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dkirschner's Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (PC)

[June 24, 2025 10:15:10 AM]

One and done! I don't think I ever played a Crash Bandicoot game on PlayStation and I don't think I ever need to play another one. It feels like an old-school platformer and is surprisingly retro. You run, jump, and spin your way through various levels. Your goal is to destroy all the crates, get all the fruits, find all the hidden gems, and, in time trial mode, do it quickly. That's it, straightforward.

There are "masks" you pick up that give Crash some special powers, such as reversing gravity or slowing time. These change up the platforming. In the last set of levels, where there is a serious difficulty spike, you do these sequences where there are multiple masks. So for example, you pick up the super spin mask, jump, super spin, jump, remove the mask, land on the TNT (because if you super spin on the TNT it blows up immediately), jump, pick up the reverse gravity mask in midair, reverse gravity, float up to the time stop mask, stop time, crawl through the dynamite, jump, pick up the reverse gravity mask, reverse gravity, float up, pick up the phase mask, phase out and go past a laser, phase in and land on a platform, phase out and go past a laser (this is all while falling, by the way), land successfully on the final platform and end the level.

Levels are littered with all manner of death traps, from enemies, to exploding boxes, to bandicoot-eating plants, and the platforming is not easy! Part of the difficulty is due to all the things going on on screen, and that's great. It reminded me of something like Super Meat Boy (one of my hard platformers to compare) where you need to learn some muscle memory to get through harder sections. Like, you'll be running and die because a box of dynamite is around the corner, so you die, restart from checkpoint, and remember not to hug the corner. And do that a lot, because in later levels, you will die a lot.

I don't have too much else to say, really. There's a story but it's silly. There's fan service with recurring characters from previous games, even some you get to play as, which also changes up the platforming a bit. There is a lot of replayability as you can strive to find all the boxes and gems every level, do all the bonus levels, collect skins, and so on. I had a pretty good time playing, but will probably never play another one. There are better platformers that don't channel the gnarly 1990s so hard.