Crash Banditcoot 4 Review - About time indeed!

By Sam Coles:

After the success of the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy people wondered if Activision were working on a sequel, fast forward three years later we now have Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. A wonderful play on words with the fact that it is a true sequel to Crash Bandicoot 3, as well as it being about travelling through time and space. Is Crash 4 a worthy sequel to the original PlayStation trilogy? Let’s find out!

Crash Bandicoot 4 takes place after the events of the first game; Neo Cortex still salty about his defeat by the orange bandicoot keeps imaging scenarios where he defeats him. Meanwhile his band of goons find a way to tear a rift through time and space (hence the title), where they can defeat Crash and his friends in different parallel worlds. So Crash must defeat them once more the only way he knows how, by spinning around and breaking everything like a drunkard in the centre of Bristol on a Friday night. The story is entertaining and well-acted from the cast; it’s over the top and made me laugh in a few places with Clancy Brown once again stealing the show as Cortex.

Gameplay is what you would expect from the first era of Crash Bandicoot, you make your way through linear yet tough levels breaking every single box you find as well as trying to do it in a speedy fashion. So far rather standard which is not  a bad thing as it goes back to what makes the series so good and compelling, but it adds in some new elements with the masks you get to play around with.

These add an extra layer of complexity to the platforming, these can range from making platforms appearing from other dimensions, a spin attack that is continuous which lets you float for a short period, anti-gravity and one that lets you slow down time. Each mask has been catered to the levels they appear in, but they can overdo it in some stages as it gets insanely precise.

Control wise this is in my opinion the best controlling Crash Bandicoot game I have played, the jumps have weight to them but not too heavy like the N. Sane Trilogy you can easily gauge where you are going to land. Crash’s overall movement just feels tight and responsive, which helps with the higher framerate which tries to maintain 60 frames per second but I will get into that later. Plus it still feels so good to smash boxes, which is helped by the excellent sound design. I will never get tired of belly flopping onto a stack of boxes, with that crunchy box breaking noise.

Presentation wise the game looks fantastic, I remember seeing a few who were a bit sceptical due to the game not using realistic fur effects. However the cartoony aesthetic works in the game’s favour, as it looks like a Pixar animation come to live in interactive form. The game is very colourful and varied; you start off in familiar territory at N. Sanity beach and move onto to the more bizarre worlds that are neon lit. Overall presentation is absolutely superb!

Now the only issue I had with the game was the framerate, I played this on a standard PS4 and as Digital Foundry highlighted in their analysis of the game it targets 60 frames per second. However the base machines really struggle to stick to that target and the PS4 floats around 40 frames, and it is worse on a normal Xbox One. What would have been nice if there was a framerate limiter to lock at 30, I’m not a framerate snob but if you going to target a specific number it needs to be consistent.

Overall Crash Bandicoot 4 was a blast from start to finish, these retro revivals of old franchises have been fantastic this year and this game was another excellent addition to the movement. It’s bright, colourful, funny and a joy to play. I highly recommend this platforming adventure!