Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time Review
By: Jozef Kulik
Tags: Features, Gaming, PlayStation, Games, Review

The game’s level design feeds into its tight controls, challenging players across a vast variety of environments, and with an exciting array of both new and old abilities.

Simple platforming challenges that would feel frustrating in the original titles — or their remakes in the N. Sane Trilogy — are a joy to experience in Crash 4.

The new abilities featured generally aren’t anything new if you’ve been playing platformers over the past 10 years. You’ve got your gravity shifting, time slowing, dimention switching stuff, but they all work well as a means to spice up the gameplay in Crash 4.

Mechanical marvels

Like a expertly designed Mario level, you’ll see a new mechanic introduced and then gradually developed and varied throughout the course of the next few levels, building into truly impressive platforming challenges that task you to piece together your mastery of all of the challenges that preceded them.

Some mechanics are short lived, featuring in just one or two levels, and these are used to surprise the player just when you think you understand where things are leading.

The narrative is actually surprisingly full of twists and turns too. At several instances I thought that the game was going to end, only to find that there was another world, and then another world after that.

Part of that was just my content expectation from the previous Crash games. The original trilogy featured around 25 levels each, while Crash 4 features over 40 main levels, and 60 bonus stages.

The bonus stages are generally either variants of existing stages or opportunities to play as one of the newly introduced playable characters. That’s one of Crash 4’s big selling points, the idea that you can play as Tawna, N. Cortex, and Dingodile. For the most part, these levels are great diversions from the core, Crash Bandicoot formula. Dingo and Tawna both play like Crash (or Coco), with extra abilities. While Cortex has a mostly distinct moveset.

Patchy platforming

Unfortunately this is where my first gripe with the game really comes in. While these levels are enjoyable diversions, none of them feel quite as polished as the levels designed for Crash and Coco. Tawna and N. Cortex both feature mechanics where they shoot a projectile into enemies or crates in front of them, Cortex using a blaster to transform enemies into platforms, or destroy crates, and Tawna using a grappling hook to pull herself towards objects, stun enemies, or destroy crates. While for the most part, this works as intended, sometimes it can be a little particular with how accurate you need to be in directing these attacks— and this can really slow the pacing of the level down, or even lead to frustration when it gets you killed.

Dingo Dile on the other hand, actually feels really good to play. He’s a little slower than Crash, but it’s fun to feel more powerful, sucking crates into his vaccum cannon and swiping enemies away with his tail. The only issue with Dingo’s levels is that they tend to be overly long — with checkpoints feeling further apart than they are in the rest of the game.

None of these side characters are bad to play as — don’t get me wrong — but I couldn’t help but feeling that the level design or mechanics are a little less polished than that of Crash and Coco. As a result, I was usually eager to get these over and done with.

But, like many of the levels in Crash 4, these levels with the alternate characters are mostly optional. In fact, you don’t need to play even half of the levels featured in the game to see the basic ending.

Everything but the kitchen sink

The game is overflowing with extra content, and for the most part, this is a blessing. Once you’ve beaten the critical path, you still have all of the N. Verted levels to do, all of the time trials, you can go back and collect all of the boxes you missed in each level, you can complete the levels without dying to gain an extra gem.

Boss fights are among the game’s highlights too, each featuring unique stages and attack patterns. Sure, they all fall into a fairly predictable sequence, with Crash surviving waves of enemy attacks, before getting an opportunity to strike, but they pose satisfying challenges nonetheless. Particularly as they continually spout humorous one liners as Crash deflects their attacks, one by one.

There’s simply so much to do in Crash 4, and this will give people a reason to keep coming back to the game for many hours after the basic clear. In fact, the majority of content here is actually side content. And it’s rewarding to boot. Collect a certain number of gems in each level (through the normal version of the level, and the N. Verted version) and you’ll unlock an additional outfit.