Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time review: Best of the best

Quantum Masks

As you progress through the game you meet several new masks, similar to Aku Aku.

Unlike Aku Aku simply hovering around you an absorbing an attack, these new masks add awesome new abilities for your character.

There are four different ones in total. You don’t keep them for the whole stage but mostly a segment of the stage before the ultimately disappear. You can’t miss them. They will appear out of a hole in reality and automatically adhere to you.

Each of the four gives you a unique power. Whether it’s Kupuna-Wa allowing you to slow down time, Ika-Ika allowing you to distort gravitational pull, Lani-Loli allowing you to switch things in and out of existence, or my personal favorite ‘Akano, who gives you a violent dark matter spin that spins you so fast you can deflect projectiles and even fly through the air long distances as a jumping tornado.

The powers disappear automatically once you get through a certain part of the stage but luckily each mask automatically puts you in a really cool costume so it’s very easy to see when you no longer have those powers and you don’t suddenly jump into a pit thinking you’ll be able to tornado your way up and over something.

All of these features, nods, characters, accessibility features, power-ups and more mix together to make a near-perfect platformer. It’s still going to be a little more difficult than some people can handle and as my parent review will cover the death animations are a bit surprisingly hardcore but this all meshes together to create an incredible platforming experience, especially to fans of old school 3D ones.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.