Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time - A Lovely Completionist NIGHTMARE

a good sequel has to strike a fine balance between nostalgia and innovation you don't want to remain exactly the same and not to change anything then you're just releasing the old game all over again at the same time you don't want to do anything that's so different that the sequel is completely unrecognizable from the original game fortunately this isn't an issue for crash bandicoot 4. because this game isn't just the perfect sequel with its tightened controls and additional game modes characters and collectibles it's also the best damn crash bandicoot game yet you'll see what i mean when i complete crash bandicoot 4 it's about time hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them and today we're playing crash bandicoot 4. it's about time because this time around it's about time that we got a new sequel to to crash to crash three um yeah now it's important to know that i did not get paid for this video but i did get paid to make a cool promotional video for crash bandicoot for it's about time you can check it out right here there's a link on screen or a little little info card you can go ahead and check out please give that video some views and likes because uh i have put a lot of time into thinking about hamsters and speed running so this game hasn't made me gone crazy at all more importantly i did not get paid to get this video out they gave me a review copy so this is a non-sponsored activision completionist review as we do so i hope you enjoy today's episode on crash bandicoot 4 it's about time it's about time that we start this video here comes a new challenger danger [Music] if you grew up with a playstation you probably grew up with crash bandicoot naughty dog's orange marsupial blew up on the platform and spun into our hearts with release of four critically and commercially successful games that many still consider to be some of the best games on the system these games made crash the official face of the playstation and helped cement the playstation as the number one console of the mid to late 90s but once you get to the top of the mountain it's very easy to fall down and boy did crash fall people began to notice with the next game the wrath of cortex while this looked like a crash game something seemed a little off everything just had a little less life to it and things were added for the sake of adding them not to mention the glitches and the insanely long load times this was because the developer naughty dog had moved on and sold the ip to activision they had simply outgrown the title once known as sonic's ass game to move on to many more great titles like the uncharted and the last of us series meanwhile crash bandicoot was left in the hands of lesser developers making crash games it didn't feel like crash although series like ratchet and clank sly cooper and naughty dog's very own jack and daxter thrived crash became a shell of himself that was eventually unrecognizable and left in the bargain bins along with scalar just look at the cover art for mind over mutant crash doesn't even look like he wants to be there his face says well that's it and it was that is until 2018 when the insane trilogy released this was the beautiful remaster of the first games from the glory days of the bandicoot not only did it look and play great but it actually felt like crash no half-assed development no tribal tattoos just all the box breaking we've come to know and love and it did so well that a remaster of the original crash team racing came out a year later crash was back baby and the world demanded a true sequel to the original trilogy and so here it is the crash bandicoot game fans have been wanting for over 12 years and the developer toys for bob agreed it is about time crash bandicoot forwards about time starts off with cortex and trophy and uka uka in the time void they ended up in at the very end of crash bandicoot 3. after ukuku uses all of their energy to open up a rift to send them all back to the present and tropey and cortex ditch him and use it to travel to different timelines to try and take over the multiverse meanwhile crash is resting on the beach as he does and is disturbed by a large explosion turns out it is the waking of the quantum mask lonnie lowly and it now becomes crash and coco's job to collect all four quantum masks and stop entropy and cortex okay this is brilliant because not only does it actually provide good motivation to go through the whole game but it completely justifies making a sequel to crash 3 even though many crash band 2 games have come out since then they're all just different timelines great scott and while this is a different timeline the gameplay remains much the same platform your way through a level while breaking crates and enemies faces with your trusty spin double jump and slide attacks but even though the base game remains the same there have been a ton of additions that make crash force stand out from the pack hi i'm jonathan gamer fuel with g fuel energy telling you about all the great deals that we got going on at g fuel dot com all right i'm not jonathan gamer fuel nor uh is is any of this outside of the fact that yes this is a brand deal for g fuel energy uh we've actually been working with g fuel for quite some time now and honestly it's been a wonderful partnership you guys at home have been using our code a lot it's one of the true parts we've ever had with the company where they've been uh continuing to support us they helped us a lot during indie land and uh their support this year has meant the world to us so in case you guys don't know jifu energy offers a different variety of products from uh like citrus type waters uh to powders um that focus in both mixing with your water for uh caffeine and and energy or if you want like a hydration supplement too they got all different kinds of products out there that you can easily just purchase and mix with water my favorite uh flavor personally is the sour phase berry that has been one of the best things ever i am getting really burnt out on soda especially during the pandemic i've just been so sick of it and g fuel energy has been such a great alternative the one that's actually made drinking water kind of exciting again for me personally so hey if you want to support us head over to gfuel.com and use uh checkout code completionist to get 30 off your order this weekend only and in case you guys some crash bandicoot fans out there they do have a whopper fruit flavor that is now available on the website so again go to gfuel.com and use the keyword completionist on checkout to get 30 off or if you're lazy click the links in the box down below or use the url on screen right now guys if we sell more g fuel they told me that i get my own shaker get me a shaker i want the tobg fist on the shaker let's do it fists on cups doesn't sound nearly as good as i thought fist gamer fists on cup that sounds worse please come back to the episode [Music] [Applause] [Music] when you first start crash bandicoot forwards about time you are greeted by a beach with the spider of the dragon floaty crunch spelled out and magnets on a refrigerator and a tv that changes between the first crash games after seeing this one moment it's easy to think that this whole game will be bogged down by nostalgia and references to every other game in the series however this is not the case for while there is a good amount of nostalgia in crash 4 it is the plethora of new additions and twinks that make this the best game in the crash bandicoot franchise the first thing that stood out to me immediately were the side levels crash bandicoot has always been a straightforward platformer follow the order get through the game maybe find some gems or some different pathways to unlock more levels but crash 4 introduces two types of new side levels flashbacks and alternate timelines the flashback levels show crash and coco performing in experiments run by dr cortex right before the first game now these are wonderful because not only are they challenging but they are beautifully retro these levels you unlock by collecting vhs tapes in each of the regular story levels and the look of the levels reflect that everything has that awesome vhs grain to it and are dated right before the original crash bandicoot game released not to mention we learned some pretty great tidbits about crash and coco's origins did you know that crash's full name is crash with cortex the first now you do although they don't look as cool the alternate timeline levels are just as interesting each one features a new playable character tana dingle dial and cortex each of them plays completely different to what we're used to with our main heroes tan is from an alternate timeline so naturally she does martial arts and has a grappling hook dingodile has a vacuum gun and can suck up enemies and crates while firing tnt crates and finally cortex is a raygun that can turn enemies into platforms and he also has a dash all of these are a fantastic way to create variety in the older games this was mostly achieved with the different vehicle levels these range from fine to frustrating i'm looking at you koko's jet ski levels but the alternate timelines provides just enough change on top of the already fantastic gameplay we've seen in crash bandicoot instead of getting a completely different dish you're just getting some different seasoning and i love that while all the new characters are fun my favorite has to be dingodile with his australian accent and d-gap attitude each level of his was a blast to play but both of these types of levels serve as a great palette cleanser between the main story levels so what if you want more than the main story levels well then halfway through the game you will unlock the inverted levels inverted levels are exactly what they sound like levels that are flipped in the opposite direction so left becomes right right becomes left but the really cool part is the new art style every level already looks great but the inverted levels are true works of art some become bright neon colors while others are invisible until you spin and send a shock wave outlining everything around you but my personal favorite has got to be the cortex towers area where everything looks like the game boy advance crash games it's pretty awesome these inverted levels give you a great reason to revisit levels and try them again and again in previous crash games you never got that you only revisit the levels if you miss some boxes or want to perfect the time trials now i get to enjoy old levels as completely new experiences and i'm here for it all those levels and characters are welcomed editions but they don't mean anything if they aren't fun to play and toys for bob could have left well enough alone by just leaving the crash bandicoot gameplay alone instead they decided to add just as much to the gameplay as well some parts are more obvious than others like the quantum masks that give you various abilities like slowing down time altering gravity but there's also new platforming elements like wall running or rail grinding but other people have already gone into deep detail on why those are awesome the things that stood out to me the most were the much smaller quality of life changes first and foremost was the shadow circle one of the biggest complaints with the insane trilogy was that people didn't always know where they were going to land it didn't always feel right to players classic players will understand that this is where it came from but newer players would be off put by this decision toys for bob fix that right here by literally putting a yellow circle around any of the playable characters this seems simple and a little cheap to some but it makes a world of a difference especially in the sections with a ton of backtracking it eliminated a lot of the guesswork and made it so i always knew where i was going if i fell i had no one to blame but myself the other change is the ability to switch between modern mode and retro mode retro mode plays like all the previous crash games right you collect lives every time you die you lose a life and you go back to a checkpoint if you run out of lives you get game over or in this case are kicked out of a level modern mode on the other hand eliminates lives altogether no matter how many times you die you will always go back to the last checkpoint you reached this is somewhat game changing crash bandicoot is notoriously a game that is easy to learn but very hard to master and you will die a lot while you play but now you have the opportunity to practice and try as many times as you want so for me personally this really brings the crash series into the modern age of gaming lives originally were included to add a fake sense of difficulty and ring quarters out of you in the arcade here they're just a nuisance that prevent you from fully enjoying the game by eliminating lives toys for bob actually made the trial and error of crash bandicoot enjoyable you aren't limited by your failure you can grow from it and if you don't want to play that way there's a switch to put it back to retro mode it's all of this that makes crash 4 stand out for me from the rest of the franchise toys for bob could have just made a pretty game that plays and feels exactly the same as the classic crash games but instead they took steps to create new content that filled out the world listened to previous criticism and brought crash into a more modern style of play they cared about what they were doing and they added so much great stuff because of it however didn't just stop there oh no toys for bob had a lot more to add previously i spoke to how a bunch of small tweaks and additions to gameplay made a huge impact on the overall experience for crash four but this isn't the only place where auditions were made we still have to look at the collectibles and this time there are so many more things to collect than ever before the original crash games only had crystals gems and relics and while the crystals are gone in this game the gems more than make up for their absence because instead of getting just one gem for every level there are now 6 to 12 to collect you still get your standard gem for breaking all the crates that means there's five left you get one because of a hidden gem in every stage as well as one more gem for beating the level with less than three deaths now how do we get the other gems this is where the wampa fruits come in see in the retro mode you need wampa fruits to get lives right no matter what you hunter wampa fruit to get an extra life in modern mode you don't really need them right wrong in all modes no matter what you need to collect the wampa fruit because if you get 80 percent of the wamba fruit in a level you'll get three gems so that's three wampa fur gems one hidden gem one standard destroying all the crates gem and one for being the stage without dying three times or less times all of that by 38 levels and that means there's clearly over 200 gems in crash four well that doesn't seem so bad right those seem like pretty easy goals to meet with practice ah but you don't do it just once remember those cool looking inverted levels you have to do the same thing on those levels to get the inverted gems that means i have to break all the boxes again find the hidden gems which is in a different location this time around collect most of the wampa fruit and not die all over again times that by 38 stages so now we're sitting with well over 400 gems to unlock in this game right but we haven't even talked about the four color gems the four color gems are hidden throughout the game that you need in certain levels to find all the boxes not to mention one of the last levels in the game requires all four colored gems yes this is a lot of gems as far as collectibles go however you have to get tapes the tapes for those extra vhs levels and you can only get those if you get to that part of the stage where the tape is if you haven't died which brings me to my next collectible the insanely perfect relics so a lot of you guys are saying yourself man these gems inverted in normal don't sound too bad find the tapes don't sound too bad what the hell could the insane relic be these insanely perfect relics you get them only if you get all the boxes in the stage and you clear the stage without dying this gets really hard especially around the game when the truly tricky platforming and mass combinations kick in wow gerard that is a ton of stuff well guys i hope you're buckled in because i'm just getting started i still have to break every single box in the flashback levels to earn a platinum emblem on those levels not to mention all the trophies and achievements that come with the game because you know video games and while the trophies and achievements are not as hard as some other games there is still yet more stuff to do in crash bandicoot 4. come on toys for bob i got other [ __ ] to do now longtime fans of crash bandicoot will know the next thing i'm going to talk about because one if you've watched my other crash videos i've talked with them extensively and two yes it is the biggest pain in my ass the damned time trial relics see these were the band of my existence in most of the crash bandicoot games not only were they hard to get but you didn't even get anything for unlocking them they easily took up a majority of my time re-completing crash bandicoot 2 and 3. but for crash four they're even harder i had to keep trying every stage over and over and over again just hearing crash scream whoa so many times as i would die in the same deposit the time before again and again and again and again and again and again and you know what uh i enjoyed a lot of it but man does it suck balls it sucks really big wampa fruit balls look this was really tough all these different collectibles seemed daunting when i first started this completion journey but i was surprised that as i kept playing there wasn't really any big burnout for me i was having fun and felt completely satisfied the entire time this is partially because the game keeps rewarding you for the gems in the form of skins which are different costumes for crash and coco to wear these range from cool to funny to nostalgic and work as a great incentive to complete as much as possible as you play essentially the more you complete the more you earn in my opinion this is one of the best ways to encourage your players to complete your games if you unlock things you get more things and what's awesome is that the cutscenes in the game reflect the skins that you see and equip however i really feel the saving grace here is modern mode because i couldn't get kicked out of a level for dying multiple times in a given section i wanted to keep experimenting this meant that when it came time for me to get that perfect run or get the platinum relic i had my game plan ready ahead of time i didn't have to keep restarting when i failed this is the perfect way to leave this game so much work but a true sense of satisfaction however toys for bob couldn't leave well enough alone again there's even more time trials yes that's right folks you can go beyond platinum all the way to purple the purple time relics represent the developers times and they are impossible that you have to be a speed runner to do these these are seriously not fun already i would spend hours trying to perfect the platinum time relics and then i would see the purple time relic scores afterwards and they were anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half faster it's ludicrous this was made even worse by the way this game has made you move faster at the very end of crash 3 you unlocked the crash dash you would hold r2 and be able to sprint faster this was a great way to quickly speed through levels and nail those risky time trials however in crash bandicoot 4 this is replaced with the triple dash essentially you have to keep rhythmically mashing the spin attack button in doing so you build three different levels of your dash which meant you always had to go dash dash dash dash dash dash dash dash dash dash to keep your momentum going all the time this made it so much harder to plan routes and maneuver myself when i'm constantly doing small bursts of speed as opposed to one constant sprint now look i have played a lot of games in my days guys you've been here for a long time with me on this journey it's been a blast when have any of you ever heard that i got physically exhausted or burnt out while playing a game because it was really hard to play my thumbs have cuts and bruises i have been playing this game non-stop ever since it came out sometimes one level would take me eight hours to beat and that's just the platinum relics i'm not even good enough to get one of those stupid purple relics i have one purple relic it was on a dingle diet level and that's because that stage was super easy and here's the tricky part in all of this the dev purple relics do not affect completion criteria so what do you get for getting the purple relics at this time it's just pure bragging rights and nothing else there is nothing you get for earning every purple relic in the game and there's no way that i can physically do it in a reasonable amount of time to make this video so i pulled an audible i did not do the purple time relics because here's the reality i don't want to waste months of my life trying to perfect this part of a game that doesn't reward me for it and i don't enjoy it these felt like more of a slap in the face than a fun challenge which is a shame because the rest of the game is so good [Music] so once you get to 100 in the game you earn a genuinely funny cutscene that serves as an epilogue for all the characters you meet throughout crash 4. but as it is so often the case with the crash bandicoot series the game does not end at 100 this time it ends at 106 percent and this results in another cutscene serving as a teaser for a possible sequel a sequel that i really hope happened to you guys crash bandicoot 4 it's about time is a perfect crash game it looks and feels incredible while continuing the tradition of the original crash three games there is a ton to do and it is unbelievably satisfying that is until you get to those platinum and purple time relics those things are monstrous and in my opinion are not even worth attempting however if you strive for that 100 and even to get those platinum relics for that 106 percent mark then crash 4 is absolutely worth your time when i completely crash banning q4 it's about time there were hundreds upon thousands of deaths seriously you're going to die a lot but being in modern mode made this a lot more palatable 21 platinum flashback emblems earned really easy but a nice change of pace from the franticness of the rest of the game 52 trophies earned fun overall but barely noticeable next to everything else i had to collect you complete the game you get the platinum pretty simple 58 skins unlocked my personal favorite being crash's pirate skin i love pirates 460 gems this includes the clear the inverted and the color gems and about half of these i had to get in a single run in order to earn 38 insanely perfect relics this was definitely a challenge but it was fun it's for sure a new way to look at crash bandicoot levels 13a platinum time relics earned 126 hours and 30 minutes of total playtime crash 4 while not my favorite is the absolute best crash panic good of all time i love the masks i love the playable characters i love all the collectibles i love all the different styles of gameplay here the only thing that really took the wind out of my sails once again was the time trial platinum relics more specifically even those dead purple ones they're brutal and not in a fun way and those dev times don't even add neutral percentage so at this time 106 percent is the way to go uh i don't know if i think it's necessarily important to get those secret endings but at the very least it does give us hope the triple dash while a fun idea in practice is a difficult task for those of you out there who are struggling to play this game your hands will hurt my hands are cut and bruised from doing it trust me just beat the game and you'll be having a good time regardless so with that in my guys i give this game my completionist rating of finish it [Music] finish it [Music] you

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 935,087

Keywords: crash bandicoot 4, crash bandicoot, caddicarus, crash bandicoot 4 its about time, playstation, naughty dog, review, crash bandicoot 4 review, crash bandicoot review, crash bandicoot gameplay, crash bandicoot 4: its about time, crash bandicoot 4 gameplay, crash 4, crash 4 review, crash 4 gameplay, coco, neo cortex, gameplay, completionist, jirard khalil, caddy plays, xbox, playstation 4, playstation 5, crash bandicoot 4 skins, ps4, let's play, lets play

Id: MUhvF3t8_uM

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/thatonevideogamer]

CORRECTION - I made a mistake in that I said Naughty Dog sold the IP. It’s not as simple as that. Naughty Dog never owned the game IP and it was as a results of corporate mergers and acquisitions that led to Activision owning the IP. I made this comment on the fly without research and that was my bad.