Crash Bandicoot™ 4: It’s About Time

Unfortunately, even upon replaying on PC, and after getting 106%, I can say with confidence this just isn't that great of a game, and it's really REALLY short if you're not a completionist. First, the controls: Outside of being able to Slide from Crawl, the controls are a massive downgrade from N.Sane trilogy, and it's not because you don't have your Crash 3 abilities, it's because Crash 4's general mechanics don't blend together naturally. For example, in the OG Crash games, none of your button inputs conflicted with another input outside of body-slam, in fact, they would usually work together, such as the Slide-Jump-Spin (SJS) from Crash 2, or the Slide-Jump-Long-Spin-Double-Jump from Crash 3, making the movement feel 'complete' in Crash 2/3, with a nice skill-ceiling to the timing - SJS was originally a bug in Crash 2, but Naughty Dog had kept it as a feature, having realized its gameplay potential in Crash 3. In Crash 4 however, SJS and its variants are gone completely, instead there's a Slide-Spin in its place; this Slide-Spin doesn't serve much purpose, with very few exceptions outside of Time Trials, and is very restricting - no SJS, no combos - because of this, Crash 4 is limited to Slide-Double-Jump as its standard form of movement, which feels overall lackluster & terrible, especially given that double-jump kills momentum so hard in Crash 4. Side-Character's are another good example of botched controls - outside of Side-Character's just feeling bad and unfinished compared to Crash - you're telling me Cortex can't have his Dash bound as Double-Jump, but I'm forced to have Dingo's Hover be tied to Double-Jump? It would've been so incredible to remap the controls for individual characters, as by default they're quite atrocious - but I suppose that's asking too much. Second, and most infamous, are the N-Verted & Side-Character levels: These are terrible, there really isn't many redeeming qualities to these levels, as their purpose is padding, and nothing more - otherwise, Crash 4 would be rather short, with only 11 levels more than Crash 3, not a great bargain there either. Side-Character stages continuing beyond their cutscene, forcing you to replay the level again, was also terrible padding - on ANY of the levels with multiple characters, you WILL play at least 6 times for completionist if you're perfect, 8 if you take your time (not including retries for Time Trials). N-Verted stages should have been optional gameplay filters you could apply, since the later ones do affect gameplay - making them mandatory for completionist was a terrible choice only made to pad the game out. The Flashback Tapes would've been perfect Bonus Rounds in the Cortex Castle Dimension - but it's only a couple levels long in 1996 Cortex's dimension, so they needed to find another way to pad it out; Flashback Tapes aren't bad per-say, as they're like the Deathless Routes from Crash 2, but they're so much less interesting without the level to accompany it. Third, and most painfully obvious, is that Toys 4 Bob clearly didn't polish the game as it needed - you can feel everything beyond Brio is just not thought-out as well, at all; barely functional at some parts, you feel it the most when doing Time Trials, and platforms randomly 'jitter' if you're going too fast, especially Toxic Tunnels - the trigger-zones in general, even the camera adjusters, are quite bad; dunno how they worked so well in the N.Sane trilogy. Fourth, this is minor, but the music was pretty lackluster, and there really isn't 'spooky' elements like the OG Crash games - makes me sad we didn't get all the OG environments or atmosphere. Overall: There's too many poor design choices, too little polish, and just not enough of that classic Crash Bandicoot feeling that made the OG games so legendary - I could play the originals again easily, but I'm never running a completionist of Crash 4 ever again - really only worth getting it on a steep sale, for a casual playthrough.