Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (PS4 / Xbox One)

[Sonictrainer]

So apparently, there was a new Crash Cartoon that was cancelled...

 

 

[Echidna Adventurer CC14]

Crash 4 is headed Switch and next-gen next month! Excited to finally play this. I wasn't counting on it happening this soon.

[Jango]

Aw yes! PC at a later date aswell. I'm holding by breath for some DLC content, but I reaaaaaally hope they fix some of the glitches.

[Sonicka]

Because like the others before it... we all knew a switch port was coming at some point. XD

I won't pretend to understand the logistics behind the segmented workloads in activation for porting... but this definately should that have come out alongside the PS4/ONE releases last year.

However I get it. I get it. And kudos to them for marketing and releasing this alongside the other "upgraded ports", it's clever and appears less sleazy to the casual consumer. Undoubtedly the switch version will technically be 'the worst' of all of them, but will be the version to generate to most sales with the install base (especially considering PS4/ONE owners of it already get free upgrades) so It makes sense. 

On the plus - a great game is finally coming to all platforms! 

EDIT: Watched the switch trailer... and unsurprisingly it looks pretty rough. Oh my. They used the old trick of hiding 1 second snippets of in game footage within cutscenes.

They even had the balls to show a screen displaying an end of the level with an all to familiar '99/100' boxes display... followed by crash and coco's disappointed faces. Those trolling bastards.

[Jango]

Interview with some extra details:

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/02/interview_an_exclusive_chat_with_lou_studdert_on_crash_bandicoot_4s_ps5_upgrade

 

What's next for Toys for Bob, or indeed Crash Bandicoot?

Honestly, this is it. I mean we're focused on bringing [Crash 4] to additional platforms, and you know, just really excited to be getting the game into the hands of more players.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

51 minutes ago, Son-icka said:

I won't pretend to understand the logistics behind the segmented workloads in activation for porting... but this definately should that have come out alongside the PS4/ONE releases last year.

Oh, the reason and logistics by Activision standards are obvious: to make more money with the double dipping factor, especially from people who initially feared it wouldn't come to their console of preference so they bought it earlier.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Since it doesn’t say in the tweet - anyone who has it on PS4/Xbox One gets a free upgrade to the PS5/Series X versions.

[Cayenne]

1 hour ago, Son-icka said:

Because like the others before it... we all knew a switch port was coming at some point. XD

I won't pretend to understand the logistics behind the segmented workloads in activation for porting... but this definately should that have come out alongside the PS4/ONE releases last year.

From what I've seen, Switch ports of Activision games usually take more time to be released because they are handled by different developers. The Switch version of N.Sane Trilogy was made by Toys For Bob instead of Vicarious Visions, for example.

Games like Crash 4 were made for powerful consoles first so it wouldn't be surprising if Switch ports are seen as different things by Activision. They didn't even think that N.Sane would be playable on a Switch until a lone developer ported one of the levels in his free time.

[PC the Hedgehog]

I honestly didn't expect it to come to other consoles so soon. Figured it would be later in the year, but I'm happy to be wrong.

Actually, that makes several new games coming out in March that I'm excited about. Ooh, my poor wallet.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

PS5 features: 

• Native 4K 60FPS
• Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers (examples given: Cortex’s mutation gun, Tawna’s hookshot)
• Faster level loading 
• 3D Audio
• Free upgrade path if you own either the digital or physical edition of the game

Source: 

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/02/09/crash-bandicoot-4-its-about-time-coming-to-ps5-march-12/

[Danj86]

I held off on getting Crash 4 in specific hope that it made it to the Switch.

That and it's Activision. I don't trust Activision.

[Graystripe2000]

Well. I think I know what I’m getting for my birthday.

[Graystripe2000]

Not to double post, but, Switch gameplay. 

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

PS5/Series X

[Harkofthewaa]

I already got the One version, it'll be nice to upgrade to my Series X... if I can sodding find one. Stupid scalpers.

[Jango]

Barely any difference when it's running on Switch, which is nice. It's good that it's Toys for Bob who's doing the port job, NST was pretty well done from what I heard. And the next-gen ports are just even more amazing, damn. Makes me wish I could FIND a PS5 xD Best looking Crash game just gets even more beautiful. Hopefully they'll keep this art style for Crash 5.

[Sonicka]

Yeah the above footage was a lot less worrying than the trailer. I will say at least they have it running at a locked 30fps on switch (which is better than how the base systems got treated last gen) - and considering how gorgeous this game looks that's pretty awesome.

However having played it at 60fps on my PS4Pro... well, I can't go back. I'm not a graphics whore and any additional visual downgrades they may have needed to make to get this to work on Switch wouldn't have been a problem for me at all... but I'll always prefer the higher FPS where possible. That's not to say 30fps is bad by any means as that's a standard - but man is a higher frame rate more preferable, especially for a platformer. 

C'mon Nintendo - Switch Pro us already!!

[Jango]

So, that's kinda cool:

But why do they keep making these fake screenshots with Aku-Aku following Crash when that's not how it is in Crash 4? XD C'mon, Toys for Bob, add an "classic Aku-Aku" option or something or stop teasing uuuuuss

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

On 11/27/2020 at 10:16 PM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Even Tag Team Racing's costume mechanics is ruined by the gem hunting, and the ridiculous requirements in later parts of the game.

That reminds me of when it was rumored that the Wumpa fruit would act as currency for the costumes.

Whatever happened to that? Sure would've made getting costumes more bearable and less time consuming. 

[Graystripe2000]

PC version coming March 26th. 

https://twitter.com/CrashBandicoot/status/1370404218142613504

[Harkofthewaa]

 

 Nice. How much you wanna bet it has Denuvo too?

[Ryannumber1gamer]

After many weeks of bashing my head at these levels over and over again, I've finally done it. I've beaten Crash 4 fully - 106%. All platinum relics, all perfect relics, all flashbacks, all gems. Everything but the purple relics, which aren't required for completion.

Proof:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/11511-crash-bandicoot-4-its-about-time/ryannumber3gamer

So with that, I think you can consider this an addition to my previous impression posts on Crash 4, as well as a continuation of my points on the game's completion requirements that I made before. Having done these now has provided more of a first-hand perspective.

So I'll start with the simplest point - Crash 4 is a janky, frustrating game.

Yes, really. It's one of those games that if you were to play it start to finish, it's a great time, a blast to play, with well-designed levels and mechanics. When you can use the new modern mode to make mistakes less punishing, and to up the skill ceiling significantly. 

And on the point of the skill ceiling, I think it's fair to say that I've got a whole new opinion on Crash's movement in general. I used to dislike the alterations to the physics. It wasn't anything like previous games. The double and slide jumps acted completely differently. But I think they'd actually really great when you get used to them. It's super fun using the slide's minor fall delay to combo into double jumps and reach some insane heights/pass large gaps. Slide spins are great for gaining speed, and when you get used to it, being able to hit crates while standing still so you only hit one specific crate can be used in interesting ways.

But where Crash 4 absolutely falls apart like cheap toilet paper is when the game even remotely asks you to start optimising yourself, when it starts asking you for perfection, because simply put - it is not built for it.

There are so many times in this game where you will die, and lose runs for things that are completely on the game, things that are not in your control, solely because TfB screwed the pooch on it.

First things first - there's just inconsistency. The game has this massive reliance on cycles, where everything is on a cycle, and you need to rely on these cycles for good runs. This gets to the point of the game asking you to straight up predict cycles seconds before you enter that area in order to get the perfect set-up to blitz through them. Ropes in levels like N Sanity Peak, and Jetboard Jetty, the fishermen in Snow Way Out, machinery in Cortex's levels, this game is dominated by them, through and through. And while it might not effect much in perfect runs, it will make platinum relics an absolute nightmare to play through.

Second up - crate jumps. These are one of the worst things in the game by a long shot, solely because so many situations straight up become do or die scenarios. You see, the short version is Crash's double jump is actually fantastic in this game, seriously. It's perfect for slowing you down enough to let you specifically choose where you'll fall. The amount of precision control this jump provides you is just fantastic, and one of the best moveset additions.

Unfortunately, Toys for Bob also screwed it up. Because there's a hidden mechanic in the game, one that might as well be RNG. The game will randomly disable your double jumps if it thinks you're trying to bounce off a crate. Yes, instead of just letting you hold down the jump button as you fall towards a crate, instead the game tries to lock you into it at random points. The end of this is that while you're trying to do a double jump in order to control your landing and land on precision crates, the game instead decides "you're trying to bounce off this crate, so you can only hold X" - which means what will happen is you'll only do a single jump, the game ignores your double jump input, you'll overshoot the mark, and then dead.

It genuinely can't be overstated how genuinely awful this one in particular is. It legitimately just disables your inputs because the game makes dumb assumptions upon what you're attempting to do, leading to so many failed attempts as a result.

Thirdly - alternative characters. I officially hate each and every one of them. Yet again, it's a result of the game asking you to optimise these characters for scenarios where it feels like they weren't designed for, and thus revealing the cracks in them.

Tawna feels like an incredibly gimped version of Crash. She runs slower, her attack is far more inconsistent, to the point that it's a regular occurrence that an attack manages to kill an enemy, but they ALSO manage to kill you at the same time, her kick is garbage for trying to hit time crates with any kind of precision, and Tawna easily has the worst level design out of the characters for the amount of hidden boxes in her stages. Because of her hookshot, they love hiding crates into the backgrounds of stages, and because they're deep into the background, it's incredibly difficult to actually see them, even when you're specifically scanning around for them. Then you have her hookshot...and well just keep that in mind for later. 

Cortex is awful. Straight up. No other words for it. Awful. Cortex is a puzzle platformer character being asked that you speed-run through levels with him. Something you'd think would be built for him due to his dash, but trying to aim Cortex towards various places is difficult enough as is, there's platforms in levels like Shipping Error where attempting to dash to moving platforms is inconsistent, and only works about 70% of the time,  and to boot - his gameplay is also reliant on cycles. There's tons of stages where you have to wait for enemies to get into certain positions, and they have to be just right, or else you're going to die. And when you're attempting to speed run through levels, that is just not good enough. You can lose upwards of 10 to 15 seconds alone from these time-wasters. And his ray gun...we'll get there

And then you have Dingodile, who I had to admit - is probably the best out of the three, if only because the game recognises there isn't a super ton of stuff you can do to optimise him through levels (barring...ugh...Rock Blocked, which is...we'll get there). He's just a slow character but his hover and level design makes it that it isn't ultimately that bad for him. That said, he still has his share of finicky, gimmicky bullshit, including random crates not being sucked up, or taking longer to suck up TNT crates, and so on, and on the note of his air cannon and firing things out of it...

Yeah, we're there. The biggest issue all three of these characters have is one they all share, and it's one that's very, very simple. The aiming mechanic in this game is absolute. dog. shit. It makes Nina's gameplay from Twinsanity look like polished gold in comparsion. This is going to be one of the biggest points of absolute frustration in the game for you. In both perfect, and time relics. The auto-aiming in this game is absolutely horrendous, and completely random.

There is so many times where Tawna will miss hookshot targets right in front of her. Literal stacks of crates in front of her where she'll still veer off to the very left or very right of the boxes. In fact, I once had a fun target misfire where in Rush Hour, there's a double stack of boxes to the right of a platform at the start of her section of the level, where the first stack has normal boxes, and the inner stack has a TNT. Correct way of doing it is use the hookshot to specifically hit crates in stack one, then use a jump box in stack 1 to jump up and get another box, drop down and then hit the TNT in stack 2 to blow them all up...and somehow Tawna's hookshot completely misses the first stack altogether and hits the TNT right behind said stack in stack 2. 

There's other times where Tawna's hookshot legitimately can't even hit lock on targets. I had instances in both Potion Commotion and Rush Hour where Tawna is supposed to do a wall jump, then hookshot to a lock on target in the far distance, except even with the hookshot target active and flashing blue, Tawna would still aim for the wall to her right instead of directly ahead, which can actually kill you in certain stages.

Cortex though, again - he's the worst. His gun is absolute shit, solely because he has no auto-locking system whatsoever, and on top of that - collision is so terrible in Crash 4 that Cortex can legitimately get his shots stuck on empty pieces of the stage. There's times in 2D sections where you'll be aiming left and right and still Cortex won't be able to hit anything because his shots are instead hitting empty stage collision which counts as a "wall". And while it's one thing in perfect runs where you can take your time (not much though because there's still tons of do or die shots where if you miss once, you can't go back), it breaks time trials.

You cannot take your time in time trials, you need to be constantly moving, constantly dashing. The trials, especially in levels like Double Trouble and Shipping Error are literally designed around you being able to move, turn quickly into a small doorway towards the north direction of the screen, shoot, and move along. But the window of being able to do so is so small, and so finicky due to this that it's genuinely jaw-dropping how they let it pass QA testing. It's bad enough trying to aim Cortex's dashes, but his gun is just straight up broken. It's bafflingly, even Twinsanity, all the way back in 2004 knew well-enough to have some kind of auto-lock and aiming reticule for a character who primarily uses a blaster.

There's also random mechanics that just love breaking randomly - in particular - Wall-running has a habit of just letting you fall to your death at random points through no fault of your own, or not even activating even though you clearly hit the wall. It will become especially frustrating in levels like Nitro Processing, Off-Balance, and Food Run where you have to rely on this mechanic to get through safely.

It comes off like Toys for Bob being absolutely terrified of trying to add anything that might not be 100% related to how the original trilogy handled HUD elements, and they went for the sake of visual consistency, instead of ease of use, which hurts the character far more as a result.

Dingodile, again - is probably the one who somewhat gets the least of the trouble from it, but he's still pretty awful as a result. A lot of Dingodile's boxes in various levels requires him picking up a TNT crate, aiming quickly, and launching it towards various crate stacks. And it's as inconsistent as Tawna's hookshot. Even more so of a problem however because with Tawna, time trials rarely require hookshotting crates, while Dingodile's on the other hand features a lot of firing TNT quickly towards either targets, or far off boxes, and missing once and screw the entire run up for you.

Then you just have the game's regular game glitches, ones that completely, and unfairly - ruin your runs. As a small rundown of the kind of things I experienced - I had times where I'd lose masks, or just straight up die by hitting random crates - yes - regular crates, ruining a run altogether. I've had the glitch I mentioned back in October where during sections, Crash and Coco would straight up just randomly lose all momentum as if they'd just randomly hit into an invisible wall in mid-air (something I can now put down to the janky collision present in the game). I've had stacks of boxes where I did the single standstill spin to hit the regular box, only for the game to randomly blow up the TNT/Nitro above/below it, I've had characters get stuck on random pieces of geometry, I've had characters randomly lose momentum jumping off ropes, leaving them either falling to their death, or missing critical jumps required for time trials, etc.

All that to come to the same conclusion - the fact that this game has the balls to ask you to be playing at your absolute peak, as Caddicarus said in his review - playing to complete perfection in both time, and perfect relics, is a total joke, when the game can't even have the same decency to be a well-polished experience. There's so many times where your defeats doesn't feel like your fault, but down to the game being buggy, or inconsistent with what works and doesn't work.

And that's still not the height of the issues either. Hitboxes are wonky at best, especially when you're rushing. Barring the already infamous animal-riding hitboxes, which I won't go into detail because they were patched and fixed, and they've already been talked about to death - Crash, Coco, Tawna, and Cortex are all horrendous inconsistent with their hitboxes. Tawna will miss boxes frequently because of how terrible her kick is, Cortex will miss frequently because of getting stuck on random pieces of the stage, and both Crash and Coco can easily miss boxes while attempting to spin through them, especially on chase levels like Dino Dash.

Then we go to the flashback tapes, which are just a crowning example of Toys for Bob's bad decision making with this game - the biggest problem with it easily - they don't know when to just say enough is enough. They come up with great and fun ideas, only to ruin them by making both too many levels, and making them far too hard. The flashback tapes are fairly alright until the end (barring Countdown Crate Intro, which is a ridiculously tough Crash stage), but Coco's final levels are a joke.

First up is Resilience Evaluation - the penultimate Coco stage, and one that took me an hour to finish. Not complete, finish. Why? Because of one thing - the fire crates.

Going back to the cycles present in the game, there's one exception to the rule, in that it's cycles are completely randomised - fire crates. Now normally, this isn't a big deal, because you can wait for them to finish a cycle. But not here. In this level, the fire crates are placed atop of nitro crates, and the aim of the game is to slide under the nitro when they bounce up (one cycle), but you also need to do so when the fire isn't active on the crates, or else you'll get burnt.

The problem? RNG means fire crates changes their cycles on death, meaning there's times where you can get cycles that are literally impossible. As in you are dead either way. There's one area where you need to slide under a nitro stack with fire boxes, slide into a timer box, which will activate the blocks under Crash to let him stand on them, but also block off the area above.

The way through is fire crate will go on fire on the right side (where Crash lands after sliding) as the crates bounce. You slide under, hit the crate, and stay crouched, which will let the fire crate go off without killing Crash. Fire crate switches to the left crate just as the box blocking the exit vanishes, letting you then crouch jump safely up. 

However, with the RNG cycles, it can instead make it that the fire crate always stays ignited when the timer crate blocking the exit vanishes, meaning you either get killed by the flames, or you wait and fall through the ground due to the timer running out. That is plain awful design that relies solely on luck, and the rest of the level is no better.

Coco's final level, the Gauntlet features much of the same, a lot of Nitro to avoid, a lot of RNG fire crates with random cycles, a maze like area to go through, and while it's not as bad as Resilience Evaluation, it's still pretty horrendous (and took me 40 minutes to beat).

Point is, much like how Eggmanland is a bad level for being a 50 minute slog in a Sonic game of all things, a Crash Bandicoot game should never take upwards of an hour to beat. 

There's just so many infuriatingly frustrating aspects of bad design throughout the game, and I could go on forever about it, things that just make 106% completion completely unfair, and unfun. 

Toys for Bob didn't remotely stop to consider if it was fun for their players, if it fit this series, if this was a good idea. It took me 135 hours to 106% this game altogether. More time than a full run through Persona 5. Likely more than Sonic Unleashed, and more time than the N Sane Trilogy combined - playing the same finicky 38 levels over and over and over again. This is an absolute joke on TfB's part. Ridiculous completion requirements along with unfair, unfun, glitchy bullshit. That's what it ultimately comes down to. Crash 4 is a great game to beat, but it's a complete mess to complete, and Toys for Bob screwed the pooch hard on it, especially when they decided to remove user-friendly power-ups like the Crash Dash and replace it with vastly inferior and inconsistent moves like the Triple Spin. 

Still, if anyone else is N Sane (heheheh) enough to even attempt it, here's my tips.

• Be confident in yourself. I'm not an expert Crash player by any means, and when I started out, I was shit. It took me hours to pull off the easiest levels. But just stick with it and learn the speed mechanics of the game. You'll get it down, and start crushing these levels. If you've managed to beat even simply the Gold relics in N Sane Trilogy, then you can handle platinum here.
• Don't be discouraged - This game is unlike the previous games because Rude Awakening is a straight up beginners trap for new players attempting to get to grips with speed-running the game. It's time is incredibly tight, it's got a lot of cycles to deal with, and it's one of the hardest time trials in the game. But if you can pull it off, you can pull everything else off.
• Learn the Slide Spin - I can't empathise this enough as it's the point that makes the difference with these time trials - unlike the triple spin, which is an inconsistent mess, the slide spin is easy to do, faster than the triple spin, and far more consistent as well. It takes a bit of practice to get to grips with, but due to being an unintended speed mechanic, it's easily usable for getting an edge on the platinum times. Here's a great tutorial for it:

• Mute the voices - Caddicarus recommended this one and I can't agree more - the voices will make these levels far more of a pain if you have to hear them over and over and over again.
• Do the hardest levels first - I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but you don't want to finish up the majority of the game only to discover that you got stuck on the hardest levels. If you can knock out Toxic Tunnels, Cortex Castle, and Nitro Processing, you can handle anything this game has to throw at you. Start off practicing on levels like Rude Awakening, N Sanity Peak, and A Real Grind, move up to Bears Repeating and Building Bridges, and by then, you should be experienced enough to tackle the worst the game's got, so jump right to Cortex's world. When you beat the hardest levels first, it makes the rest of the game much more comparatively easier, and also lets you relax more as a result.
• Watch 100% level tutorials - I used Maka's Guides, but anything will do. You do not want to get to the end of levels like Toxic Tunnels just to discover you missed a box. At minimum, you want to have a box tally guide so you know how many boxes are present at each checkpoint.
• Do the perfect relics first - I can't say this one enough - you already have to get 80% of fruit and all boxes for the perfect relic, so getting a perfect relic first also cuts out a significant amount of gem backtracking later down the line. 
• Make sure you know where the Hidden Gems are - Always search up where the hidden gem is before starting a perfect relic run. Barring some exceptions like Off Balance, where the hidden gem requires significant detours and has more risks to go after it in the same run, most gems are usually easy to get, and saves another level repeat. I personally used Gamerpillar's videos, as they're straight to the point without a bunch of fluff.
• Take breaks - Incredibly important - you're going to get pissed off a lot when going for completion because of the game's own faults, sometimes it's best to just call it a night and pick it back up tomorrow. There was several levels where I had trouble getting something, took a break, and got it within a few tries the next day.

And finally, for fun. 

Hardest Perfect/Time Relics:

• Toxic Tunnels - An absolutely awful stage. A gem path that's four times as long as other gem paths, plus even more deadly, tons of machinery all on cycles that actually glitch out and reset if you take damage while on, or near them - which can easily ruin your run, frustrating enemies start to finish, tricky jumps caused by the rotating spiked platforms, just a nightmare all around and the worst this game has to offer.
• Cortex Castle - Yeah, I don't really care what others say, this level is terrible. I do agree that a large chunk of it is down to memorisation and such, but there's also just aspects of both inconsistency and random chance to it. There's times I'd get stuck in collision while doing jumps, times where mask powers wigged out and sent me to my death, times when enemies would break out of cycles and ruin runs for me (the shield enemies in particular). The level has just a ton of jank. 
• Nitro Processing - The level isn't too bad when going for the perfect relic, barring one particularly awful bit where you have to wall run while avoiding spiked insta-kill wheels. The time-trial on the other hand is horrible. There's a ton of things heavily reliant on cycles throughout the level, including electric enemies who can literally block your path for seconds on end if you're a milisecond too late to get to them before they attack. The wall-run will slow you down significantly, and the time to get there is ridiculously tight.
• Crash-Landed - Following the update that fixed the hitboxes for animals and vehicles, Bears Repeating and Building Bridges isn't that difficult anymore, honestly. Still tricky, but the level before the riding part is short enough that you don't have too much to redo if you mess up. Crash Landed on the other hand is still as awful as ever. Not only because the stage is ridiculously long as it is, but it has TWO riding sections with just as easily missable boxes, inconsistent mechanics because you have to attempt to get through enemies and hazards while slipping on strange ooze, crates placed in out of the way places that are still easy to miss with the fixed hitbox, AND a gem path on top of it all. Redoing this entire level if you miss ONE box towards the end is the worst feeling in the world, frankly.
• Rush Hour - the infamous level. A six to ten minute level where Dingodile and Tawna have to share a level together. A level with a massive amount of boxes throughout, and incredibly difficult platforming sections. Better yet, some of those boxes are both deviously hidden, especially with Tawna due to aforementioned problems with them hiding boxes in the far distance that are difficult to see when you're trying to concentrate on platforming, but the biggest middle finger of the lot is the end of the level - a section where you, as Tawna - have to platform over an extreme inconsistent cycle of fast moving vehicles, hitting boxes along the way in midair with a kick that's far worse than Crash/Coco's spin. This is the reason why it took me so long to beat this level. Because you'd get up to this shit section, get dealt bad luck, and then have a full ten minute level to replay all over again start to finish with all boxes.
• Rock-Blocked - A timeline level where you start off with Dingodile and finish with Crash/Coco. Not only is this level ridiculously tight with it's time limit, forcing you to optimise Dingodile to the letter, and even damage boost through hazards for a shot at the time, but the final part with Crash and Coco is absolutely awful, because you're being chased by a dinosaur in a auto-scrolling section where it's easy to miss crates. You need to be at your peak speed, or else you'll be killed, all because the dinosaur jumps at the very end of the section right before the end of the level, and he can hit you with his head.

And with that, that's all I've got to say for the minute. My rambling thoughts after weeks of playing this game to get completion. I still have to say above it all, I still like Crash 4, but going to completion has just exposed so many problems with the game. So much so that it expands past the gameplay and even into the characters and story. It's been a weird progression of playing the PS4 version at launch and liking it, but being disheartened, replaying it when the PS5 version came and really getting into it, and now just being ridiculously burnt out and critical because of the game's failings when going for completion, and I think it's totally fair to feel that way. 

At the end of the day, Crash 4's failings are the failings of Toys for Bob, and the ridiculous amount of bullshit that they ask of you. They really, really don't seem to understand that there's too much of a good thing, and when they have the nerve to ask so much of you, and ask for perfection at that, while also making a lot of incredibly bad mistakes in the development of the game as a whole, it doesn't reflect very well on them at all. With Vicarious Visions now gone too, and it being likely that if we're to see more Crash games, it'll come from either Toys for Bob or Beenox, I sincerely hope they get their shit together next game and realise that this just isn't the way. This is not why people liked completing Crash games. There was a reason Naughty Dog got rid of bullshit like completing levels with all boxes and no deaths as early as the second game, and it's because no one liked it. People like Crash for being a rewarding, and a tricky platformer, and yet Crash 4 is developed as if someone saw all the "Crash is the new Dark Souls of platfomring" memes, and said "oh well I'll show you!". Crash 4 is just such a mixed bag of a game, to be frank, and I wish it wasn't. I really hope for a better effort next time.

[Sonicka]

Well Done! That’s entirely commendable for going through all of that for the 106% completion. 

I certainly can’t say I’ll do the same, and mainly that’s because of everything you posted.

At present, Crash 4 remains the best Crash game ever because I’m not trying to 106% beat it - and this is a shame as usually I like to fully complete my platformers... but I’m more than aware it’s not worth it. I’ll go as far as getting most of the Skins and probably leave it there. I don’t want this to become a game of regrets. 

It’s just a shame that TFB made something so fantastic turn into something tremendously tedious and frustrating for the completionists. 

 

[Soniman]

If all the unfun stuff in the game is optional than I consider it a win imo. I'm not a time trial guy at all so I really only care about perfect relics at this point and seeing as how they finally fixed the polar sections I'll probably get back in and try it. I think %100 completion is a good middleground between feeling accomplished but not killing yourself with frustration.

Though I know Crash fans to love go for full completion so i do think it's something TOB should consider going forward, for me personally this is probably still my favorite Crash game rivaling 3

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

5 hours ago, Soniman said:

If all the unfun stuff in the game is optional than I consider it a win imo.

I'd argue that a game should feel fun and fulfilling all the way through. Completionism included, especially since they clearly added all that stuff in to try and justify selling it at full $60 price upon release.

And unfortunately,  Crash 4 missed that mark horribly.