Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time Review
“It’s About Damn Time…” Written by: Ethan (@ChaoticAether)
After a 12-year absence of new games and two highly successful remake collections from Activision, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is finally here and man was it worth the wait. With mostly excellent level design, stunning visuals and stellar animation and writing, Toy’s for Bob have not only managed to live up to the work done by the original Naughty Dog Trilogy, but even surpass it in many different ways. Despite its flaws such as questionable base console performance and poorly designed additional characters, Crash is finally back in surprisingly one of the best 3D platformers in recent memory and man, it’s about damn time. Sorry, I couldn’t help it…
Image Credit: Activision Blizzard
Following on from the 105% completion ending of 1998’s Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped, Cortex, N. Tropy and Uka Uka have spent many years trapped in their interdimensional prison. Using all of his energy, Uka Uka successfully rips a hole in the fabric of time and space, allowing Cortex and N. Tropy to once again return to their time, and with the help of some of Cortex’s classic minions, attempt to destroy the Bandicoot siblings once and for all.
As this happens, Aku Aku wakes up Crash and asks him to climb N. Sanity Peak, where he finds the first of the quantum masks, Lani Loli. Meeting up with Coco, Lani Loli tasks the pair with finding the remaining three Quantum Masks, to defeat Cortex and N. Tropy, and to fix the dimensional rifts that have appeared across the multiverse.
The overall story is nothing compelling but feels right at home in the Crash universe, feeling like a return to the classic Crash games of old, while simultaneously feeling fresh with the way that these characters interact with their new environments. This is helped by excellent writing, which may be the best this franchise has seen (bar Twinsanity) and the excellent vocal performances that helped to keep me engaged and entertained through this long and punishing journey.
Image Credit: Activision Blizzard
And what awaits you on this journey you may ask? Well surprisingly the comparisons draw more to the first Crash Bandicoot game than the rest of the original trilogy. After completing the first two levels you unlock the dimensional map, a similar map to the original game that allows you to progress from level to level in a fixed order. Some may see it as a step back from the Warp Room design of Crash 2 and 3, but it actually works out better in this format, allowing Toys for Bob to create levels and worlds with a progressing difficulty curve instead of having a group of levels with similar difficulty per warp and a spike in difficulty between the warp rooms. The map also adds so much charm and character to the game, with unique animations that make each world feel unique. This is also where you are able to switch between both Crash, and his sister Coco, who aside from different animations controls the exact same and has no meaningful differences in terms of gameplay, allowing you to choose your favourite of the two Bandicoots to play on aesthetics alone. There are also two separate modes to pick from from the offset of your adventure, Retro and Modern mode. Retro keeps the classic Crash life system intact, requiring you to gather lives and wumpa fruit to keep your life counter high, die on zero and it’s game over. Modern mode removes the life system entirely, allowing you to restart from checkpoints an unlimited amount of times and replaces the life counter with a death counter, making the game more accessible to new and younger players. Crash 4 wants both new and old players to have their cake and eat it, and this system works surprisingly well.
But what should you expect from the actual level design of crash 4? Well surprisingly, the answer is for the most part, great designs rivaling the original trilogy. Except for far too many offscreen crates scattered across levels, each main crash level in this game is in my opinion excellently crafted, giving you a mixture of gameplay elements that for the most part are well made and provide a fair challenge to both newcomers and platforming veterans alike. Crash and Coco retain their movement sets from Crash 3 for the most part, with a double jump from the start, body slam, slide and spin as usual. All in all, it’s the best Crash has intentionally felt to play ever, with slide spin jumps extending your movement distance platform to platform and the double jump allowing you to reach new heights and recalculate difficult jumps you may have underestimated. The only problem is the slide jump itself, which kills your current momentum making some platforming sections feel like they are grinding to a halt. Accompanying these classic moves is the introduction of wallrunning and rail grinding, which for the most part work as well as you think they will. Except for a couple of ugly hitboxes, rail grinding works surprisingly well and feels like an excellent addition to the moveset. Wall running is more finicky, essentially sticking you to the wall for a set period of time. However it is still used in interesting enough ways that I did not mind it being added to the core moveset as it added some much needed challenge in later sections of the game.
Alongside this is the introduction of this game's platforming quote unquote gimmick, the Quantum Masks. These four masks can be found in specific parts of levels and are made to alter the way you handle crash platforming sections in different ways. Lani Loli shifts parts of reality in and out, making for some interesting platforming puzzles, but ending up as the most lackluster of the four in terms of visual appeal. Akano, the Dark Matter mask allows you to perform a better version of the tornado spin from Crash 3, letting you constantly spin and decrease your overall fall speed allowing you to glide, in addition to allowing you to break body slam crates. However, unlike in Crash 3, Akano is incredibly implemented, allowing for his platforming sections to be some of the most fun in the game, making use of tight platforming sections with obstacles, TNTs, and challenging jumps to make him the most rewarding of the four masks to learn. Kapuna-Wa, the Time Mask allows you to grind everything to a halt, allowing you to break otherwise impossible timer crates, slow down falling platforms and stop your enemies in their tracks. However, the joy of Kapuna-Wa’s mechanics soon begin to fade when you realize how linear her implementation and segments are, making her my least favorite of the masks personally. Finally, there is Ika-Ika, the gravity shifting mask that allows you to switch the direction of gravity at the press of a button. Ika-Ika not only adds challenge due to his late addition to the game but his movement is so well done that his sections are honestly some of the most well done parts of the game period. On the whole, all 4 masks are worthy additions to the gameplay and add a much needed sense of variety to your regular Crash Bandicoot platforming adventure.
The masks aren’t the only form of variety though. Bonus rounds return with a new spin, feeling more like difficult platforming sections with no lives rather than a way to stock up on more boxes and extra wumpa fruit. Variety has also been added by mixing several different types of gameplay into individual levels instead of focusing on one core concept per level. Gone are the individual vehicle levels of Crash 2 and 3, with gameplay sections such as the jetboard and the polar bear now added to original full-fledged platforming levels both increasing the variety within levels and removing the monotony of sole vehicle levels from prior entries in the franchise. No one gimmick is overused either, making one or in rare cases two appearances throughout the entire game, making it a joy when new ones are introduced.
As for your overall objectives in each level, your task is simple, reach the end of the level to move on to the next. But each level has an additional six gems to find within for the completionists out there. These are separated into the three Wumpa Gems, requiring you to collect 40, 60 and 80% of the wumpa found within a level respectively. The Box Gem for breaking all crates within the level. There’s the Death Gem, requiring you to beat each level in 3 deaths or less. And finally a Hidden Gem which is found hiding somewhere within the level. These gems add plenty of replay value to levels, and the sheer number of them make you feel like you are constantly making progress, however small that progress may actually be. Gems collected can be used to unlock a variety of skins for Crash and Coco, which are all unique and give you a solid reason to go back and replay the levels as you definitely will not collect all the gems during your first visit. This is then doubled in N-Verted mode, an additional mirror mode that adds a filter to the level and has a whole extra set of collectibles for you to discover. If that wasn’t enough four coloured gems are hidden within levels in addition to the 228 regular and 228 inverted gems, time relics make their return which feel like a fair challenge yet are not exactly to everyone's taste, especially when you factor in the fact that Platinum Relics are required for full completion this time around. Also included are flashback tapes, this games version of death routes that must be found in levels without dying and give you a challenging platforming section for you to complete, set during the testing of Crash in 1996. These provide fun challenges and hilarious dialogue, but for the most part miss the mark. Feeling like trial and error platforming stages, rather than the challenging but fair level design of the regular levels. All this is topped with the N-Sanely Perfect Relics, which require you to break all crates in a level and make it to the end without dying. This may seem overwhelming to some and for the most part, they are right. There is an overabundance of content in Crash 4, making it extremely daunting to get to 106% completion, but at least you can say that Toys for Bob really tried to make this game a decent price proposition. However, with the overabundance and repetitive nature to all the collectibles, you may end up giving up due to the sheer amount of content.
If you thought even that wasn’t enough, on top of all this, Toys for Bob also thought to add three additional playable characters to the game on top of Crash and Coco. These characters appear once or twice during the main story, and then have optional flashback levels in prior and subsequent areas to see their minor impacts on the story. The first is Tawna, Crash’s girlfriend from the first game revamped as an adventurer from another dimension, a character similar to Crash and Coco but bulkier and carrying a grapple hook. Most of her sections are fun at first, but the lack of variety in her moveset will quickly start to bore you, making her feel like a tired addition. Dingodile, a villain from the third game reappears as a restaurant owner with a leaf blower just trying to get home, and has an interesting set of platforming challenges and mechanics making him feel like the best of the three. Finally there is Cortex himself, who has a charge attack and a blaster capable of turning enemies into blocks for platforming. Cortex, aside from one or two levels, is honestly the worst character implemented into the game, feeling constantly clunky with terrible level design not backing up what are theoretically good gameplay elements. These characters also feature all the collectibles mentioned prior and N-Verted versions of the levels on top of that, and If there is one area where the quality starts to drop it’s within these levels. There’s honestly no substance to these characters and the level designs are easily the worst in the game making them feel like a late addition, which is a shame as the performances are fantastic and you can feel like there’s potential within these characters that never truly shines. It’s in this area alone, where I feel like Toys for Bob and Beenox may have bitten off a little more than they could chew.
Image Credit: Activision Blizzard
The one thing that Toys for Bob nailed perfectly however is the overall artstyle and presentation of the game. I can say this for a fact that this is the best the crash franchise has ever looked, with the new redesigns of the characters being some of the best in the series. With the personally awful design and visuals of the N-Sane trilogy, Toys for Bob took the lessons learned from the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and completely redid the artstyle into something that looks straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. The animations are zany, the enemy designs are stellar, and the levels are brought to life superbly with bright and colorful environments. When Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin stated that they wanted the original game to look like a Loony Tunes adventure, I assume Crash 4 is exactly what they were thinking of at the time. This is matched by a soundtrack created internally at Toys for Bob, and although it is not as memorable as songs from the original trilogy or Twinsanity, it’s still an excellent showcase of talent, and if you have enjoyed previous crash soundtracks you will probably be impressed with some of the songs on offer. Whether it’s Off Beat sounding straight out of a Disneyland parade, to Out For Launch mixing sci-fi sounds with incredible riffs, the soundtrack is something you really should be paying attention to.
The same goes for the sound design for the game in general. As mentioned throughout parts of this review, the voice acting for all of the characters is one of the games shining qualities. It’s honestly both the writing and performances of these characters that truly make this game come to life, and had me laughing hard throughout the majority of my 60 hour run time.
Game performance on the other hand is something that Toys for Bob really should have put more time into. On base consoles the game is running an uncapped framerate, which feels awful to play due to game inputs being tied to the FPS. It never reaches full 60 FPS, and many of the framedrops are so noticeable it may make the game unplayable for some hardcore platforming fans. On the PS4 Pro, XBox One X, PS5 and XBox Series X however, the tables are turned. The game finds itself locked at 60 most of the time, and that really is when the game is at its best. As someone who originally played on base consoles, I personally do not feel like the framerate should dis-sway you if you’re already interested. But if consistent framerate in a platformer is something you deeply care about, I’d consider waiting to play it on the next generation of consoles. Load times are also a concern, clocking in rather high on the current generation of consoles. This is fine for the most part when going from level to level, but as soon as you start restarting time trials and getting game overs, they become far more apparent. Again these are shortened with the next generation of consoles, but if you were hoping for loads like the year one patch of N-Sane Trilogy, prepare to be disappointed.
Image Credit: Activision Blizzard
Summary
Crash 4 is the culmination of all the work that Activision, Vicarious Visions and Beenox put into bringing Crash back into the mainstream eye with N-Sane Trilogy and Nitro Fuelled. Now with Crash 4, Toys for Bob have done what many would have seen as impossible. Not only create a new Crash Bandicoot game that rivals the original Naughty Dog trilogy but surpasses it in many ways to become not only the best Crash Bandicoot platformer of all time, but one of my favorite 3D platformers of the past decade. Despite questionable performance on both base consoles and poor at times implementation of additional characters, Crash 4 manages to put that to the side and give you an amazing platformer that you really should not miss out on. It may not be my favourite entry in the franchise, but with a wonderful art style, a hilarious and well written narrative, plenty of collectibles, an overwhelming amount of content and a balanced mixture of fun yet challenging level designs for the most part, Crash 4 is not only recommended for Crash Bandicoot fans but for fans of the genre in general. It’s flaws on the base consoles may stop me from giving it a must play rating, but in my eyes Toys for Bob have nailed the Crash formula on their first attempt, and if this is only their first shot at a Crash, I cannot wait to see where they take the series next. The Franchise couldn’t be in safer hands!