Johnny vs. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

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course was great in getting me back into the groove and teaching me a few tricks with layers that i never considered not that i'm a sports illustrator but there are some skills that can be universally shared across all the arts and if it's not illustrations or something like that there's courses for web development essential tools and writing stories i noticed a whole bunch of stuff on animation who knows maybe i can talk about that next time and you can get started with all this too skillshare is giving away a free trial of their premium membership to the first 1000 people who can click the link in the description below to help you explore your creativity and after that it's only about 10 bucks a month much like the skillshare for the sponsor and thank you for helping support this channel and now on with the show [Music] hey how's it going folks sorry for the a little wait on this one no cover mac division this time i had to get the game at launch like everybody else did not that i minded of course i had every intent on getting this game for myself because it's crash bandicoot 4. but let's get the obvious thing out of the way it's not really crash bandicoot 4 that was random cortex steven label has the fourth game in its japanese release with twinsanity being labeled as the fifth game but i think ag activision and company are now doing everything in their power to pretend every game past the original trilogy didn't happen or at least don't matter anymore especially considering that the insane trilogy was incredibly successful they have essentially hit the redo button folks got the original three games back in their minds they want another go you know what sure don't really have a strong opinion on that i only just played wrath of cortex and twinsanity for this channel in the past month or so so it's not like i have nostalgic memories of crash's life in the 2000s but i admit i do feel a little bad for those games with this game subtitle it's about time i expect something like that from a disgruntled sonic adventure 3 mod don't deny you know it make more sense then and i get it this title has a double meaning but it's not as if these games were resounding failures they just weren't as good as for these i don't know maybe but i digress yeah i was excited at the mere existence of this game i wouldn't say to the degree of something like sonic mania but i was hoping that insane trilogy would reignite enough interest in the series so that we can get new adventures of the orange marsupial with new level concepts using the original three games as the basis or at least crash 2 and crash 3. basically what i want the next 2d sonic game to be after mania i'm sorry for all the sonic mentions i just can't help myself in this situation anyway i was down with the idea but i was initially skeptical on the premise and art direction time traveling this was following up directly after crash 3 i mean we just did that [ __ ] why do that again so soon after i know i say that and this game is decades after crash 3 was released so maybe that's what they were banking on and yeah i didn't think much of the game's zanier art style even if crash bandicoot by nature was a zany concept i thought the insane trilogy already had a fine enough aesthetic i thought the environments looked great the models were cool just tweaked the lighting on the fur and such it were golden but they changed it up completely for this and i guess i was just caught off guard but you know what i did warm up to it and i would like to start with the graphics and presentation for this video crash 4 is the best looking crash game in the series by far it's not even close if i were to compare yes that is in part due to the power of current hardware if i was just talking raw graphical fidelity but everything from presentation sound design it's all seriously amazing i was a little concerned that we had a new developer for this game i thought vicarious visions would be a showing for the next game but instead we got toys for bob the folks responsible for the spiral reignited trilogy it wasn't an immediate condemnation but a sudden shift in developers was a little off-putting for me even if toys for bob were also responsible for the switchboard of the insane trilogy well either way i was worried for another they [ __ ] nailed it and then some i love the way everything moves in this game how level aesthetics are varied the way they pop out the inverted graphical effects are simply stellar a little disorienting sure but splashing color on these barren lands a joy to look at the way the character's enemy i love everyone's expressiveness here especially from crash i've never seen a more heartfelt interpretation of the dude that's in equal parts bumbling but completely endearing i want to hug the [ __ ] out of this guy and enemies are just as animated the chase sequence has never felt so threatening how i even love the snazzy menus an a-plus effort that should seriously be commended great job to the whole development team however i can't say much for the music at this time it's only been about a week and most of the tunes didn't catch my ears at first listen with exceptions to those tracks that use familiar light motifs i will respect them for not re-using the crash bandicoot 3 theme for the uptoe time though i'm going to go a bit into the story here but since crash 4 is newly released i will leave a timestamp to help you skip past that part if you're looking to go in fresh i don't know why you can click on this video if you're looking to go in fresh but hey if you did i appreciate it anyway all right it's not that there's much story to go into but getting into my criticisms required that i spoil it so as the long-awaited sequel to crash bandicoot warp crash 4 picks up almost immediately where the last game left off so you remember that little bit at the end where cortex entropy and uku were sent far into the past because they got caught in that time vortex and they turned into babies playing tug of war with face yeah that was a little strange but apparently that's a thing of the past now as cortex and entropy are back to being full size with ooka tapping into all of his power to tear open a quantum rift allowing our villains to escape while cortex and entropy manage to escape ukahuka is left to ride probably for the next game likely but aku aku is quick to notice that something is up and tells crash to investigate insanity peak where he eventually encounters this new mask named lani lowly one of four quantum masks that are in charge of keeping things in check when some putts with an ego attempt to take over the dimensions that said entropy is hell-bent on taking over all dimensions now that he's escaped with cortex and associates following along as lackeys both eager and reluctant together with his sister coco and the help of the other quantum masks that are eventually gathered crash sleeps across time and space to thwart whatever nefarious schemes our villains have in store for them and after the setup not much happens crash bandicoot games never had much in story but given the premise i was expecting a little more with entropy i mean the opening plays him out to be as sinister as possible there's a menacing vibe there i haven't seen since ukuku's debut back in crash 3 on the playstation but after the opening the dude is barely an entity until near the end of the game where it's then revealed that he's teamed up with his female dimensional counterpart to enact his plans i love to see how that meeting worked out but it's given next to no focus but for what it's worth i love the whole interplay between the two when they actually do get some screen time together how everyone is grossed out they tease each other and i don't know is that some sort of dimensional masturbation either way dingle doll [ __ ] loves it oh man but yeah later in the adventure we get tonna and dingledale joining our team this tunnel however is from another dimension where it's straight up confirmed that the crash and coco from her world were killed by entropy and that she's here to make sure history doesn't repeat that's a bit darker than what i was expecting and then there's dingle dial who's decided to retire from a life ability and just open up a restaurant but thanks to cortex's shenanigans his diner is blown to hell he's sucked into a different dimension now the dude just wants to go home he also just straight up swears bastards that i was not expecting at all but i guess crash bandicoot is growing up alongside long time fans soon he'll ride a motorcycle and get a gun and fight aliens and wait he's already done all that [ __ ] the chemistry between characters are some of the best stuff i've seen in crash bandicoot on a level beyond from what i enjoyed in twinsanity but it's all in bit parts and i wish there was a little more time spent on development i love what i see i love thinking about what could have been there's still a ton of that trademark whimsy and yeah the game is funny as hell but surprisingly i found crash 4 to be one of the more mature games in the series by far it's definitely edgier than past games but a good sort of edgy not desperate to fit in sort of edgy nothing really made me wince except for that one moment near the end of the game where you're escaping dimensions you grab the berries to escape and then you're suddenly visually assaulted with that crash face meme from 2017. and i know i'm speaking as someone who made a similar joke in my insanity review back in 2017 but that was back in 2017. toys for bob was a little late to the punch on that one i'm probably reading too much into this but as the touted fourth game in the series following a game that was originally released oh god nearly 22 years ago i feel the team wanted to write a game that long time fans would find pretty gripping and i did find it gripping but it's not as developed as i would have liked it to be it's still a fun story throughout though i don't want to make it sound like i'm undermining what's already there plenty of laughs plenty of great moments crash 4 delivers on that front and as for the game itself toys for bob really liked crash bandicoot 2. i wouldn't be surprised if they had a gold cast factory sealed copy of crash 2 on a pedestal in their employee lounge because god damn and this isn't like a wrath of cortex just blatantly copying crash 3 scenario no i'm talking more about the spirit of the game crash bandicoot 2 going from the first game was just a no-nonsense improvement take what worked removed what didn't work and flesh it out it made crash 2 all the better with the sole exception being the jet pack and the one other thing that i'll get into later crash 4 is just as no nonsense in terms of design there is very little in gimmicky playstyles this game is 95 pure platforming no vehicles no underwater swimming no jet packs no roller balls except for this chase level no real permanent upgrades either save for one but that's not the end of the world crash who didn't have any power ups and that game was simply fine plus in this game crashing coco have a double jump by default the best double jump in the series i think doesn't have the odd timing of crash 3 doesn't cut all your speed to zero like in twin sanity and actually works when i push the button twice unlike the gba games and yes because i feel the need to mention this the slide jump is back to being an amazing means of crossing hazards and making long jumps [ __ ] in this game you can get some serious distance with the amount of hang time you're given sliding off the edge of a platform it's standing required for some stages so it's good to master it as soon as possible i'm just happy it's back to being awesome again but as i was saying crash 4 is just a whole bunch of platforming challenges both old and new stuff you dealt with before like chase levels and animal riding sections that i don't think control as well as before but it's close enough and then there's new obstacles you haven't experienced yet in classic crash thanks in part to the new quantum mass the closest thing crash 4 has to a gimmick for brief intervals in certain stages you'll have to tap into the power of one of these maps to bypass hazards for lonnie lowly you can cause certain objects to switch between dimensions making them solid to interact with or transparent to safely phase through them mighty switch forces what i kept thinking about during those moments where you had to keep the pace up switching constantly to stay alive or to get all the goodies for me it was one of the masks i had the least amount of trouble getting into account was basically the death tornado spin in temporary power-up form you spin indefinitely until you decide to stop and in midair you can glide across large piss to safely cross them a little unruly on the ground so i wouldn't recommend doing that and stay the hell away from tnt crates when using it i would have liked having the death tornado spin as an upgrade like it used to be instead of having to rely on this so i do think of it as a downgrade but it functions as design and even feels good to use in long-winded sections so it's okay kupuna wow is my favorite of the bunch because she can slow down time for a couple of seconds making enemies easier to kill letting you jump over things that are moving too fast and even letting you safely hop on nitro crates for a split second before they explode you see that's way more interesting than just tippy-toeing on top of them the challenges tied to this mask can get intense but it's easy access ensures that i don't get too flustered assuming i'm just playing the stage normally and we'll get there that just leaves ikea the one i was threatened the most because i saw what this mask could do in the trailers it's the anti-gravity mask you press the button and now you're on the ceiling and you press it again and now you're on the floor anti-gravity yay look you know i'm not the biggest fan of this gimmick i straight up hate anti-gravity [ __ ] because i get disoriented easily and yeah i know that's the point but [ __ ] that point if i'm not having fun i'm not having fun super mario galaxy and galaxy 2 are some of the only games i know to ever do anti-gravity design right then i'd be awfully hard-pressed to find another shining example to be fed of the mask i didn't think it was obnoxious no i thought every area it was used was fairly designed and not overly punishing there were a couple of times where i was [ __ ] crushing my controller with anxiety but that was more about the circumstance rather than the power of being unreliable the mask is fine the anti-gravity is fine but all that aside you'll have your work cut out for you mastering all these new abilities because crash 4 can get pretty damn hard at points and i'm talking just casually speaking tight jumps precise platforming split-second decisions that can make or break you and obstacles new to the original style like boxes that can spew out fires swinging vines and grind rails which i wish were snappier i'm not a fan of the half second delay every time you switch from high to low or vice versa or how tight timing is for swinging left and right i lost a lot of attempts at box jumps because of panic switching or misreading my death perception [ __ ] there goes another box it's time for another death in this game you're given the option to choose between modern and retro style the former giving you infinite lives with the latter sticking with the life system of the older games and unless you're a stickler for that archaic [ __ ] you stick with a modern design because the last thing you need is a game over on some of the more rigorous stages you know what though kudos to the game for giving us the choice more games should do that it's not just crash and coco you're controlling through this whole adventure though a couple of times you're given the option to play as either toner dingle dial and even dr cortex for reasons that make more sense when you keep playing the game and they're not too fundamentally different from crash but each have a couple of unique characteristics tonight can't slide but she's got an amazing ground pound she's got this grappling hook that lets you zip across certain targets and break boxes from a distance not the most accurate thing to aim in fact i would have appreciated a manual lock on for chris that weren't already programmed to have the button prop above them because manually aiming at something with a fixed camera angle was all kinds of awkward her wall jump is also sketchy you can only do it in set locations but it always feels there's a certain delay to the button press and the action going off itself but i like tana overall i like the fact that we get to play as her dimensional counterpart or not she reminds me a lot of nina cortex from twin sanity i'm all for fleshing out more characters if it remains fun and consistent to the core design and this holds true for dingle dial he can spin like crash and his gun allows him to glide in the air for a bit and suck things up from a distance there's no options to shoot fireballs or flamethrowers that's a missed opportunity i think but you can weaponize tnt crates and barrels by launching them at enemies and obstacles blocking the path given his larger frame i only found things a little troublesome with tiny platforms in the odd occasion where he had to bounce on boxes for 100 completion besides that he's great dr cortex is one i wanted to like more but his stages are no more fleshed out than his solo adventures into insanity he can shoot with his ray gun to blast open boxes and ignite explosives and he can also transform enemies into platforms or bouncy blocks to get past stuff you can't lock on the things with the gun something i find very strange to omit so again when you're trying to manually aim at things particularly in a 3d space in cortex's case it is a little problematic there's also this admittedly random headbutt he can do that acts as a makeshift dash it's all right but i despise that little cool down animation in the end where he tries to get his bearings it's a funny visual but [ __ ] up my positioning so hard when i'm using it above moving platforms a case where character detail can be more harmful than charming but compared to tauna and dingodyl i feel cortex's levels got the short end of the stick all these characters have straightforward level design i should stress but cortexes feel the most one note or at least the most uninteresting you make platforms you dash through this thing you shoot boxes you fall down again because of ill timing functionally sound but mundane i just find tana's grappling hook and dingle dials hover vacuum to be more visually striking i suppose what's funny is that these guys are all technically optional after the introductory level they're not required at all to beat the game but you know you're about to unlock a new level with them whenever you have those moments in regular play where something happens off screen and crash and coco have this confused look to them but you know what that means it's time to get a little more perspective and that's what these levels are they are previous stages from this character's perspective you go through their unique section then you reach the apex you see the event in action and then control switches back to crasher coco for the remainder of the stage you remember back in crash 2 or 3 where you had those specific warps that took you to previous stages but it put you in a completely new area that had the color gem or those boxes you thought you missed to get the box gem but then you played the rest of the stage as normal it's like that and when i think of it like that it's traditional i guess but a part of me also feels like it's shameless recycling mainly because unlike the crash two and three examples i mentioned these are considered completely separate stages with their own box tallies and gems level design does change somewhat when you're playing through the crash and cocoa sections again the bonus rooms in particular probably see the most dramatic change in difficulty but it is still largely the same stage so it's like you're playing it twice for the sake of padding trying to justify spending your money's worth crash 4 is a full price game individually yeah it's 60 bucks as opposed to the 40 insane trilogy which was three games and i remember people making a little stink about that you know was this solo title gonna be worth the price tag however i'd argue that crash 4 is actually 2 games there's crash bandicoot 4 the standard crash game with marvelous visuals tight controls great humor and superb level design and then there's crash bandicoot 4 the collect-a-thon nightmare from hell where more than 70 of the game's 100 completion mentality seemed to be directly inspired from cold hard crash the one level from crash bandicoot 2 that nobody [ __ ] liked fully completing folks that kind of [ __ ] is all over the place in crash 4 and let's just remind ourselves crash bandicoot becoming a much harder game when trying to nab all the collectibles is nothing new but this is on a level far more extreme than the original game and you remember from that review how much i hated getting 100 in the first crash game it's 10 times worse here for varying reasons which is impressive but come the [ __ ] on first up the cold hard crash problem the problems i guess there are a lot of times we have to travel to one area of the stage trigger something to make more boxes appear then you got to backtrack to nap those boxes both against and with the camera bonus stages are rife with this and those gotcha moments when you're punished for activating the exclamation box too soon and then there's the overabundance of those god damn hidden boxes if you're going to jump into this game with the intent of getting everything assume every vertical stack of boxes has a hidden box on top of it off screen oh my god that happens so often in this game and then there's those lone individual boxes that look right there jesus christ i barely see that son of a [ __ ] or this one which i only caught a glimmer of by complete [ __ ] accident when i was far away enough for the camera to pick it up or this one which i also found by complete accent when i almost fell to my death on this falling platform this sort of pixel hunting absolutely plagues crash 4. it also doesn't help that some levels are a little too busy with detail and the boxes just sort of blend in for as amazing as the game already looks but if it gets in the way then it gets in the way getting the box gym can be an absolute nightmare and i know they know this because they threw in a bunch of these other gems that you can nab for the sake of making your journey at least somewhat fulfilling there are gems given to you by collecting enough lumper fruit a hidden gem that i feel requires less [ __ ] work to find than some boxes do and then there's a gem for managing to complete a stage with three deaths or less and getting those gems are fine i think they're a good enough incentive for going the extra mile but the box gym is a tradition as old as time in crash bandicoot and they went and made it way too arduous making the game crash for its about time to crash for it's about [ __ ] time i'm combing stages left and right i get to where i think there's a hidden pathway it turns out i'm right i get those extra boxes alright my sense of curiosity is rewarding box gem here i come i get to the end and i'm still [ __ ] short by like eight or nine boxes or worse one box and this happened so goddamn much that i lost count and interest it was exhausting no i'm gonna be here all [ __ ] month if i try to nab everything for this game oh we got a new stage here let's do with that cat oh my god 393 oh jesus oh celine selene help me i'm gonna fake come back here and there's more where that came from the flashback tapes i would have had the review out early last week if i didn't feel the need to waste more time than needed with these these unlock special stages where you play as crash or coco before they manage to escape cortex's lab before the events of the first and second game it's continuity love to see it but flashback tapes require that you reach to where they're located without dying to like the death routes of previous games and early on hell even around the midway point they're relatively comfortable to nab and then around the second half these sons of [ __ ] are close to the end of the stage and [ __ ] up near the end means resetting the whole stage over again or you [ __ ] up close at the beginning because now you're flustered and you hit reset meaning sitting through a 20 to 25 second load screen every single time and this was played on a ps4 pro i can't imagine how worse it is on standard hardware these can be wrath of cortex on ps2 bad and it was a little off-putting hopefully something that could be fixed in a patch i recall nsane trilogy having a similar issue at launch that was later fixed so maybe it's only a matter of time anyway you grab these and you unlock those cortex levels these are like the cortex and embryo bonus stages from crash one on steroids precise box jumping is the entire premise here with just one wrong move meeting your death they also come with their own unique hazards like arrow boxes that turn into nitro crates only after a few bounces so when you're trying to grab the platinum metal where you need to break all the boxes you need to do this deliberately so that those nitro boxes count when you set off the nitro detonator that's some pretty sneaky [ __ ] but i ended up really liking these stages which is why i kept going after the flashback tapes like a damn damn idiot i shouldn't have i knew i was only gonna spend a minute or two talking about it on this video for something i wasted five to seven hours on trying to finish but i did it i got all the tapes i got the platinums and all them i unlocked the general's outfit please validate my suffering and there's still more collectibles the relics and time trials complete with sapphire gold and platinum tears there's the color gems which if you played crash too oh man i hope you prepared to go through some serious [ __ ] to find and grab these there's also these perfect relics that you can nab by managing to complete the stage in one life while grabbing all the gems except the hidden one going for that old school crash one challenge that we've long since moved away from because nobody liked it then so why the [ __ ] will we like it now after a specific point you unlock inverted stages which of the same state is only flipped horizontally and they have this strange filter that are admittedly very cool to see in action but they have their own gems to collect what the [ __ ] there's so much [ __ ] in this game there's a surplus of extra costumes you can earn by collecting enough gems in a stage and the cool thing is that it counts both this and the regular stages gems cumulatively so if you're hell-bent on getting a certain costume but don't want to rip your [ __ ] hair out trying to get every gem in a normal stage just make up for it in the inverted stage and soon you'll be rocking those caveman duds with a biker outfit from crash three one of my personal favorites legit i think the costumes were a great idea i'm down with future games bringing this back because something as a novel as playing a level in different clothes can go a long way even if it causes crash's bottom teeth to clip through his jawline and let's just see if activision has anything to say about toys for bob's declaration that crasher will have no micro transactions i'm sorry but after the nitro field debacle i'm allowed to be skeptical we'll see i hope i'm wrong but as i said earlier crash bandicoot 4 is two games the casual straightforward experience that i think is one of the best crash games ever developed i put it up to a crash 2 and crash 3 and completely serious the stages and themes are greatly varied with a ton of unique obstacles and means of putting your skills to work they ooze personality they look absolutely amazing and the new masks are great to utilize yes it is a little more difficult than the other games but nevertheless fulfilling to finish and continue along and then there's the 100 journey which is a long excruciating slog that i think went completely overboard given the sheer number of things to get and the process required to collect them objectively i believe crash would be well worth its price tag but subjectively i think that extra content is [ __ ] dumb and one day maybe one day i'll make a live stream series out of it god knows you folks love seeing me suffer grabbing all those emblems and sonic adventure 1 and 2. 100 for this game seems perfect for that kind of [ __ ] so i guess in some way that gives the game value as well if you're still on the fence then i say just wait for a price shot before playing it but i do recommend that you play it because i'm serious just playing the game stage the stage not giving a flying [ __ ] about 100 completion this is a fantastic platformer one of the best in crash bandicoot lots of meat with very little fat if this is what's in store for crash's future i am all in that [ __ ] just tone down all this [ __ ] next time please and with that i'll see you guys in the next video it's october i feel i should do something a little more seasonal something a little more appropriate a lot of places you can go with that if you haven't already the trailer for this year's extra life charity marathon went up about a couple of days ago we're playing pac-man games for 24 hours straight to raise some money you can catch that video on the card up top for more details and as always thank you all for watching stay safe wash your hands wear a mask if you decide to go outside have yourselves a fantastic night and take care [Music] this [Music] you

Channel: SomecallmeJohnny

Views: 394,983

Keywords: Somecallmejohnny, Somecallmejohnny Video, Somecallmejohnny Review, Johnny vs, Video Game Review, Somecallmejohnny Crash, Somecallmejohnny Crash Bandicoot, Somecallmejohnny Crash 4, Johnny vs. Crash, Johnny vs. Crash 4, Johnny vs. Crash Bandicoot 4, Johnny vs. Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 4

Id: 7kHvPZJs7XE

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020