Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy: Switch, Xbox, PS4 and PC Versions Tested!

[Music] crash bandicoot is back again and this time he's available just about everywhere that's right Vicarious Visions remastered trilogy is now available on nintendo switch the Xbox one and PC joining last year's PlayStation 4 release it's fair to say that I was pretty impressed with this package last time around the N st. trilogy is still a great example of how to remaster a PlayStation era game while the visuals are dramatically more detailed than the original games as you'd expect the style and atmosphere of Naughty Dog's ps1 games has been completely retained this is not an easy thing to accomplish but Vicarious Visions has done an excellent job with this new release then this is the first time that these original three games have appeared on another platform the crash series has been multi-platform since the ps2 era of course but these ps1 originals remained exclusive to PlayStation for decades so now that he's made the jump how does it stack up well on the surface seems like a pretty straightforward port it looks very similar across each machine at a glance but if you dig a little deeper there's a lot more going on here than you might have first anticipated there's a whole host of changes on Nintendo switch for instance in addition to one glaring flaw while the PC version provides some interesting insight into certain choices made during development and how about that Xbox version well to find out we're going to discuss each version of the game while trying to get a better idea of how they all stack up in terms of visual makeup I think it's safe to say that most people watching this video are probably interested in the Nintendo switch version this is usually where we see the most compromises after all and crashes no exception for starters the resolution on switches lower than the other versions of the game coming in at 720p for docked mode and 480p while gaming in portable mode not really a surprise mind you but there it is of course it's worth keeping in mind that when I say 480p I'm talking about 853 by 480 rather than an anamorphic 480p as is often the case with DVD movies and classic 480p capable consoles it looks reasonably clear I suppose but it also seems as if they're simply using a basic FXAA here whereas a nice temporal AAA solution could have really cleaned things up in comparison the other consoles fare a lot better in terms of pixel count both the base PlayStation 4 and the base Xbox one managed to deliver a full 1080p output I was actually kind of surprised to see the Xbox one serve up the game in full HD but here it is and it looks great the pro version that is still 1440p just as it was last year while the Xbox 1x version offers full native 4k making it the cleanest console version of the game by far of course the ps4 situation isn't identical to last year a new patch was just released but we'll get to those details in a moment to round out the resolution talk though the PC version of course allows for a multitude of resolution choices but it only supports a 16 by 9 aspect ratio with the narrow design of the game this isn't a real surprise I suppose it's entirely possible and likely in fact that the area outside of the 16 by 9 window just isn't complete since I'd imagine ultra-wide was not originally part of the development discussions if you're playing on xbox one ps4 or even the PC then crashed looks basically identical I did notice one oddity though motion blur has been tuned down in the current version of the game if we look back here at the original ps4 pro footage compared against version 1.0 6 which is the latest patch it looks like the shutter speed has been modified and blur is now less pronounced as a result this applies to every version of the game in fact well except for the switch port where motion blur is actually more evident that's not the only difference however the switch version of crash features a lot of other changes as well in that sense Vicarious Visions has taken a different approach than panic buttons Wolfenstein 2 port rather than sacrificing resolution in favor of maintain visual parody the team has opted instead to pare back several visual features instead the thing is while wolf 2 aims for realism where these effects are crucial to its overall look the animated nature of crash means that the lack of these features kind of has less of an impact overall on visual quality so let's start with the most obvious visual difference then the lack of fir shading on other platforms crashes model uses this technique to give the impression of fur in comparison on switch the effect is simply absent replaced instead with textures this applies to other creatures and characters throughout the game as well not just crash so how does it actually look then well I feel like crash himself still looks pretty good without his fur and some may even argue that it feels closer to a classic game as a result but the rest of the characters well the results aren't great these Lions for instance now look as if they're made of chocolate or mud or how about this little guy and really that's just the beginning the remake of crash also makes use of self shadowing parallax occlusion maps to add extra depth to the world these carved indents in this rock for instance are simply a texture trick but it looks fantastic on switch this has been eliminated entirely and such textures are reduced to a flat surface instead I understand the need to cut it but this one kind of hits hard is this technique is used in nearly every stage and this absence is especially noticeable look at the floor in this cutscene or how about the tiles along the top of the wall or even the bricks for that matter it's all missing on switch that being said while the lack of palm is certainly noticeable the cartoony nature of the art direction also means that the game still manages to look nice without these textures it loses some depth sure but it's hardly ugly as a result but it's not just the parallax occlusion maps that have gone missing however in other stages world geometry has been modified on switch it's clear as day in this section where the door positions and terrain complexity have all been modified on switch little changes like this are evident throughout the experience so thus far then we have a reduction in texture quality and absence of parallax occlusion maps simplified world geometry and a lack of ambient occlusion or at least greatly reduced AO but there's more in this stage crash runs through an oily substance which ripples based on character interaction while reflecting and distorting the surrounding environment what's interesting here is that even the original PlayStation 1 game attempts to simulate reflections by drawing models both above and below the surface plane it's a key part of the art direction for this stage on switch however the effect is completely missing which leaves certain stages like this feeling somewhat incomplete and empty thankfully reflections like this only appear in certain stages water for instance typically does not exhibit reflections thus the results appear on par with other versions of the game what's important here is that the ripple shader is still intact which means crash and enemies can break the surface of these pools of liquid creating lovely ripples while doing so next on our list is foliage reduction which I guess kind of fits in with the aforementioned geometry changes in this stage for instance grass and plants are paired back on the switch both in the near and far field region of the screen this is a rather smart cut however as the difference only becomes noticeable when directly comparing against other versions of the game on its own it still manages to look convincingly fool it's a perfect example of smart optimization shadowmap resolution is expected ly lower overall as well but it's what isn't rendered that is more noticeable here only completely opaque objects seem to cast shadows on the switch and it kind of varies from stage to stage things like leaves from the surrounding trees in this scene for instance are spotty in comparison leaving us with areas to void of shadow based on our experience with the PC version which we'll be touching on shortly shadow quality has the most significant impact on overall performance so it makes sense to reduce the setting but reducing the number of objects which can cast shadows in a scene does have a significant impact on the overall presentation now one thing to keep in mind is that certain types of leaves do actually cast shadows so you will occasionally see shadow maps like this but by-and-large leaves and grass do not cast shadows that's a lot of changes right so let's quickly recap them so in docked mode switches 720p its 480p and handheld it's missing reflections first shading parallax occlusion Maps all while exhibiting reductions in texture quality geometry complexity and ambient occlusion with all those changes you'd kind of expect the switch version to look rather poor but as you've no doubt seen the results are still pretty good it's a step down from other versions but it still kind of holds up it's a nice looking game but what about those other versions then well for all intents and purposes the Xbox and PlayStation 4 versions look basically identical outside of resolution variants of course there are some subtle shading and shadow differences evident in certain areas but overall it's real minor stuff and they basically look the same what's neat is that both versions now support HDR as a version 1.06 on ps4 and out of the gate on xbox you can play the game in HDR the problem here though is that the implementation is kind of poor the brightness variance appears relatively low and there are no additional adjustments to be made here it just feels as if the game is simply tone map to run an HDR without really taking advantage of it thus the image can actually appear less vibrant in HDR then when running in SDR a disappointing thing for sure another key improvement in this version is loading back when I covered the original version on PlayStation 4 loading times we're at the top of my complaint list it takes forever to go between stages in this version of the game and it absolutely ruins the flow now on Xbox one and ps4 with the latest patch installed loading times are greatly reduced Vicarious Visions has implemented predictive loading which basically tries to load data based on where you might go next are also holding certain common assets in memory at all times Xbox one X takes the lead here for sure with loading times so fast that the game almost doesn't need a loading screen at all ps4 Pro is a little slower than Xbox one X but it still offers a significant improvement over the release version of the game often saving upwards of 10 seconds or more it's the same deal on switch which is comparable to the ps4 pro version or even a little faster in all cases it's a lot faster than the original 2017 release and it helps make for a better overall experience but there's another curious thing I wanted to discuss the frame rate when crash launched last year we lamented the fact that the game was capped at 30 frames per second it was unclear why this was selected but thanks to the new PC version of the game we now have more information regarding its performance now this is all speculation of course but I feel that crash should have been 60 frames per second at least on the ps4 Pro and Xbox 1x and here's why to test our theory we loaded up the PC version of the game on a quad-core athlon x4 50 370 paired with a gtx 960 graphics card it just so happens that this particular etholon cpu uses the now-infamous jaguar microarchitecture yep just like the consoles it's a jig the difference here is that this variant is only a quad core while the consoles have access to more cores for games this Cinebench test shows the system running with a 100 megahertz overclock bringing it up to 2.3 gigahertz a match for the xbox 1x clock speed so how does it fare well check it out this is crash running at 1080p 60 frames per second on a machine that is less powerful than Xbox 1x this gtx 960 is certainly less capable than the GPU included in the ex yet this combo is able to power through the games muth lee this is with all settings maxed out by the way except for shadows which were reduced from ultra too high so this is a promising start but that we get to crash 3 this game exhibits minor drops but hardware utilization isn't quite right leading us to believe that there's a bug or problem going on here basically CPU utilization kind of sticks around 60 percent these drops occur whether or not you're using a gtx 960 or GTX 970 which is a lot more powerful and it seems like something that could have been corrected if they were targeting a fixed console platform at 60 frames per second the point is crash at 60 frames per second seems completely feasible on these consoles and it's kind of puzzling to us why vicarious opted to cap 30 frames per second instead all evidence suggests that it could work of course keep in mind that this is speculation on our part we have the numbers here from the PC but we really can't say one way or another that said Xbox 1x features a much stronger GPU xbox 1x features a much stronger GPU and access to 2.5 more CPU cores for games out of 8 total it's really a shame too as the gameplays significantly better at 60 frames per second the controls are simply more responsive overall and the game looks nicer when moving at this clip thankfully though even at 30 frames per second crash still feels remarkably responsive on the Xbox and PlayStation 4 but then there's the switch again remember the issue I mentioned early in the video well well here it is the switch version of crash seems to exhibit additional input latency compared to other versions of the game now when it comes to testing input latency I don't really have a strong scientific method here we might need to wait for Nyjah Woodall to look at it but from my limited testing using a 240 frames per second films sequence which adds roughly 2 frames or so of input latency or 33 milliseconds on top of the other versions so how does this manifest well you might notice it in that the switch version feels ever so slightly heavier than the others it was immediately clear to be when flipping between the two that's for sure it's not bad but it does feel slightly off it's also possible that it could be some sort of dead zone issue with the controller the Joye con controls for instance feel even worse still whatever the cause I found that the game just felt less responsive on switch overall even when playing on the built-in screen just something to think about then we come to frame rate we've already established last year that the ps4 and ps4 Pro versions of crash run at 30 frames per second locked based on my testing on version 1.0 6 that remains the case here now it's true it might be possible to drop a frame here there in very select circumstances but in my testing it's very uncommon Xbox 1x offers a flawless 30fps experience in comparison as it should considering how much Headroom they must have here any dips would be genuinely surprising it's a very fluid stable 30 frames per second though yeah we kind of wish it was more the base Xbox one then does a nice job as well I did note a couple drop frames here and there when testing on this Xbox 1s but for the most part performance was stable and it does play very well it's nearly the equal of the base PlayStation 4 version in fact Nintendo's switch however is perhaps the least impressive of the bunch in terms of performance despite dropping a ton of effects in lowering the resolution there are still minor hiccups and performance during gameplay there's basically two problems to discuss here framerate drops and frame time inconsistencies these two issues tend to go together where you encounter a run of dropped frames like this with a few 16.7 millisecond updates occurring along the way the 16 millisecond spikes can occur out of the blue as well so why does this matter well while it's true that these dips are not significant the slight inconsistency does impact overall fluidity of the experience this is a platforming game after all and those little hitches can prove annoying when they crop up thankfully they don't crop up that often and I'd say the majority of the experience is a stable 30 frames per second just like this so perhaps it really isn't a huge problem after all but it is something to consider which is kind of how I feel about the switch version as a whole there are a lot of compromises being made here and they all kind of add up the resolution has sliced down to 720p or lower and portable mode a lot of visual details and effects have been removed there's a tiny bit of additional input latency present and/or dead zone issues and it has the slowest framerate of the bunch on average still it's kind of a miracle that this port happened at all from what I understand it sounds like a single engineer took the time to port the first levels of the game over to switch in order to convince management to push through and develop the entire game for the platform sure it has its limitations but clearly the effort was worth it and now we have crash on the switch it's not the best version but it's still pretty good next up is the Xbox one version on an Xbox one S or a base system here performance is mostly a lock 30 FPS but it can exhibit occasional minor dips it's very minor though I should stress and it's basically on par with the ps4 version overall both versions are excellent if you're looking for a smooth 1080p30 experience following this we have the ps4 pro version which comes in at 14 for TP with rock-solid performance most of the time at least this was previously the best option but it's now been dethroned by Xbox one X which is the best console version with native 4k support and a perfectly stable framerate plus it has the fastest loading times the actual best version though is on PC where even a super low spec PC can deliver a smooth 60 frames per second experience this makes a greater difference than anything else here and it's a shame that the enhanced consoles are missing out on this option of course for owners of high refresh rate monitors you're not gonna be able to go over 60fps it seems to be limited to either 30 or 60 which is definitely something to keep in mind in addition to the lack of ultra wide support but if you can deal with that and the relatively limited options menu it's a pretty good port overall beyond that one extra bonus worth mentioning here are the new bonus stages this new release of the game includes stages like this these are basically extra challenging stages designed to put your skills to the test and it's a nice little addition to the game you can even access this one right from the beginning ultimately this remastered trilogy is extremely well crafted overall and Vicarious Visions has done a nice job working on every version of the game from what I understand toys for Bob also contributed to its development so good job all around revisiting the game once again this year has allowed me to appreciate just how much work has gone into this version it really does offer a tremendous improvement in visuals over the ps1 originals as you would expect with some nice tweaks to the core gameplay as well it is a perfect lesson in how to translate 32-bit style platforming into the modern era which is why I'm so curious to see how the remastered version of spire the dragon turns out later this year the included teaser trailer certainly looks promising but that's all for now if you enjoyed this video be sure to LIKE subscribe ring the bell to enable notifications of new content and even follow us over on Twitter but until next time this is John signing off [Music] [Music]

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 277,287

Keywords: crash bandicoot n. sane trilogy nintendo switch, crash bandicoot n sane trilogy, crash bandicoot switch, n. sane trilogy, playstation 4, xbox one, nintendo switch, crash bandicoot nintendo switch, nintendo switch crash bandicoot, crash bandicoot n sane trilogy review, crash bandicoot n. sane trilogy switch, crash bandicoot n. sane trilogy xbox one, nintendo switch games, review, graphics comparison, visual comparison, frame-rate, framerate, fps, Digital Foundry, PS4, PC

Id: bCteF4zvd2c

Length: 21min 29sec (1289 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Richsince95]

Very thorough assessment, I like it. I may get the Switch version in the future as I loved Crash growing up. HD isn’t a huge deal to me, so having a portable Crash trilogy sounds perfect. (Fingers crossed for Spyro someday!)

[u/cydipl]

I wasn't expecting such a big difference between PS4 and PC version, but 60 fps, no motion blur, and much shorter loading times (obviously now PS4 also has short loadings, which is great), make the game so much more enjoyable for me. I still think remake looses a lot of charm and atmosphere of the original, but the smoother experience is worth it. Also not having subtitles for cutscenes in 2018 is unthinkable. And it has octagonal movement, so I wouldn't recommend playing with analog, making those precise jumps with it is much harder, and I have a theory, that's the reason of people calling it "Dark Souls of platformers".

[u/[deleted]]

Could someone be absolutely the kindest person and give me a short tl;dw for how the Switch version fares?

[u/Mystic8ball]

Honestly if given the choice between Switch and the other versions I'd say that the compromises the switch port makes would be a deal breaker to me. I get that people value portability and all but I don't think that's enough for me when the downgrade is that significant.

The motion blur in particular is rough, and i'm not one who's really that anal about motion blur.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/[deleted]]

How does it play on PC with a keyboard and mouse?