Review cover Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Nintendo Switch)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

  • Release Date (NA): March 11, 2021
  • Release Date (EU): March 11, 2021
  • Release Date (JP): March 11, 2021
  • Publisher: Activision
  • Developer: Toys For Bob
  • Genres: Platform
  • Also For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Game Features:

Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
He's back and zanier than ever with this wumpa-filled port, showing off just what the team at Toys For Bob can do!

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Crash is back, and honestly, it really is About Time! Crash Bandicoot Warped landed back in 1998, so it's been a whopping 22 years since we last originally enjoyed the series trilogy and, though there have been four spinoff titles, four racing games, a mobile game and 2017's remastered trilogy, this is the actual, real, fully certified fourth game according to the Bandicoot's creators.

Built around the Unreal Engine, Crash 4 goes out guns blazing from the very beginning, really flexing the compression methods it has employed to get this game as much as running on the Nintendo Switch. It has taken five months to shoehorn this 45gb PS4 game into just 9GB for the hybrid portable; overall everything is slightly flatter, slightly blurrier, but its essence and feel are clearly essentially all there! Upon firing the game up I was immediately concerned, though. The much-beloved Activision swirling letters animation was insanely choppy and the proceeding animation reminded me of the Spider-Verse movie with its skipping every other frame to produce a unique aesthetic. However, this didn't feel like an intentional stylistic choice, more one of obvious compression.

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Getting into the main menu, my worries were allayed as everything looked and felt like its bigger sibling's menus and animations. I had real concerns that this was going to feel like playing the GBA version of Tekken (Tekken Advance) all over again; the resolution was pitiful, the frames chopped to all heck, and even with the core ideology still intact, it just doesn't stand up against the PS1 version, not even nearly.

Crash 4 kicks off with a very retro-inspired feeling of tropical tiki island life, with all the typical cliché accoutrement you would expect. This eases you back into the ingrained image of Crash we all have, washing up on a beach and starting his vertically-oriented escapade, adventuring and exploring on into the background, rather than horizontally lolloping around. Not to be outdone, and in some ways to harken back to those days, Crash 4 seamlessly switches between these orientations and allows for more typical 2D platforming in some sections, whereas others opt for action-packed 3D explorative, sometimes almost frame perfect-feeling gameplay. It's not open-world by any means, and this is a great thing. There is no chance of feeling lost or not knowing which direction to take. I would describe it best as: funnelled and relatively linear, but with so many secrets to discover when you veer slightly off that beaten path. With a hearty mix of 43 levels, 20+ flashback stages, 43 N Verted levels, 5 major boss fights, Crash 4 really pushes you to fill out every checkbox in the 100+ level strong lineup. It should be noted that you only need to beat the core 43 stages to finish the story segment, but there is plenty to come back to in future if you want to obsessive-compulsively tidy up the multiverse.

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Controlling the characters is relatively straightforward. Jumping, sliding and crouching all become second nature before long, but don't forget to master the rail sliding/hanging/jumping/swinging sections as they require quick thinking and almost frame perfect timing to get every box and fruit in one gnarly swoosh. I was unable to wrap my brain around some of the sections that required me to jump, slide, or hang in various combinations, and I frequently died until I surrendered to the fact that I couldn't bang those stages out in one go. It was insanely difficult to synchronise my brain into going high or low to avoid the obstacles and I honestly had to step away from the game for 20 minutes or so at one point to chill myself out and regain some semblance of composure. On other levels, you have Mask powers that activate and deactivate with the "X" button and essentially phase objects in or out of existence. It was a brain bender for sure, and once you achieve those dizzying heights of mastering those sections there is a definite endorphin rush and an elation at the end...only to discover you missed ten or so boxes somewhere along the lines and would definitely be revisiting that level again in future!

To really kick you while you're down and rub acidic wumpa juice into your wounds, there is a death counter. I don't know which sadist thought it would be smart to include this feature, but my goodness, just seeing that skull icon increment made me more and more outlandishly furious at every turn. I remember getting to around fifteen deaths on one level and again having to put myself in a time-out.

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The developers have undoubtedly raised the bar and pushed the Nintendo Switch to a new height with this level of optimisation and technical wizardry. Though it will never be on par with a 4K locked 40-60fps experience that a PlayStation 4 Pro or PS5 could give you, the ability to seamlessly take this one the go with you makes it actually a decent way to enjoy this title whilst out and about. Unreal Engine's temporal upsampling definitely makes the best use of the assets available in such a compressed port. You might be missing reflections, dynamic lighting and screen space effects such as motion blur or bokeh, but Crash 4 retains 99% of its charm and style thanks to some pretty smart choices in the optimisation department.

If you're craving something taxing, with plentiful items to discover and heaps of replayability, you cannot go wrong with Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. Just expect some really difficult sections to really cheese you off and you won't be shocked at the unapologetic level of N'Sanity you will have to endure to get to the N'd of the game.

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Solid gameplay throughout with epic moments and boss battles to enjoy
  • Incredibly well-ported given the clear limitations
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Difficulty ramps up too quickly
  • Can feel really daunting at times if you get frustrated easily
8
Gameplay
With a difficulty spike coming after just a handful of levels this is not a game you can whizz through and 100% with ease unless you're some kind of Bandicoot taming prodigy. This game sets out with tonnes to unlock, new characters to play as and some really devious challenges that will keep you coming back for more: if you're up to the task?
8
Presentation
Fun, funky and vibrant: Crash 4 certainly fits in with the original trilogy and reinvigorates the series once more. Everything is meticulously well designed and superbly thought out. The side-scrolling segments combined with the standard platforming and then juxtaposed with the endless running toward the screen culminates in an incredible experience: even in handheld!
9
Lasting Appeal
Crash 4 has a plethora of unlockables and secrets within its mere 9GB confines, that you will have plenty to go back and find. From 100%'ing the crates to obtaining all the tapes and decimating those challenges you get a lot of bang for your buck with this title!
8
out of 10

Overall

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is clearly chopped down and squeezed into portable form, but where sacrifices in framerate, draw distance, pop-in, LOD and resolution have been made they're relatively minor and entirely forgivable in the overall collect-a-thon fun-fest you're able to play on your TV and on the move!
I bought this game for the switch when it came out. I haven't played it yet. my friend @Glyptofane told me the game can be quite difficult, but that it's good. I'll have to read over this review to see what I'm in for. :D
 
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I remember liking this game as a kid, now I see they are fairly primitive all around, both old and new instalments.

Nope. You never played this game as a kid. ;) And primitive all around? Why? Because it's not open world? Elaborate on why you feel it's primitive, please, instead of making such a generalized statement with nothing to back it.
 
Did the same thing I did with the trilogy: bought on ps4 first, sold, picked up later on Switch

the ps5 version looks gorgeous from footage, but I prefer portability for crash

no regrets
 
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Did the same thing I did with the trilogy: bought on ps4 first, sold, picked up later on Switch
It's the opposite for me. I bought N Sane Triology on Switch and kind of regret the choice of platform due to performance, but still think I can live without rebuying it on PS4 unlike with Bloodstained... for now.
 
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It's the opposite for me. I bought N Sane Triology on Switch and kind of regret the choice of platform due to performance, but still think I can live without rebuying it on PS4 unlike with Bloodstained... for now.

Yeah the load times for trilogy aint great but it was a concession I was willing to make

Pleasantly surprised that Crash4 on switch loads faster than Crash4 did on my ps4 pro in the winter from memory. That's probably changed with some patches, certainly changed with the ps5 version, but its quite zippy all things considered on Switch

Graphical downgrade for both - to be certain - as a given
 
Nope. You never played this game as a kid. ;) And primitive all around? Why? Because it's not open world? Elaborate on why you feel it's primitive, please, instead of making such a generalized statement with nothing to back it.
Well I mean its his opinion and I actually agree with it. I loved playing crash 2 and 3 and liked 3 more. But now I can't go back and play them again cause their controls feel weird and they're not precise at all. Looking at mario 64 you can tell the controls for sm64 are so much better.
For crash 4 it does control better but yea I don't know it just doesn't feel right
 
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Played alot of it on pc! Didn't finish it but what I played was fun & a bit hard but i like that...
 
Well I mean its his opinion and I actually agree with it. I loved playing crash 2 and 3 and liked 3 more. But now I can't go back and play them again cause their controls feel weird and they're not precise at all. Looking at mario 64 you can tell the controls for sm64 are so much better.
For crash 4 it does control better but yea I don't know it just doesn't feel right

Crash 3 on the PS1 has the best controls of all the games. Second is original Crash Team Racing.
 
As I kid I never got to have much of a sway on the games we had, more what my brother asked for, and what mostly licensed games they got for me.

but in our case case full of Ps2 games, there was about 4 or so PS1 games, the original pro skater, Winnie the Pooh the board game, and Crash 3, on of the first two games I ever completed from start to finish without cheating “The other being kingdom hearts 2”

i loved it had a kid, forgot mostly about it I tilt he N’dane trilogy came out, and then bought that and loved all three games.

now the forth? I actually got the switch version for road trip portability, and it holds up great, considering I didn’t play N’sane all that much however, and never touched the games after three, even on a handheld the game looks great.

performance wise my biggest complaint is the lowest frame rate cutscene in the game, which is the Toys for Bob logo, sense you have to see it every time the game loads, it is especially annoying.
 
i always tough to myself, why people like crash? its a barebones 3d on a corridor platformer imo.

I always loved spyro and mario much better, the open worlds platforming was so much better than those tiny corridors or straight up 2.5d platforming that crash does use.
 
It can be quite hard specifically a level at the end...I’ve died 169 times in Neo Cortex Castle level while i’ve beaten any other level with less than 30 lives...
 
i always tough to myself, why people like crash? its a barebones 3d on a corridor platformer imo.

I always loved spyro and mario much better, the open worlds platforming was so much better than those tiny corridors or straight up 2.5d platforming that crash does use.

I never got a Nintendo 64 when I was younger, so I missed on the 3d Mario games for a few years, but on the PS1, the first three Crash games were among the best for that console. The third one specifically, had a bit more variety than the other two, with jet ski levels, aerial combat and levels where you could ride a lion on the Great Wall of China. There was also a different animation for almost every death, either being cut in half, squashed, blown up with only your shoes and eyeballs remaining, and many others. Again, this doesn't seem like much, but I feel like back then this gave you an incentive to explore everything the game had to offer, even if you messed up, you would at least get to see a fun animation. So maybe it's the nostalgia, but I think the older Crash games were great and are still fun to play.
 
I never got a Nintendo 64 when I was younger, so I missed on the 3d Mario games for a few years, but on the PS1, the first three Crash games were among the best for that console. The third one specifically, had a bit more variety than the other two, with jet ski levels, aerial combat and levels where you could ride a lion on the Great Wall of China. There was also a different animation for almost every death, either being cut in half, squashed, blown up with only your shoes and eyeballs remaining, and many others. Again, this doesn't seem like much, but I feel like back then this gave you an incentive to explore everything the game had to offer, even if you messed up, you would at least get to see a fun animation. So maybe it's the nostalgia, but I think the older Crash games were great and are still fun to play.
still predered spyro 10 times over any crash game to be honest, even on ps1 days.
 
still predered spyro 10 times over any crash game to be honest, even on ps1 days.

They are totally different games, how can you compare a 3D explore platform experience with a true native platform with some 3D? Crash is all about timing and precision like the good old arcade platform games.
 
They are totally different games, how can you compare a 3D explore platform experience with a true native platform with some 3D? Crash is all about timing and precision like the good old arcade platform games.
I said as a game i prefer much more spyro, doesn't matter if its a different genre or anything for me spyro was much better overall game than crash was each on their own genres, spyro deserve much more overall recognition as a ps game than crash imo.
 
I said as a game i prefer much more spyro, doesn't matter if its a different genre or anything for me spyro was much better overall game than crash was each on their own genres, spyro deserve much more overall recognition as a ps game than crash imo.

I would say they both deserve the same recognition, and they both got it with their trilogy remasters. but speaking of sequels, I think I would be more excited to play Spyro 4 (if it existed) than Crash 4.
 
Review cover
Product Information:
  • Release Date (NA): March 11, 2021
  • Release Date (EU): March 11, 2021
  • Release Date (JP): March 11, 2021
  • Publisher: Activision
  • Developer: Toys For Bob
  • Genres: Platform
  • Also For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

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