Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time takes place after the events of 1998’s Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, essentially ignoring the 4 additional ‘mainline’ games that released on PS2 and other consoles back in the ’00s. While the 4 previous games were good, they weren’t great games, like the original trilogy. So, does Crash Bandicoot 4 live up the brilliance that was the first three games? Or is it a series that should have been left as a trilogy? Let’s find out!
Before talking about gameplay elements, it’s worth noting that I assumed Crash as a series was dead until the fantastic N.Sane trilogy landed to great praise back in 2017. Playing these older games, loving recreated left me yearning for more. They also left me annoyed about how hard I found the games, especially considering I played the originals to completion numerous times over. Hitboxes and the jumping mechanics felt slightly off to me in the N.Sane Trilogy and often I wondered if it was performing poorly because I’m getting older or if the games were overly ‘tweaked’. Thankfully, I seem to fare a lot better with this newer experience, and while I still die a lot, I usually know it’s my fault and not the game itself!
Story
Taking place after Warped, Crash 4 starts with Dr Neo Cortex and N. Trophy along with Uka Uka attempting to escape the Time prison. They succeed by opening dimensional rifts, which Aku Aku senses. Sensing great power, Aku Aku tells Crash and they come across Lani-Loli, one of the Quantum masks which only appear once dimensional rifts in time and space appear. They decide to travel through the Quantum rifts to locate the other three quantum masks whose power is needed to put everything back to normal.
Gameplay
The Gameplay in Crash 4 is what you would expect from a classic Crash game, a lot of platforming along with some ingenious boss fights and, of course, levels where you have to run towards the screen, but Crash 4 does an awful lot more than that. There are hidden Flashback levels along with 43 different ‘N.Verted’ levels, that put a unique rendering style on each main level while reversing them from left to right etc. There’s just so much content here to be had and Crash 4 put’s a lot of modern games to shame in that regard.
The difficulty is something I should mention, and Crash 4 gives you the option to either play it modern style or classic. Classic style gives you three lives per level and some of these can be pretty brutal. I played through the game on modern, which essentially gives you unlimited retries and on some sections I still found myself taking well over 15 attempts to clear some sections. Please bear this in mind if you are thinking of picking this up for younger children or more inexperienced gamers, Crash 4 is a pretty hard game!
Levels play out over a world map, much like the first crash bandicoot and it really did make me feel quite nostalgic. Personally, I prefer a good map system instead of a hub world or menu and I love how it is handled here in Crash 4. Each area represents another quantum dimension and they are all themed accordingly. You can play as Crash or Coco for the majority of levels with a few other playable characters that I won’t spoil here as they technically are part of the story.
Each level has 12 gems you collect by completing various actions, there’s 6 to be earned in the original levels and an additional 6 to be had in the N.Verted levels. to earn all of these you’ll need to complete a level collecting over 80% of the Wumpa fruit, smashing every single crate, lose less than three lives and find the hidden gem! This means Crash 4 has a great deal of replayability and the game doesn’t penalize you for not collecting them, however, if you do collect a certain amount of gems in each level you’ll unlock a unique skin which is a real nice touch.
Not only are the gems to be collected, but you can also earn Relics, these are the real challenge of the game and once again, totally optional. Heading back into a completed level and touching the stopwatch will begin a time trial mode, these can be a lot of fun but the ultimate collectables in the game are the N.Sanity Relics, to nab one of these you’ll need to collect all 6 gems on a level while only using one life. This is ridiculously hard but a welcome challenge for those who want more.
How does Crash Bandicoot 4 run on the Switch?
With Crash Bandicoot 4 on Switch, I’m pleased Everything is here, no features have been cut back from the other versions of the game. It’s the full package, minus some of the visual flair and frame rate of course.
This time around the game is made in Unreal Engine 4, which is arguably more visually impressive than what was on display in the N.Sane Trilogy. To achieve this on the Switch, Crash 4 drops to a resolution 720p Docked and 540p Handheld, both of which are dynamic and run a solid 30fps. Despite the reduced resolution, the game still looks great on the Switch, but you may notice a little blurriness during cutscenes etc. Apart from the resolution and framerate being cut back, the game holds up pretty well with only small visual effects and lightning being cut back from other versions of the game.
Just for the ability to play this game portable, I think the trade-offs are well worth it as the game lends well to portable play with most levels only taking around 10 – 15 minutes to complete.
Conclusion
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is great! The game is more than worthy of carrying the torch of the original trilogy, fully earning the rights to its own numbered entry and is the perfect fit on the Switch. It’s a game that’s jam-packed with things to do and will keep you coming back for more, After all, there’s a ton of gems and relics to collect! Here’s hoping that we don’t have to wait 20 years for Crash Bandicoot 5!
8.5
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by Activision
You can pick up a copy of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time here!