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
