crash game, so it's a shame I didn't enjoy the experience as a whole.

• You have most of your abilities from the beginning so movement feels nice.
• The accessibility options are nice. I like the enhanced shadows, subtitles, and the addition of modern mode.
• A large variety of unlockable skins.
• There's a lot of variety in the level themes and aesthetics.
• The new masks add some variety, but they're locked to specific level sections so they don't feel as substantial as the power-ups in crash 3. The Cortex, Tawna, and Dingodile levels are a nice addition for variety too.
• The camera is straight garbo. It's fine for 90% of the game, but there's certain sections where it doesn't transition fast enough and it makes the next section harder.
• This game reminds me a bit of Mighty No 9 in that they're both inspired by retro games, but somehow adds way more tedium than their inspiration. The increased volume and focus on getting collectables and making getting the collectables way harder to get really soured me on the game starting as early as level 3. Getting the perfect runs is pretty miserable because of how hard it is to find all of the boxes in a level. They require a level of familiarity with a level that goes beyond playing a level a lot. Collecting wumpa fruit feels like way more of a chore since they're tied to gems instead of being nice things to get for 1-ups. The levels are incredibly long, so making a single mistake and having to restart the level from the beginning is soul-crushing. It doesn't help that it feels like you are waiting around a lot if you have to retry often. The levels load slow because they start with an animation that doesn't really add to the experience and you have to watch the death animations. All of these small things add up to significant amounts of time. There are so many "point-of-no-return" sections in every level, it's kind of ridiculous. They make the game even more tedious to complete since you can't backtrack in case you missed something. You get one opportunity and if you miss it, then you have to reset. A lot of grinding sections, character switching moments, and single-use boxes are littered throughout the game and they feel more like obstacles than things included for the sake of being fun.
• The repetition is pretty insane. There's a few levels that essentially remix half of a level you've already played before. So if you play the levels normally + play the inverted versions, it feels like playing the same level 4 times at a minimum.
• The mechanics are pretty frustrating. I'm not a fan of how Crash/Coco move in mid-air when they're above ice. I can handle sliding on ice, but why lose control when jumping from a neutral position just because you're over ice? Aku-aku feels pretty unimportant. He barely shows up in the story and this is the most insignificant he's felt in terms of gameplay. There are so many ways to die instantly, so a lot of the time it doesn't matter whether you have him or not. In the old games, he was a safety net, but in this one, he's just there. The fact that he doesn't persist between levels doesn't help this either. The targeting system is so bad. Why target the enemy that's in my face when I can just launch something into a pile of boxes instead? And sometimes, launching an enemy into a box on accident can actively hinder your progress too.

I was very excited to play Crash 4 after loving the original trilogy. It started off strong! The graphics are gorgeous, music is great, controls are solid and the worlds are beautifully designed. The mask mechanics are very cool, but weirdly underutilized and relatively simplistic. It's not until the very end of the game where you combine their powers at the same time. It made for quite interesting gameplay, but I'll touch on that later.

I found pretty much everything else to be dreadful. The levels are so long, checkpoint system is random, there's entirely too many boxes and the bosses are terrible. So much of this game feels cheap and frustrating. Cheaply hidden boxes, cheap deaths caused by poor field of views and camera angles, the non-Crash characters are lazy and uninteresting. Towards the late game, the difficulty ramps up insanely hard. I finally threw in the towel after 9 miserable hours on the second-to-last level. There is a section that chains mask abilities which, while impressive, is so frustrating it's ridiculous. The level of precision required is wild. I died 91 times before I un-installed the game.

I enjoyed the game slightly more once I stopped caring about boxes, which is honestly and awful thing to have to say about a Crash game.

Maybe I just suck, but I had had enough. I was extremely disappointed in this game.

Don't get me wrong, this is a fine game. The controls are excellent, the environments and graphics generally are fun and cartoony and the characters are fun as always (albeit not quite as fun as in a game like Twinsanity). Frankly, for all this game's flaws I'm glad that we have a new Crash game at all.

However, the main problem is that this game is an utter slog to get through. The levels are extremely long and beg to be divided up and 200+ boxes per stage is average for this game. You can forget about 100% the game too since in order to do so you need to find ridiculously hidden boxes that you'd never naturally come across and beat the same stages multiple times.

This game's difficulty makes it a slog too. I feel like it has more in common with modern ragecore games like Celeste than a Crash game but without the number of checkpoints required to make that viable. There are also just a lot of places in this game where you will unavoidably die unless you know what's coming or because of poor game design.

In conclusion, I think that this is another Crash game that tried to deviate from the established Naughy Dog formula and got burnt in the process, albeit with far less disastrous results than with Twinsanity or the Wrath of Cortex. Heck, if you don't care about collecting all the boxes you'll probably have a lot of fun with this game.

I'm kinda shocked how good this game is. I knew it was well-liked but still. It looks phenomenal (even the Switch version), has tight controls and overall delivers very high-quality platformer gameplay.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the difficulty. For such a child-friendly presentation, it sure doesn't pull any punches. I'm up for it though. Nice to have short challenging levels with great controls.

A direct continuation of the original trilogy, Crash 4 picks up where the 3rd game left off and starts with Uka Uka breaking Cortex and N. Tropy out of their time prison through a dimensional rift. They discover that this rift links their universe to the multiverse, and devise a plan to conquer all dimensions.

The gameplay is similar to the original trilogy, with the addition of the quantum masks.

• Lani-Loli: grants the ability to phase objects in and out of existence
• Akano: using this mask Crash can perform a Dark Matter tornado spin, which can be used to glide from platform to platform.
• Kupuna-Wa: this mask can be used to slow down time
• Ika-Ika: this power allows Crash to flip the direction of gravity

I was not expecting this game to be so difficult. It was actually refreshing, but I can see how fans of Crash 2 & 3 might be disappointed at how hard the game is.

The bosses were fun, although I felt the last one was a bit too easy in comparison to the level preceding it.

This is my new favorite entry in the franchise.

I feel like it out of old the N64 era platformers, only Mario was able to evolve with the times and still be relevant. Crash and sonic haven't really found their footing. They keep experimenting and try to modernize their games and keep failing at it.

That's what crash 4 feels like, another attempt to bring the poor Bandicoot to modern times and make him relevant. And I don't think it succeeded.

Crash 4 feels stuck on a fence and doesn't really know which way it wants to go. On one side it wants to be old school crash, it knows that if it tries some new things it, it will lose the nostalgia audience. On the other hand, it wants to try new things, it wants to let go of old crash and be crash 2.0! It knows that old school crash is just not enough to keep modern audiences engaged. So it is stuck in the middle place where it didn't do anything good enough and it is a forgettable game

After coming from hifi rush where the game has a clear vision, crash 4 dissonance is more apparent. It seems like the developers don't know what made crash fun to begin with, so they fish up everything to 11.

Oh crash had boxes! Let's add more boxes, the norm is for levels to have 100+ boxes to collect, 200+ is simply average. This is insane compared to the 50 to 70 boxes that we had to collect per level on the old ones

Old crash fruit! Let's add more fruit! But they don't give lives anymore so let's make them unlock gems at the end of the level. But this is a weird decision because you already need to collect all the boxes to get the gems and by doing so you adjust have most of the fruit so it doesn't feel like it adds much to the table.

Old crash had gems and tropics Well let's add 6 gems per level now! And then do inverse levels! And secret relics, oh secret challenge levels. It feels like the developers went with the idea of the add more something good is out to come out of it.

The level design is weird, it doesn't feel cohesive, enemies are not memorable, a lot of the entire feel like the same enemy but with a different skin.

I like to describe platformers as a dance that you need to learn. If you hit all the notes at the right tempo, you are going to be a matter saver, and that's half the fun on platformers. On crash there is none of that, the levels feels off to play, there is no rhyme or reason for enemy placement or platform placement other than a developer going : this looks empty, let's their something in here . Levels feel frustrating pretending to be hard.

Old crash levels could be challenging but they felt like they were scientifically design, each platform was just the right distance from each other, each event at the right place, and executing that difficult section was exhilarating. On crash 4 , it feels frustrating, that perfect placement of level elements is nowhere to be seen, someone there things creating a level of just throwing game components together and that's it, no one ever stopped to ask the question : are these levels fun? I just finished the game and I can't remember 95% of the levels, I have posted the originals several years ago and I remember more of those.

The new mask abilities and the new characters are probably the highlight, and I feel the game would have been better of focusing on these.

Unfortunately, none of these things feel fully utilized, the mask sections are very short and they don't do interesting stuff with some of the abilities. The abilities are fairly standard asking games, so we know the short of cool levels there could create, but like I said, crash 4 didn't want to be too different from old crash so it doesn't push these abilities as much as it should, it gives you a little taste and they go away.

The levels with the new characters are also a disappointment. There is only a handful of them and 90% of them you pay a small section with the new characters and the you such back to one of the Bandicoot a to replay a more difficult version of a level you already played.

I really wish I could have played more with tawna.

But again these new characters abilities don't do anything too interesting with the existing levels, your age left to rubber what could be done if entire sections of the game were dedicated to them and really make use of these abilities.

To make matters worst the game likes to play with the perspective of the camera and it really throws off perspective, making already frustrating sections even more frustrating.

Then reach the last few areas of the game and I read ready to call it quits. The game up to this point has not done anything interesting with the core abilities or new abilities, but decides to their everything they can at the player on the last few levels making the most frustrating and unfun experience I have had in a while. It tries to use the mask abilities in interesting ways, but since it has no lead to to this point, you have no idea what to do with this information, the game also decided that this is the perfect time to test your reaction time and you have no time to think on how to use these abilities you just need to "gogogo" so a part of the game that could have probably been one of the best, shoots itself on the foot by trying to make up on everything it was lacking at this point. There is no time to really see how these abilities could work together, your are just passing buttons on the hope to make it to the next perform and get a checkpoint so you don't have too so this stupid section ever again.

And let's talk about checkpoints, if someone randomly threw the levels together, they gave somebody else the job of putting the checkpoints randomly, I wouldn't be surprised if they did blindfolded.

They have no rhyme or reason, a good checkpoint would be right after a difficult section, maybe at the beginning of a difficult section, they would be relatively evenly spaced out. There is none of that here, there are checkpoints after really easy sections, then there is a difficult section with no checkpoint on sight, and then the next checkpoint is miles away, any wrong move (remember the terrible perspective?) And now you have to do all this all over again.

The characters, while pretty and nicely animated, are extremely boring. I can't really think of who to recommend this game to, there are so many more interesting and fun platformers out there. Heck, even if you are looking for difficult platformers , this is not it, this is just frustrating. I really hope it e see a new crash that it tries to be its own thing: either full old school crash or a brand new crash rather than being in this lukewarm state. At least if it tries something new and it crashes, it would be memorable

I grew up with Crash and really love this character, but when I revisited the PS1 games via the N. Sane Trilogy a couple of years back, I realized that those games were actually kind of... bad. They aged like milk, with Warped being the only one that I would consider a "good" game today. It is unfortunate because Crash, his world, and the other characters in it are really cool. And his 3D platforming style is kind of unique when compared to other big names in the genre.

Thankfully, Crash 4 is actually a great game! They truly made the best out of the classic Crash formula. He moves beautifully, which was not the case in the N. Sane Trilogy at all, where controlling him just felt wrong and was simply frustrating. Here, I feel in complete control, which is essential with how difficult these levels get. The level design is constantly engaging and leagues above the primitive designs of the Trilogy. The environments are super varied and pretty to look at, and the animation is hilarious.

The two hot topics surrounding this game are the difficulty and the insane amount of challenges to beat in order to get 100% completion. Now, I really like the difficulty, and the way it is handled is a major reason why I think this game is so good. If you simply want to beat it, the difficulty isn't too crazy in my opinion; anyone with some 3D platformer experience should be able to do it. But if you're trying to get all crates and collect gems, you're in for a beating. Personally, I tried to get as many gems as I could on my first go at each level to get some sweet skins, but now that finished all levels I'd rather move on. Although I might go back to collect some gems from time to time.

"WHOA!" This game is awesome.

Is Crash 4 better than Crash 2? Does it match the hype after so many years without a "good" Crash game? Are the same old mechanics there that we know and love while also introducing new challenges without straying too far from the path of what makes a Crash game great?

The answer to all of these, as far as this player is concerned, is yes. Well alright, maybe it's not "better" than Crash 2 if we're including the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia and how childhood can make something seem better than it is, but in all other cases, Crash 4 shines beautifully.

The story

As kooky and wonderful as ever, Crash is set on an interdimensional adventure where he needs to stop a veritable rogues gallery from taking over time and space. All the favourites are here, including N.Gin, Brio, N. Tropy and of course Cortex.

The gameplay

Fun and challenge collide across diverse maps and levels, with awesome chases, set pieces, and of course the increasingly frustrating but just-gotta-collect-em-all hidden gems. The familiar levels are here like running towards the screen as you escape dinosaurs or gigantic evil spirits, but also new powers come in the form of 4 masks, giving Crash superpowers to get through difficult tasks. There are also new playable characters that spice things up and fit really well into the time-travel/dimension-hopping theme of the story.

The conclusion

It's not complicated: Crash is a beloved platform hero and Crash 4 brings the series back on track in fine form. It's a game that shines for all ages.

What an amazing sequel. I can honestly say this is probably the best in the franchise. The platforming was creative and diverse, and the gameplay was actually fun. There definitely were parts that were a tad hard and unfair, but at the end of the day it was still beatable and with enough attempts, you can get passed anything. To be a completionist in this game you must be clinically insane due to the number of requirements to 100% a level. Overall, a great game that looked amazing and felt clean.

Fuck you, Activision. First, you fold Vicarious Visions into Blizzard, now Toys for Bob into Call of Duty. Just when Toys for Bob proved that they could make their own games faithful to the source material, they are now relegated to supporting the development for Call of Duty. This absolutely stings as someone who got into Spyro and Crash recently. Fuck you, Activision. Fuck you to hell.

Nicholas Kole was the illustrator and concept artist

Man... I wish Sonic games can be as a great as this game. Crash 4 gameplay is intense and I love love love the animation. The game is gorgeous and sound is immaculate. The story is good for what a crash game is. There's so much content and I had no idea how much game is in this game. I only beat the main campaign and one of these days I will go back and play the rest and tried the 100%.

The only bad i can see is that it's difficult. REALLY difficult so it's not welcoming like the way it looks. At times it got frustrating especially the last 2 worlds, but that's how difficult should be to me.

Definitely play the game!

Right when the Switch version comes out and I'm playing it, the PC version is just announced to have an earlier release date than expected (March 26th). .-.

THEN WHY DIDN'T THEY ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE DATE ALONGSIDE INSTEAD OF NOW? THEY ANNOUNCED THAT IT WOULD BE COMING OUT "LATER THIS YEAR", SO YOU SHOULD EXPECT THAT IT WOULD COME OUT SAY MONTHS LATER. I WOULD'VE GOTTEN THE PC VERSION.

Crash Bandicoot 4 is an intimidating beast to review. Excellently crafted, beautiful looking, and surprisingly charming, this entry is also easily one of the hardest Crash Bandicoot games ever made and isn't afraid to show its teeth.

Following up from Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Neo Cortex and N Tropy figure out that they can use holes in the fabric of space and time to conquer all dimensions. Crash, Coco, Aku-aku, and a few other friends join in to gather the Quantum Masks, masks with great power over space and time, and defeat Cortex and N Tropy.

The most immediate gameplay change is the introduction of the masks. Throughout the game the player can enter segments where they can phase out objects, glide on a powerful spin, slow down time, and flip their gravity. A lot of these have been explored in other games but Crash 4 keeps it fresh and even combines these segments to make some unique challenges.

As for more intimate changes, Crash has new moves like slide spinning and triple spinning for speed (unlockable at the end) that add to a more consistent beginning moveset instead of something gradually unlocked over time. It also switches up gameplay, especially for the grueling time trials. Littler tweaks help smooth the experience like how much wumpa fruit comes out of crates, new types of crates that can burn the player or bounce a few times until they become Nitro, and being able to spin without worrying about spinning wumpa fruit away.

Gems are now much more plentiful and used to unlock skins - as achievements they can be gotten with either getting enough boxes or wumpa fruit, beating the level in under a few lives, finding a hidden gem, etc - there are also colored gems and special relics that can be gained by perfecting levels. There are also challenging bonus levels gained via Flashback Tapes in the main levels, offering a lot of difficult content and a lot of things to do. There are even special N Verted versions of each level where the orientation is flipped and fun filters/gameplay styles add to the experience.

There are also a variety of unique characters to play as - some with a hookshot, a vacuum, a laser gun that transforms enemies into blocks. They often tie into the main level at some point and offer remixed versions of other segments. None of them control particularly poorly, but each have their own grueling challenges.

Crash 4 is also GORGEOUS and smooth. With an original game, Crash 4 goes for more detail, animation, design, and color that just pops out at every level. The time/space rifts allow some wild jumps between worlds (New Orleans, ancient Japan, space aliens, a future food court?) that allow plenty of unique challenges and opportunities to use masks and characters in a ton of different ways.

This game is probably one of the finest Crash Bandicoot games to ever come out, and an incredibly well-designed platformer. Players might be put off by the difficulty of the later segments (time trials, perfecting relics) but with plenty of ways to play (and multiplayer opportunities), there's something to enjoy for a lot of people.

It’s nice to see a new entry in the Crash series after all these years. I am squarely in the demographic for this game, the nostalgic 90s kid. The subtitle of this game “It’s About Time” is clever, because the story is about time travel and it’s also been so long since a new main series Crash game.

The game graphics are good. Crash, Coco, Cortex, & co. look good and the world designs are fun and colorful. Most of the levels are basic Crash staples; future city, arctic land, pirate cove, Japanese land. Nothing too dangerously original, though the alien planet level was a bit unique. My favorite set of levels that were unique for Crash were the Louisana stages. The first one has you scampering across the rooftops of Mardi Gras and it’s just a fun, exciting level. The Crash Bandicoot theme shows up at the first level for a nice bit of nostalgia and the Mardi Gras music was fun, but the rest of the game didn’t have memorable music. It was all good music that served the purpose of enhancing levels, but not anything I found myself humming later on. And all the voice actors do a good job. I wasn’t a huge fan of N.Gin’s new voice though. It was too robotic. He sounded less like the quirky Igor I enjoyed and more like he was taken over by the AI hive mind.

The story is nothing too crazy, it’s a cartoon platformer. It’s honestly a remix of Crash Warped & Wrath of Cortex with the focus on both time travelling and new tiki masks that have special powers. These new masks are in charge of the quantum reality and have accordingly approriate powers. One can switch between different realities, another slows down time, etc. These masks are captured by Cortex & Tropy, so Crash travels time to save them and meets alternate dimension Tawna & Dingodile along the way. The humor in the story is fine. It’s very kid friendly and bland, I can’t recall any moments where I was busting out laughing. The self-aware wacky humor of Twinsanity was more my speed.

The challenging platforming is what this Crash game is all about. I want to preface this section, by saying I could just be too old with crummy reaction time, but this game is not here to be your friend. After about the 2nd world I was dying a lot. Some of this was an intentional challenge, requiring quick reaction times and controlled jumping. These were sections of the game, where it became trial and error, getting a little further each run and figuring out the patterns. Luckily, the load times between deaths weren’t too long. The hardest platforming bits were usually saved till the end of the level.

Other times, it was just complete bull crap. The 3-D perspective hindered some of my jumps, where it looks like I leapt far enough, but nope I’m just short or overshot it. The mask that flips gravity was a chore to learn. It was almost a little too floaty as the effect doesn’t happen immediately, leading to some deaths that felt cheap. After enough deaths, the game takes pitty on you and you respawn with an Aku-Aku, but it really didn’t help in my case. I hardly ever died from enemies or Nitro crates. My deaths were from falls, which Aku-Aku does diddly squat against. That was about the only time I got an Aku-Aku mask though, because to up the difficulty this game is very stingy with mask & checkpoint boxes. Also the game counts you deaths on the HUD, which did nothing but demoralize me when it started reaching 20, 25, 30 in later levels.

The boss battles are a little underwhelming, because they are all similar. You fight an evil scientist in a big mech suit who throws waves of energy at you and then after a bit you hit them once. It is helped a little by having a different mask you use with each fight, but still I would’ve liked to see Tiny, Pinstripe, or Papu Papu show up and give us a varied fight. There are side levels where you get to play as someone besides Crash/Coco. Tawna, Dingodile, and Cortex are all playable with their own set of skills. Their levels play out at the same time as a previous Crash level does, part of the time travel stuff. While it’s cool to play as some different heroes, these levels have one downfall. Once you finish the short bit with the new hero, you are transported back to Crash and you have to finish the rest of the original Crash level again. That fact turned me off to playing any of the side character’s levels.

All in all, even with the draconian difficulty curve this game throws at you, and boring side character levels, I still enjoyed playing as Crash in a new outing and with enough persistence I was able to complete it. I hope this spurs on a new wave of Crash game, maybe with some difficulty settings to tweak and if not, this was a fine entry into the series.

Crash Bandicoot was the first game I ever played. The original trilogy will always be among the holiest grails of gaming in my eyes. I waited long time for this. I have two reviews

Review 1:

This game is incredible!! They perfectly recreated the gameplay of the originals and managed to enhance it with all the new mechanics. Each new mask is implemented so well and the game gradually teaches you to master the new abilities.

The music is great (though not quite on Josh Mancell’s level), the visuals are beautiful and perfectly realise the Looney Tunes asthetic of this franchise, and honestly just every little detail reflects the devloper’s obvious and genuine love of this IP.

10/10

Review 2:

This game is fucking hard. Fuck this game. Toys For Bob can eat shit and die!!

In all seriousness, the difficulty of the game is maybe a bit more intense than I had hoped for from a Crash game. Particularly for traditional Crash completionists, I think this game is too rough.

The N Sane relic is a pretty unwelcome addition, in my opinion. I got each and every one and it cost me one controller and my phone (both of which got hurled across the room throughout different fits of rage). This relic wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t required for every level. Long levels with extremely tricky sections are clearly not designed for this kind of challenge (I’m looking at you Bears Repeating).

Also, the 106% requirement (and corresponding trophy/achievement) should be consistent with the previous games and require gold relics only. I enjoy playing the time trials where they are tricky but do-able. The platinums in this game veer into speed-runner territory and, after doing a few, I realised the game was no longer fun for me and gave up on that final task.

0/10

Overall review?

Nostalgia wins.

10/10

PROS

• Contains tons of challenging platforming content
• Wonderfully cartoony art style
• Diverse environments are gorgeously rendered
• Playing as Crash/Coco feels great
• First few hours are excellent

CONS

• Opts for shallow gimmicks and "replayability" over memorable level design
• Mediocre boss fights
• Inadequate camera and busy mise-en-scène make depth perception and obstacle detection a consistent struggle
• Side characters aren't particularly fun to play as (Tawna's dumb-ass grappling hook and garbage wall jumping come to mind)
• Lackluster script is crowded by too many characters and filled with unfunny jokes
• Appeals to nostalgia mostly fall flat