Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
I’ve only played and reviewed one Crash Bandicoot game so far for this blog: The N-Sane Trilogy for the PS4. I was not a massive fan of that title, as evidenced by its C- review score.
To be honest, I’ve never been a giant fan of Crash Bandicoot. I don’t hate the series, but I’ve never been too overly excited by it either. When I first heard that they were making a Crash 4 back in 2020, I knew that I would play it someday – but I was in no rush to do so. Well, here in 2022 that day has finally come. Would this game change my thoughts on the Crash series as a whole?
No.
But read on to find out why!
Story:
This game acts as a direct sequel to Crash Bandicoot 3, ignoring any and all subsequent entries in the series. The villains from Crash 3 have broken out of their prison via a multidimensional rift. Now given access to Crash’s version of the multiverse, these villains set their minds on (you guessed it) taking control of all of the universes out there. Crash is pulled out of retirement to put an end to these nefarious plans. To defeat the bad guys, he needs to collect all of the Quantum Masks, each one controlling a different aspect of space and time.
Long story short, at the end of the game you beat the bad guys and save the day. Of course you do. I’m not going to go into too many specific details, but your journey takes several twists and turns along the way, leading you not only through different dimensions but different timelines as well. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this game’s storyline is when Neo Cortex goes back in time to stop himself from ever creating Crash Bandicoot to begin with.
To be honest, though – I wasn’t enamored by this game’s storyline. There’s just too much going on. The storytelling is quite incoherent, to the point where I had no idea what the hell was happening half the time. Very quickly into the game I stopped paying attention and I stopped caring about what was going on. I didn’t care about the characters. I didn’t care about this game’s weak attempts at humor. I just wanted to play the game.
Which leads us to the next complaint-filled section of this review…
Gameplay:
Initially I enjoyed my time with Crash 4, for the first hour or two at least. On the surface this game is everything you’d expect from a traditional Crash Bandicoot game: behind-the-back gameplay, boxes to break, fruit to collect, enemies to kill, obstacles to jump over, and bonus stages galore. All the series staples are present, like TNT boxes, nitro crates, power-up masks, your spin move – that kind of thing.
As I first started playing this, I was like alright. This isn’t bad. Maybe this would finally be the Crash game that would make me a fan of the series. But that all fell apart, and fast too. I’ve never experienced a steeper difficulty spike in a game before. I went from dying two or three times in a stage to dying over thirty times each stage – and that’s not an exaggeration.
Now, I am okay with challenging games. I even pointed this out in my N-Sane Trilogy review – I’m a child of the NES era. I was raised on difficult games. But Crash 4 takes things to new, and frustrating, extremes. Extremes that often felt cheap and unfair. You’ll be about to jump on a platform and – uh oh. It moves out of the way at the last second, sending you plummeting to your death. Let’s just kill this enemy over he- it suddenly starts shooting electricity everywhere (without warning) and now you’re dead. Let's just run over this bridge- a block comes swooping through and pushes you off the bride to your death. Enemies hit you from off screen. Routine-looking jumps send you falling to your doom. You’ll think you’re at a safe enough distance from a TNT box’s explosion, but oops – you’re not. You’ll memorize the pattern of some moving platforms and obstacles and platforms in front of you, but the second you step into the playing field the pattern changes and you die. The hits just keep coming all game long, and once they start they do not stop.
Around the time I started dying 30 times per stage, I decided that I was going to slow down a bit and proceed through each level at a snail’s pace. I’d be cautious. I’d take my time. Nothing would surprise me or sneak up on me. I’d cut that number of deaths from 30 down to three or four. But no. That didn’t happen. Even playing at the most methodical pace imaginable, I would still find myself constantly dying. A nice thing about this game is that you have infinite lives, however – so that’s somewhat of a relief. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to beat this game if I started off with just three.
Once you make it to the later levels in the game, expect your frustration to be at an all-time high. I’m normally a relatively chill dude but some of these stages had me screaming at the TV. There’s one stage in particular where you are falling through the air and have to jump from piece of wreckage to piece of wreckage until you make it to the end of the stage. One false step and you die. Let’s just say I false stepped a lot here. A LOT. Let’s not get me started on the second to last stage of the game, where you have to use the game’s masks (which I’ll get to shortly) to navigate a series of obstacles that brings you to the game’s final boss. I died, I shit you not, 122 times on this level. 122 fucking times. I was so upset with this game I am surprised I didn’t wake up the baby who was sleeping in the next room over.
Normally in a Crash game, one of the things I like to work on is collecting all of the boxes in each particular stage. Crash 4 sucks all the enjoyment out of that task. I would start out each stage with the full intent of collecting all the boxes, but then I would die 30 seconds later, go back to the beginning of the stage, and I’d have to collect them all over again. Checkpoints in this game are so few and far between, and you die SO OFTEN that I quickly gave up going after all the boxes and trying to break them. Otherwise I would just be breaking the same boxes over and over and over again, only to have my progress wiped out each time I would die. What a waste of time. No thanks. Just get me to the end of this damn stage so I can get this game over with as quickly as possible!
The thing this game does that I like the most is its implementation of the aforementioned masks. These masks give Crash special powers, like the ability to slow down time or turn into a tornado. In small bursts, some of the segments where you use these masks can be fun. But the game definitely overdoes it, and very quickly these segments turn from a fun break in the action to tedious and frustrating. Seriously, this game NEVER relents in its difficulty – to the point where I simply didn’t find it fun anymore. I like to be challenged, but please do it in a fair manner. Mega Man? Dark Souls? Those games are tough, yes, but FAIR. Too many times as I played Crash 4 did I find the “rules” and the physics of the game change on a dime JUST to fuck me over. And that’s not cool.
Graphics:
I have to give credit where it is due: this game looks really nice. Bright, cartoony graphics. Wonderfully animated characters, bosses, and enemies. Each stage is filled with so many details that are an absolute marvel to look at. I said this with the N-Sane Trilogy and I will say it again – it is almost as if you are playing through a wonderfully animated Saturday morning cartoon. I absolutely cannot say a bad thing about this game’s visual presentation. It is stunning.
It’s just too bad, however, that this game is absolutely no fun to play.
Sound:
If you’ve been happy with the music from previous Crash Bandicoot games, you’ll be happy with the music here. I didn’t think it was anything too special, but I didn’t dislike it either. It fits the graphical presentation of the game quite well, even if it isn’t very memorable at all. The sound effects really shine, however. The noise it makes when you use your spin move, the TNT countdown, the sound when you collect fruit and break boxes, the “ooga bah!” when you pick up a mask – this is iconic stuff here.
The voice acting is pretty good, too, even though I didn’t care for the game’s story. If I can say one positive thing about this game, it’s that it looks and sounds fantastic. Again, it is an absolute shame this game isn’t any fun to play.
Overall:
I think you can tell from everything I’ve written so far that I didn’t enjoy this game. The graphics and sound – sure. They are top notch quality. But to me the whole point of playing a game is to lose yourself and have fun. Aside from maybe the first hour I spent playing this game, I didn’t have any fun with it.
I appreciate what they tried to do with this game. Plucking something out of the 90s and updating it with the technology of today is something I wish more franchises would do. I’d love to see something like Vectorman or Earthworm Jim brought into the next-generation of gaming. It was what I was hoping Square Enix was going to do with the Final Fantasy VII remake before they went another direction. But as I said before, I’ve never been a big fan of the Crash Bandicoot series. While I appreciate what they’ve done visually with this game, I just don’t like the original series it was based on. So as a result, I don’t like this. Maybe it could have snuck by with a score in the C range, if only it had a more manageable difficulty level.
But that difficulty level, though. It just breaks the whole game. It’s a shame too, because Crash 4 does have a lot going for it. The presentation is great. It looks and sounds fantastic. The stage design showcases a lot of variety. I like the introduction of the masks and their special powers. You can play side missions as multiple characters. You can tell a lot of TLC went into this game.
I wish I could say I liked Crash Bandicoot, but it looks like me and this series are just not meant to be. The N-Sane Trilogy got a C- and this game is going to rank even lower. If I ever get the urge to play another game in this series again, remind me of how much I hate it and steer me in another direction. I’m sorry, Crash, but we’re just going to have to go our separate ways.
Final Score:
D+
If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:
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