Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Part 3)

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – 3: Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

Back where it all started... But it's not exactly gonna
go the same way.

Assorted Annoyances

This is the kind of game where, if you are not focusing
on getting Gems, you will have a hard time, but it will
be doable. My mistake was trying to go for the All Crates
Gems every time I entered a level.. and suffering a lot
because of it. In my defense, I thought it wouldn't be
that bad, after playing the previous games!

You know what, let’s get the annoyances out before the finale. So, this game is… Well, I have already brought up the difficulty. I think I haven’t made it clear yet. Dying 20 times per level? That was at the beginning. The closer to the end I got, the bigger that number got. It wasn’t rare to die upwards of 50 times in a level’s first go-through, as I discovered, one painful mistake after the other, all the ways in which Crash/Coco/Tawna/Dingodile/Cortex could die. It is, by no means, the only tough platformer I’ve played all year, but it is among the hardest I’ve ever played – and, honestly, I think it might be the hardest I’ve pushed through, all the way to the end credits.

I remember hating the "Run on walls" parts. If your momentum
is stopped, you fall and die. And these parts love to put crates
in your way, so you have to break them. Oh! And combine
that to the gravity shenanigans in later worlds, too! Ugh.

I know I said that the original three Crash games had cruel platforming moments; I found that out as I was discovering them through the N. Sane Trilogy (though, as has been mentioned, the remasters aren’t entirely identical to their originals, which I haven’t really played). In comparison to Crash 4, Crash 1 through Warped! feel like a goddamn walk in the park. And I think a part of that might be caused by Crash 4’s own excesses. The levels are too long, several levels have too many crates, every instance with a Quantum Mask throws something new at you…

A lot fo bonus stages are all about using your abilities at
very specific moments and slapping steel ! crates in
what order, and when, for a chance to destroy every crate.
I miss the simplicity of the average Crash 1-through-3
Bonus Stage.

Speaking of crates, Bonus levels make a return. They keep the system from the remasters: If you die in them, you don’t lose a life, and the Bonus level transporter counts as a free Checkpoint. But! In the remasters, they were generally easy. Well, no more. Bonus levels in It’s About Time decided, “you know what? The player doesn’t lose lives playing these, so fuck it, we’re gonna be insanely hard!” In an utterly brutal game, these manage to be even worse. They often require use of the Quantum Masks, and are designed like puzzle platformers. You must figure out the right path, often backtracking both ways, to break every crate, and in what order, as there is sometimes only one correct “answer” to catch everything. And! Let me remind you that these bonus levels are mandatory, because their crates still count within their level’s total! Can’t figure it out? Tough shit!

Making things phase in and out, including barriers that can
get in your way, while you are also running on walls and
carefully timing your jumps. It's... a little much.

After a while, Crash 4 starts to feel more like a puzzle platformer than just a platformer. In fact, I know I have seen or played games with the exact mechanics brought forth by the Quantum Masks – but usually they aren't all in the same product. Making things appear and disappear to progress? Seen it. Messing with time? Seen it. Gravity shenanigans? Seen it! Hell, even ‘Akano’s ability involves some degree of knowing when to turn the special spin on or off. At the end, you must often adapt to using the masks interchangeably within the same level… or, in the very final stretches, one after the other in quick succession. Crash 4 is basically 4 puzzle platformers in one Bandicoot-shaped trench coat.

What’s more, to make that work, the game had to do away with a good chunk of the special stuff in previous Crash games (dedicated underwater stages, the dogfights, the bike racing, etc.), only keeping the stuff that’s been associated to the franchise’s DNA (riding small animals; running towards the camera to outrun a threat; and some jetboard segments). It’s all up to you whether you prefer a Crash game with variety, or one that’s entirely (or almost entirely) platforming, and Crash 4 is the latter.

Blast the Past

"Never the selves shall meet" apparently doesn't count if
it's done through holograms.

From Ika-Ika to Kapuna-Wa to 'Akano. Yep, we're switching
fast between all of them.

Cortex time-travels with Kapuna-Wa to his old island lab and hijacks his own comms system. His past self, spotting the intruder, immediately declares him an evil doppelganger and sends the lab assistants to track his future self down. Crash, Coco and the Masks are hot on their trail. This final world is where level design goes crazy, making you switch between the Masks regularly, often within seconds of each other. This leads to some insane challenges. There’s even a Cortex timeline level in there, seen when he is trying to reach his old laboratory to prevent himself from accidentally creating the Crash we know and love.

Makes no sense in-story? Don't care, the concept is cool
as Hell. Just sad that the whole second half of it is all
against the brute power of 'Akano.

Past!Cortex is captured by his future self, who sees the Bandicoot siblings arrive. Having no other plan, he decides to get rid of Crash now and deal with everything else later. This is the final boss, and for some unexplained reason, Cortex’s new machine can steal the Quantum Masks and use their powers in combat. You gotta wonder why that machine exists in this time, considering that Past!Cortex has (and should have) no knowledge of the masks whatsoever! Buuut, plot hole aside, it is not infuriatingly hard like a lot of what preceded it, and it was very fun to see a boss adapt the mechanics we’ve been using throughout to employ them against our heroes. Genuinely clever, fun stuff.

Payback!

Cortex’s machine goes down; the masks are freed, and so is his past self. The latter has now seen firsthand that the Bandicoot experiment will be a success – therefore, he orders N. Brio to carry through. Crash is still created, so our Cortex failed. And, also, he gets flung to the end of the universe by the Masks for his trouble. That’s fine, he can finally relax, on a beach, alone! …Or he would, but Uka Uka has apparently found his spot…

Dingodile reopens his restaurant, and it’s as nasty as ever. I doubt it will survive for long. We close on Crash, Coco and the alternate Tawna gaming at Crash’s place, with the Masks and Aku Aku enjoying the time off and the newfound, surrounding peace. Roll credits!

And contrary to the previous Crash games, you can't just
pass by with the Gold Relics for completion; it's Platinum
or nothing. Because Crash 4 still wasn't cruel enough just yet.

What else is there to do here? Well, there’s: Beating every Timeline and N.Verted version (the latter also extends to boss battles); collecting every single Gem (and unlocking every skin as a result); finding every flashback tape and getting the flashback relics; and getting time attack relics in every level. Yep, those are back, with the same system transforming some crates into time-stoppers. And once again, if you take on the time attack challenge by picking up the stopwatch at the beginning of a beaten level, all checkpoints disappear. As if this game wasn’t already fucking hard enough.

Pictured: A screen I will never see by myself, outside of
watching other people's playthroughs.

I’ll do you one better. There’s an even meaner collectible that was added here: The N. Sanely Perfect Relic. To obtain one in a level, you must fulfill the requirements for all the gems (80%+ Wumpas and all crates), and reach the end without dying a single time. Once again, deaths in bonus stages don’t count, for what little respite that gives.  The N. Sanely Perfect Relics are necessary for full 106% completion of the game and to unlock the true ending, by the way. Yeah, no, I am NOT doing that. I give up. I am NOT interested in pursuing any of those, like I was for Gems in the remasters.

Final Words

Do the New Quantum Masks and their powers feel out of
place in the franchise? I'm ambivalent on that. However, I do
agree that they change the formula a lot. The Masks end
up stealing the show, and tacking on extra difficulty and a
need for insanely precise timing on top of everything else.

I think I’ve made my point abundantly clear by now: While I do think this game looks great, plays very well and has an excellent story, it’s also way too hard for its own good. It stops being the kind of platform game that exists to be tough but fair, and crosses that line into platformers that exist to be hard, borderline unfair on purpose (think Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy). It’s already a struggle just finishing the damn thing, and then if that still isn’t enough you’ve got like a half-dozen more challenges waiting. Beating the base story mode is doable; I’ve done it. But wherever I’ve looked I’ve read comments of people admitting they had given up on getting all the way up to 106% with this one due to its extreme difficulty. People wondering if they were the ones who’d gotten bad at gaming, then going back to the previous Crash games, and realizing that they are still playing those just fine; and no, it’s just this one that decided to turn the knob up to 12 (because 11 was also not enough).

Who decided to make the Bonus Stages so goddamn
hard as well? One misplay and you die!

Okay, so let’s be entirely clear here; if it weren’t for that specific aspect, I think I would genuinely love everything here. The game is genuinely gorgeous (my only issue regarding looks is that I think I haven’t entirely warmed up to Crash’s redesign), the music is great, there’s a wide variety of environments to explore, and that’s all genuinely nice. Even the few N. Verted stages I’ve played as a test put plenty of fun design twists.

Oh, there’s even some multiplayer options that I haven’t touched on! Like "Pass N. Play", so you can play alongside a friend(s), taking turns.

So many mechanics make it harder to find and break all
the crates. You really have to be a damn good surfer to
catch them all in these areas. To say nothing of the few
animal-riding segments!

While I may bemoan the lack of non-platform levels (barring segments harkening back to Crash’s essence, like the outrun parts, the animal-riding, or the jetboard), I think we had a nice compromise with all the playable characters. Tawna, Dingodile and Cortex add their own interesting gameplay twists, and their levels all involve different design philosophies. As examples: Tawna with her hookshot, Dingodile and his vacuum gun, and the puzzle aspect of Cortex and his ray that turns enemies into platforms. I poke fun at the four Quantum Masks and how their tricks are all stuff I’ve seen in other puzzle platformers, but they do add another dimension, pun intended. I just wished the game gave us more time to acquaint ourselves with each ability before throwing us into difficult sections damn near right away!

The gameplay of the other playable characters does add
a bit of freshness, though I think I would have preferred
if these second heroes had levels of their own more often,
instead of just offering alternate versions of ones we've
already played through.

And for what it’s worth, I will never complain about a game having more content than I will, personally, ever want to try out. Yeah, Crash 4 piles on extra challenges on top of something that’s already tough, but that’s just added value for those with more patience and skill than I have. I am not whining about the quantity of content, I am whining about the intensity of the base game alone! That said, since half the game is just repeating itself with a new coat of paint (the N. Verted levels), you cannot blame me or others for feeling like things are artificially lengthened, for those hunting the elusive 106% completion score in particular.

Honestly, I think I can trace back the issues to a few major design decisions: The levels are too long. If there was twice as many levels but they were half the length they are now, I feel it would have solved several issues on replayability and challenge. As they stand now, the length of levels impacts many other decisions, and also makes replaying them over and over for Gems and relics far more of a chore.

Can you see the hidden Gem? Yeah, good luck finding
them all across these long-ass levels.
Some are hidden in truly dastardly places.

Due to the Crash Bandicoot philosophy of having the camera be mostly static (you can pan a little in 4, but not a lot), some hidden Gems are shoved in places you are unlikely to ever notice or find without a guide. Oh, and the position of the hidden Gem changes in the N. Verted version of each level, too. Many stages just have too many damn crates, and the game loves to hide those behind platforms, where you can’t see them unless you come back and spin an area you can’t see. Or, they are sometimes in spots where you also can’t see them due to the camera – and that’s when they’re not disguised in the scenery! This is so much crueler than the position of crates in the original Crash trilogy, where you could often have a hidden crate or two in a level, but never that many!

That crate is indicative of a greater issue. But then again,
misjudging depth is common in Crash fake-2D areas.
Sure, you can just spin this one away, but you won't be
able to do that to every crate down the line.

Third and last, I remember praising the aspect of keeping some depth even in 2D-imitating levels and segments in the original trilogy. I do appreciate that Toys for Bob kept this for Crash 4, but it does lead to issues where misjudging the depth distance of an item or platform can cause you to miss it entirely. The first example that I can think of is attempting to jump on a crate above an electrified fence, and many times I missed the crate, landed on the fence, and died. Yes, the improved shadow under Crash and Coco can help (and it does, even when you’re playing on the smaller screen of a Switch, as I usually did), but it’s not a foolproof solution. Since you can only pan the camera, there are times where you won’t be able to see said shadow, and it can make some specific moments tougher than they should be.

I am NOT saying this is a bad game. This is, however, an instance of one omnipresent detail bringing down what is otherwise an excellent combination of elements. If you want to play Crash 4 – by all means, go for it. It deserves a lot of praise. But it’s also going to wipe the floor with your ass.

The Quick Reviews will be starting soon! (Hopefully!)