Welcome to our review of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.
The devious villains Neo Cortex and dr. N. Tropy have finally escaped their interdimensional prison, leaving an evil scientist sized hole in the universe. Now they’ve got their eyes set on not only simply conquering this dimension, but all dimensions, and it’s up to crash and coco to save the day. N. Sanity beach is where crash’s adventure first started, and where it begins in Crash 4. But there have definitely been changes since players first saw Sanity beach all those years ago, and throughout Crash 4 you’ll notice changes to gameplay and even the art style.
Crash Bandicoot 4, you can basically say two things about this game. On the positive side, it’s more Crash Bandicoot and on the negative side, it is more Crash Bandicoot. I will explain this unusual way to describe the game later in my review and we will start with the positive side.
Crash Bandicoot is one of the all-time platforming classics and is often named in the same breath as Super Mario, Sonic, Kirby, Castlevania, … While not being a true style 8-bit classic and only appearing in the later generations of consoles, this game has found its way into the hearts of many gamers all over the world. Admittedly, I was never the biggest fan, though I did really enjoy the games.
Crash Bandicoot 4 takes all the good of the previous games, shakes it up a little adds skins, and so on. It keeps being the collection game that we know and maxing it out, finding all those items in-game, is a game in itself. Annoying for some but amazing for others, this all depends on your mindset when going into a game like Crash. I really like how the original feeling was honored by this latest installment.
I have often said this before and I will say it again I like it when some sort of shadow function is used in 3D platforming so you can see where your character is jumping towards, especially necessary in games like this. Crash Bandicoot 4 does it just about as perfect as can be, you always know where you will end up as long as you don’t mess up the jump itself. Specially mindful of the double jump mechanic here. But in all honesty use a single jump then a single jump is required.
Graphically, I played this game on a PlayStation 4 Slim and during the opening part of the game, especially when a friend was playing, I did notice inconsistencies in the picture quality. Less notable when I was playing myself, but the damage had been done, despite overall great graphics. Another friend of mine has the PlayStation Pro and he confirmed he did not have this issue. Even a full reboot did nothing to resolve it on my side.
Now onto the bad things about this game, Crash Bandicoot 4 is actually too much of a Crash Bandicoot game but in this case, level design looks to be the main influence. Despite fluid motions in the 3D action, I often had the feeling that the platforming, the actual jumping, was not always on par with what you’d expect of this generation of games. It’s often felt like levels were made difficult on purpose.
Endless lives however do make up for this, as well as the abundance in save points. I did get frustrated more than once, even in earlier levels, that the idea of grabbing everything, the main purpose of a Crash game, in my opinion, was actually counterproductive. Even earlier levels I often lost in between three and five lives just to grab everything. I stopped doing this around the seventh level because I got tired of jumping to my own death.
It also needs to be said that Crash Bandicoot 4 is actually a good game, not great or amazing but an overall solid experience in the spirit of previous Crash Bandicoot games. I just wish some of the levels did not feel like they were intentionally made to be such a pain.
In conclusion, Crash Bandicoot 4 has a lot of positive things going in its favor and they do outweigh my negative experiences with the game. It really helped that I stopped collecting everything and just started enjoying the game. Kudos to everybody going for 100% but that is not for me, I do applaud everybody going for gold with this title. My score may seem on the lower side, being only an 8, but there are just too many better platforming games out there to warrant a higher score.
