Crash 4 is an enjoyable experience that will entice new and old to the series. The gameplay loop has been designed elegantly so that levels never feel taxing, but rather feels refreshing. No level makes you do the same thing over and over again, there is a wonderful mixture of features. This includes adding new masks and playable characters that break up the monotony of playing as regular Crash. The level design and graphics alone, are enough to leave you in awe. The pros of It's About Time by far outweigh the cons making it one of the best Crash adventures.
It’s About Time is not only the title of Crash Bandicoot 4, but it is how I have felt after waiting years for a sequel to Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. The latest installment of Crash is a fantastic way to revive the series, although there are a large number of gimmicks that take away from the core game, which will be discussed in this review. Regardless of gimmicks, Toys For Bob has created a worthy fourth game, especially when it is purely Crash going through levels and breaking crates.
Picking up where we left off and improving
Years after Crash Warped made its way to consoles, we are reintroduced to our villain, Dr. Neo Cortex, who, with an accomplice, is stuck in a barren dimension. With the help of Uka Uka, the team opens a rift between dimensions and thus sets off the story and sets in motion the main goal of the game, which is to traverse through different dimensions to reunite the masks of the universe. As you progress through the story, you learn about each mask’s unique ability, their backstory, and how said ability can be activated as you wear them.
The story is very Crash and doesn’t waste too much time getting to the gameplay.
As soon as the gameplay gets going, we get to see the impressive graphics, as the world looks beautiful, the colors mixed with the shadows are magnificent, as this game certainly presents itself as the presentation crown jewel of the series. Toys For Bob seemed to improve almost every visual aspect of the title, even going as far as to overhaul the different crates. It might sound silly to point out such a small improvement, but in previous games, the crates just looked like brown fuzzy cubes. Now, they have texture and look to be made of wood as if it was a real crate. The difference between the crates was notable as well. Often in the original trilogy, you could mistake the types of crates, as they seemed to blend in with each other. In It’s About Time the differences were apparent and it was exciting to see keen attention to detail that only helps to enhance the experience.
Again, the presentation in this game is unrivaled when compared to other games in the series. It’s just absolutely breathtaking.
Same old Crash, but that’s great!
What It’s About Time does best is being a Crash Bandicoot game. When it strays away from that, the game isn’t as exciting. The platform design is stellar, with levels that would rival Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back. The early levels are the best because it is simply solving the puzzles, collecting the wumpa fruit, crates, and gems. It’s pure Crash and that is what you want from a Crash game. That doesn’t mean that Toys For Bob didn’t take chances. They certainly did with mask usage in the game, offering up different abilities and extending the gameplay in unique directions. The attempt was certainly made to expand the gameplay design in the Crash universe, but the masks become gimmicky quick and seem to stray away from what Crash fans might be expecting. Sometimes change is nice, though, and the attempt was very commendable.
The new masks add a whole new element to the game. The designs of the platforms become radically different. For instance, one of the masks allows you to invert Crash’s gravity. Using the mask allows Crash to naturally pull himself upward instead of towards the ground, all while the camera remains in the same state. This is just one of the few new abilities that are introduced. I found that this particular mask to be the most infuriating, as it makes jumps even more complicated, though Toys For Bob tries to help with that aspect of the game (jumping), which we will discuss later.
As much as I didn’t enjoy the gravity mask, there are some really good ones along the journey. There is a mask that slows time to a near halt, which might be my favorite in the game. I never found it to be annoying or breaking part of the experience, rather it was fun and felt natural to the flow of the game, which is what you want with the gameplay design and execution. Slowing time enhanced different gameplay aspects, as a large piece of playing Crash Bandicoot is trial and error. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t so you can solve the puzzle and platform is helped by the slow time mask.
Moving on from masks, another big plus for the game was the inclusion of a yellow circle underneath the character. In previous iterations, when jumping, you had to rely on the shadow underneath the character, as well as your best judgment, to land perfectly. Half the frustration of Crash throughout its history was making a leap of mathematically calculated faith over pits and whatnot, especially on the fly. Now, there is an indicator that allows you to see exactly where your character will land after a jump. The new feature does not necessarily make the game easier, but it makes it less frustrating. There will be plenty of moments where you just absolutely will fail at a jump — REGARDLESS of the yellow circle. Making the game easier is certainly straying far away from the core Crash experience.
Other aspects of the Crash that are so Crash (and so not)
In the past, the unpopular levels were the ones devoted to a feature. For example, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped had motorcycle levels, Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back‘s had the levels where you rode Polar. There was always something that stood out in each Crash game that either people adored or drove them nuts, maybe both depending. Crash 4 contains no levels dedicated to one particular feature that stood out, rather. Each level had an excellent balance of features and mechanics sprinkled in. If there was a level that had you run from a large enemy, that was not the whole level like it has been in the past. The large enemy chasing crash was just a corner piece of the big puzzle. Along these same lines, there was a balance with the use of the masks. Depending on where you are in the story, different masks will appear scattered throughout the level. When you first unlock a new mask, there is usually one level that has a lot of you testing out that mask, but it does not stay like this for long. You will quickly either lose that specific mask or just transition to a separate one.
What has been a reliable component in each Crash game, for good/bad is the camera. Some of the more challenging aspects of the series revolved around camera control. For me, the camera was never really an issue in previous Crash Bandicoot games, but I found it to be a little burdensome at times with Crash 4, though nothing detrimental to the majority of the game. The burden came in moments rather than the entire experience. For example, there were moments where it seemed to be stuck or became unruly during rail sliding. The camera was put into a weird position that made the perspective difficult to judge jumps on, which added some frustration to the gameplay. Again, small spurts of burden, but nothing that followed throughout the gameplay. Since there are different characters you can play as the camera also varied for them as well.
New playable characters are a portion of the game. I found some characters more enjoyable than others. The neat factor about the new characters is that you only have to play with them once to beat the main story. If you are a completionist, then you will have to go back through these levels though.
