Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time review: Best of the best
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time checks off everything on the list, gang.
Title: Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time
Developer: Toys for Bob
Publisher: Activision
Platforms: PlayStation 4 (reviewed on), Xbox One
Release Date: October 2, 2020
First off, I don’t know if you saw I recently previewed the Crash Bandicoot 4 demo. The full version of the game caught me off guard because while the demo was fun and difficult, it lacked a lot of variety and wonder that this game packs in it. It’s sort of like a restaurant coming up with an incredible dish and promoting it by showing off the plate it’ll be served on.
Crash Bandicoot 4 has everything I wanted in a platformer and it’s actually all presented in wonderful ways.
Right out the gate, the first thing I noticed is that the game has more accessibility options than I knew what to do with, which was awesome. Not only are there three different colorblind modes but sliders to adjust them further. I know quite a bit of color-blind people so that’s a killer thing to add.
The Closed Captioning, which is normally as detailed as “off and on,” happens to have five different adjustment options. For someone like me who has a hard time hearing, it’s really nice to have captions set how I want them.
When you’re ready to actually get into the game, you’ll notice that they went insane filling the game with visual charm. After a fun cutscene explaining why there hasn’t been a new game in so long, you’re thrown back to the start of the original Crash Bandicoot stage only this time Crash has made himself comfy. A beach-side bar, a couch under an umbrella and a nice little wink in the form of a Spyro pool floaty welcome you to the first stage.
The game throws a ton of excellent nods at you and seems to be designed by people who know exactly how you’re going to want to play. In some of the stages, the villain N. Brio (say it out loud) starts talking to you via potion bottles. I wanted him to stop so I could focus and ran off to the side and hit it. Not only did it smash, stopping the dialogue, but I got a trophy for it.
And even if the stages and the details start getting stale for you, there’s a lot of reason to keep going in the form of unlockable costumes. Every single stage in the game has an unlockable costume for either Coco or Crash but to do it you have to unlock all six gems in that stage which is not easy.
But the skins are actually really well done and, in many cases, change up the character model as opposed to just doing reskins (which, surprisingly, none of the costumes are). You can even change the skins on both Crash and Coco. In my case, I was playing as Coco but had both characters in their “Totally Tubular” 90’s clothing. I was really happy to see both characters were wearing the looks I chose for them in the next cutscene.
But now that we’ve talked about the game’s charm and how it looks, let’s talk about how it plays.