The Miserable World of Completing Crash Bandicoot 4 - Caddicarus

caddy you need to play a game it's time to make a video uh i don't wanna i'm ill i'm very ill blair but crash bandicoot 4 just came out paddy i really need some help with my homework oh my god crash bandicoot 4 everybody crash bandicoot 4 finally came out crash 3 released 22 years ago and since then we haven't had any of the crash games at all he's been dormant for two decades and now here we are the true sequel to one of my most favoritest games of all time casper nuka four in a big tent i have stopped making videos about individual games but i think i can make an exception this one time i mean it's bloody cash it's caspanooka this is so important to me that i don't even care that it's not banned a goop month so henceforth we will make this bandicoot day yes my lumpies and germs your eyes don't deceive you this is a brand new crash game available to you right now in the year 2020 and it's called crash bandicoot 4. it's about time brought to us lovingly by toys for bob this time yes not vicarious visions which i was expecting after they did such a great job on their original level for the n sane trilogy but i'm not that bothered and in fact toys for bob were the people that made tony hawk's downhill jam while vicarious visions worked on the ps4 pro skater remakes meaning that it's all connected and crash's next game will need a skateboard controller to make him move wow i'm jump just like crash bandy ever wondered what really happened to entropy cortex and ukauka after the end of crash 3 when they were sent back in time to an alternate dimension and turned into babies that brown themselves well crash 4 sets out to answer that question and give you a damn entertaining game while it's at it which i think it manages to do amazingly ah where did that come from but how does one follow on from the secret completionist ending of crash three well that's easy first of all you age the bad guys by a few years to let them go slowly mad and then kill off fuku oh so uka uka used all of his power to open a dimensional rift to get back to end sanity island so that the baddies could get their revenge on our favorite orange rats and when i say everyone's favorite i really mean everyone because even crash himself is watching tv shows all about his own games like the narcissist he truly is after aku aku senses there's something afoot crash and coco are instructed to find and collect a new group of masks with reality bending properties in order to use their powers to close the rifts and stop cortex embryo engine and entropy from taking over the multiverse and then later on it turns out that entropy was planning on double-crossing cortex from the very start due to his incompetence and his incontinence so after boss 3 entropy actually enlists the help of his alternate dimension counterpart to take down cortex and everybody else which not only means cortex and crash team up to fight a common enemy just like in twin sanity all over again but also means that entropy has a female version of him from another dimension and i have never seen anyone so thirsty for someone else in my life crash bandicoot 4. entropy does himself the bit of the plot i really enjoyed though was after entropy and his life are taken down because cortex then has a realization that nothing is stopping him from going back to 1996 before crash one happened and then convincing his younger self to stop creating crash and therefore never get defeated in the future this story is a good time and it can be pretty damn funny on occasion as well i don't think it's as funny as twin sanity or anything like that but it gives you a lot more interaction between classic characters that aren't from these things and there are a lot of cut scenes in the game so i really do think it hit the mark with entertainment value and once again the highlight is obviously cortex who may not have as many memorable moments as he does in twin sanity but is performed brilliantly by lex lang and animated absolutely wonderfully i cannot for the life of me get over this face right here how much more cartoonishly evil could you possibly be and sometimes it isn't even what cortex says that's humorous but how he says it the bandicoots are on route i must reach the spot my favorite line from him though is here when he's laughing so much that he can barely control himself and almost breaks into song and then there's this bit where he actually breaks into song but turns into a teenager anyway this is a video game not a there's more than a story here so let's play the game already oh look it's spyro spyro's in this game and he's all inflatable like ripto in spyro 4. does this mean we're getting a remake of crash purple with blow up dolls sounds hot and hey check that out they've even spelled crunch in magnetic letters on the fridge here it's almost like that's referencing something from another crash 4 but i don't know i think i made that up so let's get one thing straight before anything else is crash 4 any good yes yes it is in fact if you look at this game purely through the lens of its controls and level design it's probably the best game of the entire crash series and an engaging platformer in general even if you don't like crash games everything you know and love about crash though is here and accounted for you've got a 3d linear corridor-based platforming game with boxes to break one for fruit to collect for extra lives bouncy boxes occasional side-scrolling parts tnt that detonates after three seconds when bouncing on them nitro crates that explode when you touch them akuaku masks for extra hit points and brief invincibility bonus platforms gems to collect and hernias on your stomach from how much you'll scream so none of that is new or surprising but everything else around that is this level design here is easily the most varied interesting and challenging in the whole crash series with the dimension hopping story giving you so many different possibilities for visuals enemy designs and platforming tasks you'll be seeing level design here that doesn't only require thought and split second decision making but that also has a great deal of flow since you can see so much more of the level coming up than in any other game in the series meaning you can pre-plan a lot of what you're gonna do before running along which keeps the pace going mix that in with the new abilities to swing on ropes and grind on rails all ratchet and clank style and you've got yourself a fast paced and thoroughly enjoyable time with any and all new gimmicks added in not straying away from the core of crash's platforming and box breaking gameplay i'd say crash 4 is on the same level as the original crash one in terms of condensed and difficult platforming but expanded and broadened way more which also helps contribute to the flow of the gameplay where crash one is very patience heavy and stop and go oh and i can't forget to mention that aside from a couple of instances they even managed to get rid of all of the branching path rubbish from crash one two and three where you have to pick one path to go down and then backtrack with an awkward camera that doesn't help you at all through the other path to get everything and saying that even in the couple of instances where they are used here they're extremely short and nowhere near as [ __ ] hard as they can be in the original trilogy the flow here is also helped along massively by the controls my god if the controls in this game were a serial they'd be the best cereal first off the physics and weight to crash or coco are spot on standard movement has just the right speed your basic jump has exactly the same speed as your momentum and an absolutely perfect arc the ice physics i hate that and the mid-air control this time around is 10 times more manageable to coincide with the more tricky platforming you start the game off with the double jump already equipped and it feels so good to use here not only does it give you the extra height you'd expect but the hang time in the air you get before landing makes crate bouncing puzzles and really tight platforming sequences no issue at all you can also activate the second jump in mid-air basically whenever you want meaning no awkward timing issues to learn from crash 3's double jump and also an insane amount of extra distance you can obtain by jumping again right at the tail end of a single jump even as you've nearly dropped to your never-ending doom and suffering it also works as a great last minute save basically this double jump is a jump that you do twice well that's weird then there's the slide and the slide jump it's back and i'm not the biggest fan to be honest but for the level design of this game it works really well the slide itself is fine and you can even do a second slide while in the middle of a crawl which is a life saver in many stages but the slide jump is a little unnatural to me and when comparing it to how often i used it in crash 2 or 3 or wrath of cortex i really didn't use it as much here unless it was absolutely necessary and this is for one reason as soon as your jump activates after a slide you lose all of your forward momentum you get the height make no mistake but there's no smooth arc to the slide jump here it feels like a little arm pulls you back as soon as you slide jump and this little arm has its own legs it kills the flow of the platforming if you try to use it as a replacement for basic jumps in trickier sequences and the difference is clear when comparing it to the original games or even the insane trilogy the momentum killing mid-air rubbish should only be reserved for double jumping since you're trading the extra height for distance if you need to jump again after already committing to a single jump the double jump is almost like you're saving yourself so the cost of that is slowing you down in mid-era tad the slide jump though should not feel like that because there's already a risk to using it the trade-off here is that you get extra height and distance for a single jump but you have to cope with this weird extreme speed boost at the beginning of the jump and potentially open yourself to hitting nitro and tnt crates which will explode if you touch them in the middle of a slide but this is honestly kind of nitpicky it's only because i'm very familiar with crash games at this point where the slide jump actually rocks in this game though is with the hang time you can get in mid-air if you slide off of a ledge or a box not only extremely cool but a necessary mechanic for some of the later challenges so i can't stay mad at the slide jump for much longer i just think it feels way better to use in the original trilogy by the way whoever added in that feature of a bright circle that shows you exactly where you're going to land even if you're 200 feet in the air thank you i hope toys for bob gave you a gato and then there are the brand new masks to play with you don't unlock any power-ups in crash 4 after beating bosses so instead you get these buddies as a consolation prize considering the amazing range you can get from a hang time slide last minute double jump i personally don't mind them getting rid of power ups and these guys here are a good middle ground compromise anyway because they act more like a brief vehicle segment in another crash game and then you won't use them again until the next time that they're available except they're not a vehicle they only require one button to press instead of learning an entirely new control scheme and they're way more integrated into the platform you're already doing to make the level more interesting why do i hurt the first mask you recover lani lowly allows you to shift between dimensions and make certain crates and obstacles pop in and out of existence to either phase right through them or land safely on them he's also great for moments when you're under time pressure or on one of the new grinding sections for a nice bit of reaction based puzzle solving to keep your mind occupied while just jumping and ducking under everything after that is the mask akano who allows you to infinitely spin not only allowing for metal crates to be smashed up that you'd usually have to belly flop but also gives you some of the longest and floatiest jumps in the whole game and the heights you can reach with him are sometimes criminal then we have kapunawa who allows you to slow time down to a crawl for around 5 seconds at a time kill enemies easier get across moving obstacles easier and even walk across or bounce on top of nitro crates just before they explode which takes that stupid annoying pointless tiptoe power up from wrath of cortex and turns it into something way more responsive way more interesting and allows you to link more platforming segments together instead of being able to use it only like twice in the entire game because you have to make sure that you tiptoe in a straight line on top of the row of nitro boxes because you can't even jump on top of the nitros even if you're holding the tiptoe button honestly she speaks for herself and she pops in during some of the most tense platforming sequences in the whole game making you feel like a superhero when using her correctly and then finally is ika ika the anti-gravity mask easily the hardest to get the hang of but once you figure out you can flip gravity twice after you jump into the air you can get away with some hysterically satisfying tricks using the momentum of crash's weight and gravity hang time to your advantage one of the best bits for me was at the tail end of the game in cortex's castle though when you have to go through one of the hardest damn segments in the entire game while the masks keep switching between each other trying to help you out once you remember what's coming up and remember how to use each mask every time a new one gets activated this feels so good to get right and above all it feels totally natural mostly due to the fact that you only need to hit one button to activate the mask powers in the first place like i said earlier the flow in this game is second to none in fact while i'm on it like my pills [Music] one of the best things about crash 4 to me is how it takes elements ideas and mechanics from all the other crash games and blends them together seamlessly to give you an almost compilation best of of everything we love about crash games yes it even references the bad ones except this one and not no no you've got the overworld map with level by level progression chase sequences and tricky platforming from crash one secret items awarded to you for not dying jet board riding in swamps and animal riding from crash 2 the time trial relics excellent boss design and super spin gliding on occasion from crash 3. the four new masks introduced longer levels and ball rolling from wrath of cortex the multiple playable characters already unlocked double jump grappling hook mechanic separate hidden gems in each level and brief bad guy team up from twin sanity the multiple unlockable costumes from tag team racing the choice to switch between crash or coco whenever you want like in the insane trilogy even road to nowhere from crash one makes a return which is everyone's favorite but come on guys it wasn't that hard in the original and it still is not that hard now why are you all such a bunch of pants sure i admit that i really missed the crash two and three approach of having surprise level themes thrown together into each world and giving you the choice on which to go for in any order you want but i don't care that much because i would do the levels in order anyway and i'm willing to look at that style of progression as a callback both to crash one where you do multiple levels one after the other in a similar theme and to twin sanity where you do multiple stages in one specific location before moving on to the next one and all of this isn't even going into the amounts of moments from regular stages where box placements copy other levels from the original trilogy or the amount of different classic crash boss attacks that were given new life or tweaked entirely for the better when did i break that finger the engine fight for a first boss is incredible and basically just a slightly more complex entropy from crash 3. avoid lasers and then run up to attack him while getting your head around some platforming under a time limit brio is basically a more aggressive and more interesting version of his own fight from crash one but with a little bit of tiny tiger from crash three as he follows you around trying to crush you then ending things off with the spinning enemy off of the edge idea from cortex's final fight in crash 3. cortex's first battle reminded me a lot of tiny from crash 3 as well for how many things are flying towards you across the entire length of the screen and he gave me crash 2 engine vibes from all the falling missiles and even reminded me of the shrinking platform idea from the baronator in crash bash entropy's fight reminded me a lot of mega mix from the huge adventure on game boy advance since it's more of a fast-paced running platforming challenge than a boss and the final cortex battle is a mix of tons of different [ __ ] tiny from crash 2 with all the platforms falling koala kong from crash one with you needing to fire projectiles back at him crunches final battle in wrath of cortex for how all of the new masks are used against you at once an engine from crash 2 with those lasers that dart across the screen and you have to jump or duck under the best thing though is that if you're a crash fan you'll get a kick out of all of this but if you aren't a crash fan it's irrelevant because all the levels and bosses by themselves are so tightly designed that it stands out and excels purely on its own merits the noticeable gameplay callbacks at that point just become a bonus oh goody goody gums look everybody i said the word bonus and a bonus platform magically appeared for me to ride so you know what that means yes it's time for yet another catechurous bounds round this video has been sponsored by keeps hello i'm spons and i know what you're thinking every time you look at me damn he could really do with some hair loss treatment well luckily keeps has got me covered the easiest way to prevent hair loss which believe it or not affects two out of three males by the time they're 35. bubba hair and i may joke about it but believe it or not i've actually been using this stuff really recently to combat some of the hair loss around my fringe as you can see it's not as long or thick as the rest of me youtube is stressful and i tend to kind of pull on those parts of my hair hence my fringe issues but i can at least stop pulling my hair out knowing that i can order all the medication i need right to my door after getting an online consultation from a real doctor doctor doctor i've got a problem with my hair well i think you should get keeps because they have the only two fda approved hair loss products out there but at the best price as possible wasn't that a funny joke if you're ready to take action today and help prevent your hair loss then head to the description right now to keeps.com forward slash caddy and get yourself 50 off of your first order considering it can take anywhere from four to six months to start seeing results the sooner you do this the better once again that's keeps.com forward slash caddy and thank you so much to keeps for sponsoring this video sponse now where was i oh yes bonus levels they're back i was talking about bonus levels wasn't it and at the end of this bonus level you may see torner's mug slapped on a cushion but as you probably noticed she looks a bit different in this game it's because she's from another dimension though so don't worry if you're more into that than into that you've now got both to choose from you even get to play as her which was a pretty awesome time if you ask me even if she gets really pissed off with you if you want to replay a level what the hell are you doing here you want to go back to the beginning or screw you you want to go back i don't want to go back you can't force me to go back through that you little pissy pimply potty piss i wasn't a big fan of the hitbox on her spin kick i think it was a little bit too high for my liking but it reminded me too much of coco's kick from wrath of cortex for me to care and of course you get the grappling hook not only for the platforming but for box breaking too okay can we please address something quickly i think we need to investigate the caterers that provided food for toys for thought because i've got enough evidence here to prove that whoever did that laced their food with so much aphrodisiac i'm surprised they didn't die of being hard i mean it isn't even bloody subtle the adult references in this game are almost too many to mention not just with entropy potentially having fun with himself but with everything else from torner's new design and camera angles that show her off to even the names of costumes and levels ma super surrektus booty calls da he blows mother clucker ship happens big horn energy rock blocked booty seeker persona crash bandicoot knows what furries are and he loves them toys for bob what toys do they have and what bob do they put them in even the banuka himself is back to doing his air humping dance and considering bestiality i was personally shocked when i saw that big old 12 age rating sticker on the front of the box here and then i was even more surprised when i saw how far they stretched that age ratings restrictions for some of the stuff they included here now i know for certain toys for bob made gloria the hippo looked like that on purpose i mean that there is one letter away from dill oh and by the way you don't only get to play as torner this time around but even cortex as well as dingadar for the first time who also have their own stages and totally unique control styles don't twist your bra up though because the core of crash 4 from beginning to end whatever alternate characters and control styles there are is always about platforming and box breaking making these moments of controlling new characters with new abilities more of a joy than i was expecting dingodar doesn't have his trademark flamethrower which i found quite disappointing to be honest but he makes up for that with a monstrous spin this amazing vacuum gun that absolutely destroys boxes and a gliding hover ability that can be linked into other box bouncers after you've landed you also get to use the vacuum to suck up and fire tnt crates at enemies and other boxes which once again stays true to crash's platform box breaking routes while providing a new and unique way of interaction with that gameplay style making the dingadoll parts worth it tenfold i'm scared cortex isn't quite as good but i still found him a fun time he's basically the same as crash but has a pathetic jump and no slide instead giving you this dash ability that propels cortex's enormous fat head towards everything in a perfectly straight line he also gets this awesome little gun that not only breaks boxes from a far distance away but also cycles enemies between a solid rock platform and a bouncy jelly platform which once again creates unique situations around crash's core platforming and box breaking mechanics by making the enemies just as important to the level design as the floor you stand on so yes everybody in crash 4 you have five playable characters that are all together for the very first time cash banuka cop [ __ ] vindaloo tractor barn party dead climax and dumpling can i also just say for a second that this game looks so damn good man look at it oh oh my god look it's baby t from crash three you don't get to ride him but he's just been hatched and he looks so cute his head follows yeah you're so cute that i'm gonna blow you up so i played this game on the ps4 pro and honest to god i haven't been this impressed with the console 3d platformers graphics in a long time if this was on pc obviously that's a different ball game but currently crash 4 isn't so the fact that we constantly have this much detail bursting at the seams and draw distances this massive yet the game still runs at a smooth and consistent 60 fps is incredible even for the ps4 pro especially with the nsa trilogy being locked to 30fps on the same console i loved the look of this game from the second i saw it then i started playing it and loved it even more then i got to the street festival mardi gras stage and my lips were dried out look at the amount of [ __ ] going on here look at how vibrant and beautiful it is and again look at how smooth it's running despite all of it take the technicalities away for a second though and you still have the most cartoonish and bounciest looking crash game out there with stuff you'd never expect to see and creativity seeping out of every orifice like the one in the back of your head especially in the alien planet stages of bermugula some of the stuff that happens here i never saw coming it's really cool there's great use of squash and stretch in cut scenes and during the gameplay spectacular animations that extend even to the map screen and of course there are the suitably adorable and expressive character designs with that one character in particular getting the most drastic makeover that really accentuates certain parts of the body and that is dingodile look at this hulking mass he grew up to be a big boy he doesn't have that junk on his back anymore because he clearly stuck it right in his truck look at him bounding off what a chap if the original plan of naughty dog all those years ago was to take the insanity of a warner brothers cartoon and adapt it into a 3d platformer i'd say crash 4 gets it the most correct they even brought the death animations back oh i put the wrong disc in not to mention the references to older games and background details are absolutely everywhere from wrath of cortex to twin sanity and even the gba games somebody better call the chicken coop because i've got all of their eggs even nitrous oxide makes an appearance in this game the joke character that was deliberately terrible because naughty dog didn't care enough about crash team racing's story became a mainstay and he even has a picture of himself in his own bedroom the prick he looks like a fish oh god i didn't need to know that oxide had a wife do you think oxide likes fish fingers and let's be honest who here didn't love this little easter egg after you travel from one dimension to another towards the end of the game i wish i could pay attention to all the details honestly [Laughter] because i did oh yeah i should probably mention that i actually streamed the entirety of crash 4 on my twitch channel that you can find by clicking on the screen right now or below in the description all i did was go from the start of the game to the end but if you ever wanted to see some genuine live reactions of pure childlike adoration from me those streams were the place to be we're painting the level what yes give me your ink yes if you haven't yet consider giving my channel a follow i stream three times a week and i even upload every single stream i do under my second channel which is also linked on screen or in the description it's worth your time i promise because we get up to stuff like this yeah her handbrake on her new car is is basically you can't even say oh it's an it's a rod that looks a bit like a wheelie no it's a it has the head it has some shiny thing coming out the end i know i know that there are some cultures that are really into that kind of thing and speaking of things that look like dings the game sounds great too the voice acting is great stuff i've already spoken praise for lex langer's cortex but the rest of the cast are fantastic too and in engine's case he sounds way more nuts and robotic than he ever did in the insane trilogy i mean yeah they only really duplicated the dude's voice and then pitched it up and pitched it down by a few semitones to give like a g major effect which is something anyone can do but it's a massive improvement over this guy since our last encounter who just sounds like a creepy uncle all of the masks sound great too as does dingodile who hasn't spoken this much in any crash game before but i welcome it because i've always loved him as a character and [Music] did danger dial just cuss oh bollocks no no uh by dingadar saying bollocks that implies that in the world of crash bandicoot all the characters have genitals dingodile more like dungadile if anything at this point all i'm doing is imagining what it would have been like if crash 3 was rated at 12. good day mates dingo dials the name and i had an anal prolapse you've got to be careful though dingadar because i think your voice actor forgets how to do an australian accent sometimes got a feeling i'm not in the bag then we have the soundtrack which is not my favorite to be honest for how long i spent on this game i thought that more of the soundtrack would sink in but that didn't happen maybe i was concentrating too hard on everything else there's way more moody and cinematic pieces here compared to the other crash games that always relied on bouncy upbeat and unique melodies that were at the forefront of the action and not really a part of the atmosphere not to say it's bad here i just think it doesn't have the same oomph or impact as other crash games it doesn't stand out and lots of tracks blend together for me sometimes especially with how much they rely on xylophones and marimbas and for me most of the best tracks of the game were just remixes of older tunes like with all of cortex's themes throughout the game [Music] but still it is all good stuff it's not bad and a few pieces i really really loved like the theme song of the game [Music] then there's hook line and sinker [Music] off beat snow way out [Music] bears repeating and my favorite track from the whole game out for launch [Music] i also found it really cool how the tracks were affected by the mask power-ups whenever you were allowed to use them with ikea reversing the current song akano speeding up the percussion and making it sound all stuttery kupuna was slowing the whole thing down and lani lowly adding this weird flangey reverb effect to make it sound like you're stuck in a tin can which is what i've always wanted although none of this can even remotely compete to the best track in the whole game gog and brilliantly enough they even managed to throw in quite a lot of the retro ps1 tunes to really tickle your knees with nostalgia brainwash him master tomato [Music] but when do you hear these classic tunes in the game why in the flashback tape stages of course a new part of the crash formula that i like to look at as a mix between embryo and cortex bonus roots in crash one and the crystals and no death bonus platforms from crash 2 and 3. throughout all of the crash and coco stages at some point you'll run across a vhs tape to collect this is now becoming a pattern they're absolutely impossible to miss hence the crystal comparison i made but the caveat is that to grab this tape you need to reach that point of the level without dying a single time to start with this is absolutely no issue at all the first few tapes in the game pop up like less than a third into a stage but as the game goes on they appear later and later and later to the point where they're practically at the very end of the stage personally though i think you should try going after them not only because it adds a little bit more length to the game but because you also unlock some new levels to play the flashback levels in the hub world which are these extremely cool stages that put you in the world of taped vhs's from cortex and brio's original experiments with crash and coco before they escaped his castle you get some great dialogue in the background great ps1 music to jam to tons of background details and then this is where i bring up the cortex and embryo bonus stages from crash one comparison because the difficulty spike with these is immense the tapes provide you with some of the strictest jumps i've ever played in a 3d platformer and that's even when you aren't going for all the boxes in order to get the platinum medals for each of them but rarely is it ever unfair there are almost puzzle levels in how they're designed so patience and persistence is the name of the game mixed in with a little bit of trial and error but not too much there's even multiplayer in the game but jesus this is no crash bash two and it isn't even crash bash one all you get to do is two mini games involving you passing the same controller around where you either break boxes in a combo until you hit a checkpoint or race as fast as you can until you hit a checkpoint and you swap the controller with another player every time you hit a checkpoint and you beat their previous score great but hey at least it netted me my platinum trophy not sure if you noticed or not but crash 4 is huge and i haven't even mentioned all of it yet not only do you have 38 levels to get through with all of the characters five bosses and the 21 flashback tapes to complete but you even have the time trial relics from crash 3 making a triumphant return for all of those 38 levels and once you beat embryo in boss 2 you then unlock what the game likes to call inverted mode where every single level including bosses is flipped horizontally and given a brand new art style that changes for every single world and just like that without so much as a decent build up or a good video editor that knows what he's doing all of a sudden crash 4 becomes one of the worst games i've ever played ow that's seven fingers now you didn't even let me finish it becomes one of the worst games i've ever played if you're going for completion oh eight fingers now okay so in order for you to complete cash banuka four one of the things you have to do is go for the gems in every level going for gems is the bread and butter of nearly every platforming crash game ever since crash 2 hit the shelves and they're where you're gonna get the most enjoyment and challenge in most of the games if you ask me you see crash has had a bit of an issue ever since the second game when it comes to difficulty and length the games are usually way too easy and way too short if you're just going from the start to the end without going for any optional things but if you choose to go the extra mile for 100 in the older games you didn't only get a smattering of extra hidden stages but also got yourself an extremely cool hidden ending that was the true conclusion to the game crash bandicoot 2 3 wrath of cortex huge adventure entrance and sane trilogy the highest rated crash games that everyone loves work in this exact way yes even that one which no one likes the difference though is that the jump in difficulty from playing casually to completionist in those games is like going from easy mode to hard mode it's challenging in places but completely doable with patience it's not too long and arduous and feels satisfying to complete because the extra challenge in the optional parts are a nice change of pace to test your reflexes whereas with crash 4 the change in difficulty from casual to completionist is like going from easy mode to you will be a wrinkly old corpse before you finish this so check this out there are six gems in every stage six gems to get in all 38 stages totaling up to 228 you get three gems for finding 80 percent of all the one per fruit in the stage one gem for breaking all the boxes one gem for dying three times or less and one gem for just finding it but it's extremely well hidden personally i'm fine with this setup because most of these gems add a little bit of depth for a new mainline crash game set 22 years after the last one and i particularly enjoyed the hidden gem inclusion because of how creative and devious they could be placed and it taught me to explore the stages in newer ways i never thought would be possible in a crash game it felt very good to get all of them and finding them off screen by using the camera function was a great time sing most of them have good hints and clues without being outright obvious too so i'd love to see these come back in a future game oh what's that ah secret i'm smarter than you game i'm smarter than i died and then there's the wamper fruit gems which i also really liked since they add more value to the wamper fruit aside from just being fodder for extra lives and to be honest if you're playing in modern mode you don't have extra lives anyway so it's good that the wamper fruit are good for something and the extra details of not being able to spin one per fruit away or have all of the crate one per fruit automatically fly to your inventory after you spin or bounce on them made these gems much easier and way more satisfying to get the gems you collect also give you some nifty stuff to unlock including a secret ending that i'm sure every crash fan will get a kick out of and with my favorite inclusion they even net you some new costumes for crash and coco depending on which of the level's gems you obtain my favorite skins of which being willie the wombat because holy [ __ ] this is potentially what crash could have been from the very beginning of naughty dog didn't can the idea and then there's fake engine crash 3's biker jacket artist coco retro skin dinosaur monsieur helena bonham carter crash bat decoot elton john paper mario and the origami king and tina turner oh and special shout out to the balloon costume as well not only because it looks hilarious and is named after a bad toilet trip but also because if you get killed by spikes you get a unique death animation but in my personal opinion all of this is not worth the aggravation some of these box gems will give you i mean the very first level of the game throws 104 boxes on you which is crazy for a first level in a crash game and in later stages they can even go up to i can't even and this wouldn't be so bad to have hundreds on top of hundreds of boxes to break but it becomes infuriating when they also love to hide them sometimes even hide them in harder hiding places than most of the hidden gems that are supposed to be hidden and they are also hidden inside stages that are absolutely gigantic do you have any idea how much your heart sinks to get through a massive level and break hundreds of boxes only to find out you missed a single box that was bad enough in the original games but at least the levels weren't that long to retry and the box is usually not that hidden but here it's basically that single impossible hidden box from cold hard crash but with multiple boxes in every level that can sometimes last you up to 15 minutes on each try many of which are absolutely impossible to see without total guesswork yeah sure most of the off-screen boxes you can just assume are hidden on top of stacks of other boxes so make sure you bounce on top of them whenever the hell you possibly can but either way they went absolutely loopy loose stuck in the loo with these boxes i'm not wet the third level of this game is called a real grind because they know exactly what they did here you even get a new skin for beating the final boss which is just the bandicoots in a body cast like they know exactly what's going on here whether you like it or not you will have to pay attention to every minuscule crevice of the level design here i mean the game does look spectacular so a part of me thinks they wanted you to spend as much time as possible looking at everything they included but still it just gets outright unfair in multiple places like in the level off balance where after multiple replays i just kept missing two crates and could not find them for the life of me and then after i looked it up i discovered they are in some of the dumbest locations i've ever seen for any item in any game i've ever played can you even see it now that it's on screen like one of these boxes is invisible enough already but even after you jump towards it it still blends into the background i tried to play the entire game without looking anything up i really did but this was one of the times i gave up and had to i mean how are you supposed to figure that out the same applies to the hidden gems where i managed to find 36 of them entirely by myself which i am proud of but then i absolutely couldn't find the one on shipping error because that defies all common sense and doesn't give you a single hint about it and run it by you which doesn't only hide a switch crate there of all places but then expects you to go back and then figure out the new crates to stand on are over here how in the screw-shaped bums did anyone figure that out without a guide i mean i thought if i found that switch crate i would have activated some invisible crates later on in the level and this is without me mentioning how hard it is to hit some of the newer boxes that they included in this game as well such as the timed invisible crates where you have to hit a red switch in order to make them appear very briefly and if you're not quick enough they disappear until you hit the red switch crate again all the flaming crates which will damage you if you come anywhere near them while they're on their timed looping flame animation and when you mix these over bottomless pits meaning that you have one chance to hit all of them or else fall to the ground and die it all gets pretty ridiculous very quickly oh and i didn't even tell you the worst part of all of this the secret ending for getting all the gems requires another 228 gems you need 456 gems for another and where do you get these extra gems from you guessed it the inverted stages and you can argue that these are one of the best bits of the game until the cows sit on your mum but i couldn't disagree more yes sure there's a few art styles in the inverted worlds that i thought were a visual treat and were extremely creative and cool to experience especially when they do something a little extra to your gameplay like in the fiesta stages when you're also sped up considerably while playing in a silent film old and timey style with bouncy old piano versions of the original music from the stages but that novelty wears off faster than a nipple made out of sand once you realize that you are essentially playing the exact same game getting 228 gems all over again with six new gems per stage no i don't think that flipping the level horizontally and putting an ugly filter over the game counters new content even if they hide the hidden gem in a brand new even trickier location and some of these filters i outright just did not like and it made repeating the same levels again even more frustrating as well as repetitive the comic book pop art of the snow world honestly gave me eye ache after a while the pixelation in cortex's castle was just plain irritating the scratchy pencil look of the prehistoric world made every collectible blend into the background making me miss boxes more often meaning even more replays of the same stage i already completed regularly and the water effect in the food dimension was the absolute worst since you don't only get a constantly distorted and sickening warping screen but you also have to trudge through water physics did you ever want to replay the same stage but slower getting every optional collectible in the other crash platformers for new levels and a new ending is an important part of the experience because like i said earlier going the extra distance was never that ridiculous of an ask in terms of difficulty and the time it takes in fact i think it makes the adventure more worth it because going from the beginning to the end is just not enough but the fact is even if you were an absolute pro at crash 4 and could get every single gem all in your first attempt of every stage you would still need to play each stage completely twice over for no discernible reason other than padding for the sake of getting everything and then one last time for the time trial relic but i'm getting ahead of myself here crash four is massive enough as it is so what do the inverted stages do except double the gem total to 456 for artificial length oh and while we're talking about artificial length another bit of the game i outright didn't enjoy at all were the alternate character scenarios for certain stages you see as crash or coco in a handful of stages something off-screen and unexplained will happen you'll be confused but then you won't be confused because it just so happens that either torner cortex or dingodile are the reason why something else happened in that crash or coco stage this means you then get a different level unlocked for the new character that shows you what happens before that part of the crash level from the other new character's perspective sounds great right well just because kitchen fires sound cool doesn't mean that they are because after you finish off the new character's perspective section you then have to finish off the rest of the level as crash or coco after the moment they got confused in the original stage that you just did this means that you may have spent multiple attempts trying to get every gem on that dedicated level as crash or coco five minutes ago but then find yourself doing one half or maybe even two-thirds of the same stage all over again after only a few minutes of playing as one of the new characters yes i'm not even joking in many of these stages i'm convinced you play as crash and coco more than the new character the stage is built for which would be fine for me except you're just retreading exactly the same level you just did all over again and no placing the boxes in slightly different locations doesn't change digging dunkable the level design is identical the way you approach the level and search around it for boxes and gems is identical and i can hear the counters to this being oh well what about all the secret levels in crash two and three which take you back to an older level but from a completely different area and you had to break all the boxes in there and then get back to the original level and break all the boxes in that all over again when you already went through it all earlier to get the crystal and yes you're right about that but all of the new gems and everything else you get are tallied on top of the rest of the stuff you collected in that level already whereas crash 4 treats these alternate character routes going into the same level you just did as a brand new and entirely separate level with its own six gems to get it's redundant to the core and makes traveling some of the levels exhausting due to how many times you'll replay them i really don't know why they either couldn't use the new character perspective levels as a separate part of the original level that branches off and returns or if it had been a separate level at least stop once the new character stage had concluded it's already a fun bonus getting to play as these new characters so i wouldn't have cared at all if some of their levels wouldn't have been as long as some of the other ones but by adding the need to carry on the rest of the level it completely ruined the novelty for me and made me feel like i was just playing more pointless padding for the sake of getting even more gems when there are already hundreds oh and by the way the alternate new character stages for those same levels also have an inverted version of it including the inverted version of the crash and cocoa finishing segments with their own unique gems on top of all the other unique gems so then even if hypothetically you were an absolute pro that knew where everything was hidden and didn't die once at the very minimum some of these level designs you would have to play at least five separate times to get everything once for the regular once for the inverted once for the ending half of the alternate character stage once again for the inverted version of the ending half of the alternate character stage and one last time for the time trial and that's again if you were an absolute pro knew where everything was and didn't make a single mistake but that's not realistic at all is it being a master of the game as soon as you start playing it so let's take a step back and consider this let's take a level like bears repeating for example and count the average playthroughs of the same level for a regular player you played the level through one time in order to try and break every single box and grab all of the one perfu or maybe you'd play through it a second time because of how stupidly hidden some of the boxes are then you'll play a third time to get the three deaths or less gem because trying to break all of the boxes while riding the polar bear without dying is borderline impossible to do in three tries or less on your first attempt with how terribly it controls then you may play it a fourth time because you missed the hidden gem after that take those four playthroughs and automatically double them for taking the exact same approach for the inverted version of the stage maybe it took you two tries less because you could find all the boxes on your first try or something but even then you're still talking six entire playthroughs so i don't think this helps its case oh and if you died before reaching the flashback tape that's another replay for you when you're trying to reach it not including the many restarts it may take on top of that so let's just leave it at nine then you get the alternate character version of the same stage that ends with most of the crash and coco level being replayed all over again meaning that's the tenth time you've gone through that level design and now because there's new gems to get including the three deaths or less gem with different box and hidden gem placements and a piece of [ __ ] animal riding part meaning you could potentially miss a load of boxes or the hidden gem after going through it leaves you with potentially 13 playthroughs getting everything there and then finally you end things off with doing it all over again on the inverted version of the alternate character stage which ends the segment off with the same level designs all over a bloody game which if i'm being charitable could take an average player 17 playthroughs of mostly the same level designs just for the sake of getting all the gems okay yes i'm casting a very wide net with my estimations here but even if you were able to miraculously start a level that you've never played before and managed to hit every single box die less than three times and find the hidden gem you're still talking about 10 playthroughs of the exact same level design or most of it at least after a while it felt like i was scanning fruit and vegetables through my checkout when i used to work at a supermarket it becomes that monotonous and of course i'm also bitching like this assuming you don't try to use walkthroughs and guides because i really tried not to which ended up screwing over my replay amounts pretty high but why should i need to rely on guides to cut down on my replays in an already padded and excessive amount of reused content it still doesn't fix the root of the issues i have even if you look a few things up and besides where's the fun in just seeing exactly what you need to do and then copy it in every stage just to save time when you're already gonna be putting tens of hours into getting everything anyway if i feel like a guide is necessary in order to cut down a considerable amount of the game's structure itself i think there's a problem with the game structure and oh god while talking about yes the color gems return for crash 4 unlocking even more bonuses and level routes in other stages to catch you more gems and much like the blue gem in crash 2 the blue gem here needs to be obtained through one of the stages entirely without breaking any boxes and it took me 17 attempts and 34 minutes just to try getting this single colored jet this is a difficult and precision platform mid-game stage that goes on for minutes at a time weirdly enough though the other three gems in comparison were pretty easy to get the yellow gem was as easy as the liquid that's the same color of it since it shows you at the very start of the level exactly where it's hiding the green one was easy too since you don't only have this low nitro crate to make you think something was up but obtaining this gem involves nothing but spinning the environment around you something that is encouraged as early as the first level and even rewarded for doing throughout the game based on how many psn trophies you can get for making different things happen by smacking things around you then there was the red gem which i will be honest i did miss a few times until i noticed this obvious hint carved on the wall showing you whereabouts you need to jump on these platforms to make it pop up for the longest time i could swear the red gem would be hiding in here somewhere based on it being a red room that i couldn't see into but no that's just crash 4 conditioning me to play games while overthinking everything thank you i mean look here even i was convinced a hidden gem or something would be here there's a gem shaped carving on the wall and nothing else to see in this corner of the level other than four one per fruit which is really nothing special but no i was wrong again in fact most of the time the hidden gems in particular will not be where you expect them to be and you will look like a right dangly as you jump around nothing trying to figure it out but if you just go against your logical platforming brain for a second every so often you may end up getting lucky like right here with the hidden gem in the inverted version of dragon on i heard horror stories about how i definitely need to look this one up and i'd go insane trying to find it by myself but nope i got it on my first go-around i noticed it in the background right over there i just have the best eyes oh my god and while we're on the inverted stages again i got a lot of the hidden gems entirely by myself even when they got a little bit tricky but i had no choice but to look up around eight of them for fear of ending up in a coma there was this one that was completely hidden in a part of the decoration with zero hints in an area that 99 of the time would have had an invisible wall blocking it off then there was this one that is so off screen that even the camera doesn't give you a single whiff of anything being down there when usually the game is very fair with doing that if you use the camera then there was this one in one of the grinding sections towards the end game [Music] but easily the worst one for me was on the inverted rush hour stage which is not only the longest level of the game already but it's made even longer by the rancid water physics slowing you down making all replays of the level absolute hell meaning that while i was looking for the hidden gem it must have taken me a good 20 minutes to get from the start to the end of the level every single time maybe even longer because i was exploring every single crevice around me and yet they expected me to figure out this on my own at the very start of the level if you go for 100 in this game prepare to be tested in both your reflexes and your temper oh thank god there's the flashback tape no i thought it was automatic crash you stupid orange cloth even akuaku himself has been nerfed from the previous games since he doesn't follow you from level to level when you really need him to and if you take away casual play and time trials while i was going for completion because of how hard it gets i was only able to activate invincible aku aku five times in the entire game inverted included once in the first level once in one of the last levels and three times in exactly the same level where one time was useful and the other two times happened on this part here where there was nothing happening so thanks awk org in fact i'm pretty sure that there are more checkpoint crates in the game than aku aku crates don't quote me on that i could be wrong but it sure feels like it now this may sound crazy but do you want to know what my least favorite gems in the whole game are the three deaths or less ones yay they're all gone yes i know that sounds odd but i'm not nuts collecting all the oneperfruit comes naturally to you as you break all the boxes which is also natural for a crash game and then you've got the hidden gem which is a nice thing to keep your eyes peeled for without killing the pace of the platforming but this single sodding cut of cheap spanish jewellery kills whatever pace the game has when you're going for all the gems in one level why because what made crash platformers such fun to 100 in the past was using the lives that you accumulated yourself to experiment and mess around in the stages to figure out where certain boxes were hiding and where certain secrets could possibly be meaning many levels could be completely finished in one go no matter how many times you die but if you take that approach and crash four you are only able to get five out of six gems in every level by default because you'll be dying more than three times messing around trying to find everything in the level and risking your life all the time this then automatically guarantees you needing to replay the stage all over again after clearing it out in order to get to the end with three deaths or less which isn't challenging to do on its own without all the other elements crash gameplay excels at box breaking and all that [ __ ] so again this is all padding or you could just keep on replaying the stage from the beginning if you want to try grabbing all the gems in one run which could potentially take even longer especially with the load times after every restart oh i'll get to them in a second in fact if you take this save the death gems till last approach you then quickly notice how fast you are able to finish each level and breeze through the whole game which is still fun but ends up cutting the game's length down by a good 70 see this is the problem with crash 4 to me you could just turn to me and say well if completion really is that horrible then just don't bother completing the game and just play it through normally and yeah you're right except i genuinely think that only 20 to 30 percent of the entire game is going through it normally if you're playing completely casually i'd say that you only have about four hours worth of a game here and you're missing 70 to 80 percent of the rest of it the problem with this though is that the 70 to 80 of the rest of this package relies on so much repetition trial and error replay levels with annoying handicaps and loading screens that it is absolutely categorically not worth doing the other 70 to 80 of this game sure the secret ending is a nice touch for getting all the gems but the process of reaching it is absolutely fatiguing and think about it for a second the only incentive you have for getting the gems in this game is for that single ending and maybe a couple of costumes which yes are very cool but not worth this tedious process to obtain so you see where i'm getting at with this right if you play the game and try your damnedest to get a few gems there's no point doing any of that unless you only want a specific costume by getting enough of the gems on only one particular stage or you are already going for all the gems in the first place and once you know that then you realize that you can ignore all of the boxes and finish the main game in about four hours maybe even quicker because of you ignoring all of the optional box breaking platform challenges the game throws at you which all in all takes one of the best features of crash bandicoot and absolutely bastardizes it it's do or die all or nothing if you aren't going for all 456 gems to begin with then why bother breaking any boxes at all aside from getting the occasional extra lives that you aren't encouraged to experiment with without missing out on yet another gem or why bother breaking any other boxes aside for the gems that get you like three to four costumes that you really want to wear oh what's that another counter the classic games are built like this too yes you're kind of right but i must stress going for the optional stuff in all the other games never relies on this much recycled content [ __ ] hidden boxes and additional busy working levels that are already three times as long as every other crash level in existence and harder than most of the levels in crash 1 making the no death stuff a real challenge i mean look crash 3 gives you the most stuff to do in the original trilogy and it caps out at 45 optional gems so even if you only want to do the main 25 levels and call it a day it's not the end of the world to ask you to try going for the rest of the stuff and get the secret ending but here you've got 38 main levels to do along with 456 gems i mean do you not see how imbalanced this is hi who are you i'm you i'm from future and i'm here to tell you you're not done excuse me there's another ending excuse me for 106 okay and how do i get that oh don't worry it's easy just make sure that you get all of the fastest possible times on the time trials and replay every main level all over again but this time while breaking every single box collecting most of the one per fruit and not dying a single time bye so i did it yes my bloody did it once i heard about the second secret ending i thought oh my god surely surely all of this torture would be worth it for that the first secret ending was pretty damn funny so the next one must blow my [ __ ] off so i buckled down sat in the dip of the sofa the same shape as my rump screamed a load of words that sound like they should be names of a font and then boom everything got it i got all of the gems i got all of the boxes and all of the insanely difficult flashback tapes i perfected every single main stage by breaking every box and not dying a single time and i even did all of the platinum time trial relics meaning that i can now update my previous all 202 platinum relics total from the other crash games to a lovely and round 240 get bent and even better unlike all the other games with time trial relics in them the secret ending is usually locked out behind the gold relics which are the second best times to reach with the platinum relics being a bragging right bonus you don't need to get them in the other games but here the ending is locked behind the platinum relics which if you've seen my video about them you would know are sometimes close to impossible to grab platinum relics are now compulsory for progression they expect the world from you but i did it somehow i goddamn did it and you want to know how long that took me you are not reading that wrong to complete this game it took me 68 hours and 28 minutes which angers me to my very soul because they could have at least made it 69 you want to know why i didn't upload anything in october this game is why blame toys for bob it took me nearly 70 hours to complete a crash bandicoot game i don't care how good the main game is this is a joke an over excessive and utterly cruel joke this is cash banuka not skyrim oh and by the way yes this is my save file don't ask me why i called it nib it felt like the right thing to do at the time so i'm going to start a new file which i'm going to call near good old nib to put this in perspective when i got the insane trilogy on my switch it took me a total of 22 hours to 100 and grab every platinum relic in all of the games together sure i'm way more familiar with those games but i don't think 46 hours worth more familiar and that's three games in a pack versus one single game i spent 68 hours going through the same stages multiple times from start to end over and over and over again trying to do them perfectly in one shot on top of all the repetition complaints i had with the inverted stages the ultimate character scenarios with the retreads for half of it and just collecting all the gems in general and that's another reason i dislike the three deaths or less gem because it sounds like having tripled the mistakes available when compared to the perfection relic makes it three times as easy but you'd be surprised how little leg room three deaths is to wiggle with if you go for this gem you might as well just retry the stage until you do it in one shot perfectly and grab the gem automatically because of that in fact what the hell's the point of the death counter if it's completely useless to you after you die three times anyway sorry sorry i'm getting off track the perfection relics time trials and gems are not 68 hours worth of constantly fresh evolving new and exciting brilliant content this is 68 hours worth of replaying the same four hour long adventure but going through them incredibly slowly to get everything and with slightly different stipulations each time with occasional flashback tapes to break them up which by the way you also don't need to do unless you're going for a secret ending so if you're playing casually i guess you could ignore them too and it's not only how long it takes that's the problem it's how difficult it is to get the time trial platinum relics and the perfection relics that ruined my sanity by the final 20 hour stretch luckily you only get the time trial relics on the main versions of the 38 stages and the perfection relics are only needed one time on either the inverted or regular 38 stages but it's still bonkers the perfection relics in particular are absolutely diabolical in fact they're diabolical without the abolicle which leaves you with dying you'd think after so many replays of the same stages that it wouldn't be as hard to do them again while being able to smash every single box collect 80 of the one per fruit and never die once but you'd be surprised how often a brilliant run is absolutely squandered either by a careless mistake or by something totally out of your control and that is when you start to resent everything about crash 4's ridiculous completion requests yep i was waiting for that what do i mean by out of control well here's some examples there's a new mechanic in the game where by standing perfectly still crash or coco do a low spin in order to break boxes trapped underneath tnt and nitro without setting them off sounds great right well how do you feel about going for a no death 100 run and every so often the game just doesn't let it work and this different shaped spin doesn't attack anything above his head check it out best new feature added in i think for a fourth game in the series that didn't work that or maybe it just doesn't work multiple times throughout the game but if i can at least give it an i hate this mechanic then there's the times where you jump on an arrow crate to hit a box then bounce again to make sure there isn't anything else hidden and where's the flashback tape there was this moment here where i got stuck in a tnt crate and couldn't move left right or even jump out thank you for the 12 banukas here we are with banukas of our i'm stuck i'm stuck how does double jumps being stopped by absolutely nothing sound to you or how about jumps just randomly happening in mid-air when you're riding an animal or how about when you're jumping in between squashing obstacles and not getting squashed by the thing landing on you but just dying from touching the top obstacle oh and maybe again i mean at least every so often silly buggery like this can happen yeah party let's get down crash is up he's up and he's not coming down and the odds of success can tip in your favor ever so slightly like when you bounce on certain nitrate crates accidentally whenever they decide to randomly jump up themselves i don't know how that happened but those tiny bits of joy mean nothing to the grand scheme of things listen crash 4 if you expect perfection from me when going for these things that's fine i can cope with that but then i expect perfection from you because this is just unfair and then of course there's the issue with concentrating so hard on not dying that you end up forgetting where every single sodding hidden box is which will tear you apart in so many stages particularly when you are one box away from perfection and have to do it all over again [Music] oh yeah sure whatever you don't need to go for the hidden gems in the perfection relic run and sure none of your deaths in the bonus levels count but it's still an arduous and painful process trying to get these things remember when crash one's gem collecting was hard getting to the end breaking all the boxes and not dying once nobody liked that which is why they got rid of it for crash 2 and onwards but even then that's a mechanic from the hardest game of the original trilogy which i was able to 100 in a four hour sitting when i streamed it the thing is though i am more than okay with them bringing back this mechanic as a little nostalgic throwback to crash one and making it a separate collectible i suppose but in a game that's already asking everything from you including your time and expecting you to replay the same level designs constantly i am not going to let it slide when the game behaves inconsistently especially when some levels have hundreds of boxes can go on for longer than 15 minutes and then every time you make a tiny little error you have to restart the whole level which then throws you into a 30 second load screen every single time with the amount of restarts i had to activate with getting the perfection relics alone i swear that took up at least an hour of my total play time not even joking the loading times are that long and the worst thing about it is i don't even understand why this is if you die before hitting the first checkpoint crait you restart at the beginning of the level in seconds the only difference being that the voice acting won't trigger again the death counter goes up by one and the life crates change to one per fruit crate but that's it that's all that changes so i have no idea why resetting those things back to the beginning with a level restart takes more than 30 seconds and if people want to meme about wrath of cortex's loading screens then you're gonna have to do the same thing for crash four and at least with wrath of cortex you don't have to find yourself replaying the same level over and over and over and over again going through that loading screen multiple times plus when i was playing this game i decided to go for all the collectibles out of the starting gate and i thought it would be quicker if i didn't go for all of the gems first and then the perfection relics so i tried going from main level to main level with the intention of getting the perfection relic before moving on to the next level so that i at least got five of the gems and the perfection relic all in one go but as you can see because of how difficult that is to do and the loading screens that didn't save me any time and i wouldn't be surprised if a few of you out there were really struggling with getting some of these things so allow me to give you a couple of hints and tips on how to get all the perfection relics tits and hips use the d-pad yes i'm being serious even though this is a 3d game and the analog control is positively luscious in terms of how smoothly you can direct anybody in any direction it will ruin multiple runs when it comes to precision across platforms that branch off from the center of the stage or in some side-scrolling bits particularly with dingodile where it's still possible to move too far in or out of the screen much like the older games it's following off from the control input was built around the analog stick and d-pad for a reason so use it when you use any wall runs for the love of god don't touch any buttons other than spins or jumps it feels very unnatural i understand but holding forward while on these bits or pressing the direction towards the other area you want to jump towards will more often than not completely cancel out the automatic system in place that makes you run along these things to begin with so just focus on jumping and spinning and you'll be golden most of the time trust single jumps i'm going to go out of my way and say right now that this is the best single jump in any crash game it's perfect the arc the height the distance and more importantly the speed you lose absolutely no running speed when you use it and many platforming moments require you to make quick jumps over perilous situations often with explosives that you can't stick around for and you'll find that you don't physically have enough time to be more accurate with a double jump between each platform jump because of how much momentum it kills so get used to using single jumps learn to be confident with it trust where it's going to take you and that will help you out a ton especially in the time trials don't bring a duck use the camera panning feature on the right stick every second you can so many of those awful hidden boxes are completely off screen and only visible when you start looking around your immediate vicinity with the right stick it's easily one of the most useful features of the game and if you're scouring the level top to bottom looking for things anyway then stopping and using the camera will not slow you down anymore you'll find things in places you never even thought to look learn how tnt crates work what i mean by that though is learn how you can use them to your advantage for instance in dingodar stages if you grab a tnt and launch it at something the explosion caused from the tnt that you threw doesn't harm you other explosions do so be careful about that but the one that you threw yourself never hurts you no matter how close to you it explodes also in the crash and coco stages you can slide and therefore slide jump off from the top of tnt crates now assuming that you're already walking on top of them yes active or not it doesn't matter you can slide on top of tnt now so do it and finally do yourself a favor and mute the voices every time you restart a stage when you're going for the perfection relic all the voice clips trigger all over again in the same places and there are only so many times you can hear dinger dahl say what am i a bandicoot or torna say [Music] before it starts making you hate existence and it'll make you worse at the stage that you're already trying to perfect you may be wondering what the hardest stages in the whole game for me were though and if you weren't tough because i wrote them down and you're gonna sit there and listen to me whine for another few minutes with a mini top five and i'm gonna cry yeah crate escape this level is only difficult to perfect for one damn reason the very ending segment where you switch control to crash or coco and then platform across boxes falling out of a plane in one of the worst parts of the game there's floating physics to work with along with your movement speed changing every time you jump tiny platforms to land on by a pixel's worth of accuracy and you can't go back if you miss a crate it's an auto scroller you try getting through the same relatively okay cortex stage five million times only to make it to the final 20 seconds and lose it all because of a ridiculously stupidly hard bit it's maddening yeah off balance is a nasty little stage even though i do love the icano mask super spin power-up because trying to keep control of it around all the explosive crates is very irritating and some of the jumps they expect you to pull off are really picky mix that in with some wall running parts which sometimes don't work how you'd like them to and of course the worst hidden boxes in all of crash bandicoot and you had me replaying this for perfection multiple times before looking up what the hell i was even doing wrong jetboil jetty is a nightmare not because of the platforming that's relatively okay but because it's a pretty long level has a hard colored gem platform route to complete with boxes to break and gives you access to the jetboard which has some pretty slippery controls when trying to be accurate all around this nonsense coming at you oh and on top of that the only mini boss in the game happens here and sure she isn't that hard but she's at the very end of the level and you fight her on the jet board which can sometimes not go quite as planned if you were expecting me to mention the jetboard sections from the swamp stages because of how uncontrollably fast you go downhill making the boxes a [ __ ] to break in one go without dying well no i'm not gonna put it there because i found my own little trick to do right here yeah sure it's a cheat but i did this for a total of maybe two minutes in the 68 hours i played so i think i got away with it bears repeating bears repeating this single level took me one hour and seven minutes to perfect complete not because of the platforming though it can get pretty tense at times but because of the bloody bloody bloody bumbling bear this thing controls like ass it's way too loose and sways way too far whenever you so much as tap left or right and i can work with this except when they stack up the crate in fours and if you aren't pixel perfect and i'm not even joking pixel perfect you could hit one two or even three out of the four crates in what feels like a game of chance every single time but this wouldn't be a problem if you were looking to get the box chain while dying as much as possible because you just need to keep dying to reset to the last checkpoint if you miss a box like in crash two or three but then that doesn't only mean you redoing the stage over again by default to get the three deaths or less gem later but you also can't do that on a perfect relic run anyway if you get through the whole platforming stage including the bonus platform and then this happens on the first load of boxes in the bear section which doesn't make any sense at all do you think restarting to the beginning sounds fun or fair in fact consider this a joint second because crash landed has exactly the same problems with the fat slug with legs except there the level is twice as long and gives you a difficult coloured gem root on top of that with its own boxes to break again if you demand perfection from me game i demand perfection from you and this this isn't perfection oh and there's even a perfect relic you need to get on a torner stage called building bridges which forces you to finish off the rest of the crash portion of the level by riding the bear all over again and missing the box and starting at the beginning damn it yeah toxic tunnels toxic tunnels couldn't be more appropriately named if it had tried it made me toxic if my loved ones came close to me they got radiation poisoning getting the perfect relic in this stage is one of the most miserable experiences i've had in any platformer you get given the second to last level of the game and one of the hardest levels in the game that goes on forever that also has the hardest optional route that needs all four colored gems to access which then goes on four times longer than any other difficult optional routes with their own boxes to break and then after around two hours of attempts two hours i made it to the end finally and i missed two boxes guess where they were hidden off to the back and the side of one of these parts of the colored gem route screw this level i hate it oh what you were expecting cortex castle to pop up somewhere here well no i didn't have any trouble with cortex castle at all it really isn't that hard guys i'm sorry i mean i agree it's hell on your first time through but once you know what to expect it's really not that bad just mix patience with logic don't panic and remember the game is based around momentum and flow then you'll be naturally reacting to everything thrown at you perfectly fine just be confident trust where your jumps are gonna land you in fact dare i say it's extremely satisfying and the best bit of the game getting the perfect relic here took me 13 minutes i'm not kidding no i'm not trying to make myself sound good it took me 13 minutes and what helps out a ton is how it's actually one of the shortest levels in the game so any mistakes don't take 15 minutes for you to get back to where you were yes i didn't even need to look at where the hidden gem was because when i got here i looked up and saw this tnt crate and realized that if i needed to get the box gem it made no sense not being able to reach it from here so in a guess i jumped onto this laser barrier which moved me over so i jumped on the tnt and saw the final boxes got their hidden gem and shazam this game changes how you look at secret design in platformers and that genuinely is one of the best things about it to me wait a second did i just go positive right there oh god we can't be nice because we're still not done platinum time trials are they hard absolutely are they the worst part of the game absolutely not i admit i feel more negatively about them since they were the last thing i did in this game and i'd already put 60 plus hours into it when i got here but like i said in my 202 platinum relics video i have no problem with these and i don't see them as pointless retreads of already existing stages purely because you play the stage in a completely different way from every other time you've gone in pick the correct boxes to break ignore the rest go as fast as you can take as many shortcuts as possible take loads of risks they're fast paced and fresh challenges that add a nice bit of spice to the already existing stages don't get me wrong i was replaying these stages for the 50th time after getting everything else in the game and i had to do many restarts during my attempts but this was easily the least frustrating part of the game to me and the only thing worth revisiting the stages for without making them all overstay their welcome it doesn't always play ball though like with the hitboxes on cortex's gun which gets mega annoying when you're trying to rush or cortexes jump weirdly enough none of which i think is your fault if you ask me along with these swings and toxic tunnels vanishing and reappearing at totally random times in the middle of my runs and tnt crates glitching around the sky during dingodar stages but since it's much faster dying to the occasional glitch and reloading to the beginning to try again this was nowhere near as bad as the perfection relics and the 30 second loading restarts every single time you lost a life but then they had to pause that up too with the addition of a new ability you can unlock after beating the final boss in casual play a triple spin which is the poor man's hybrid of the death tornado spin and the crash dash boots from crash 3. you see instead of just giving you an ability to run faster or give you an ability to spam square for a super spin toys for bob just threw their hands into the air said you have mail and added this system in where you have to tap spin three times consecutively in a specific rhythm to get a speed boost you need to do this throughout the entire stage whenever it's possible and the aggravation this mechanic will cause you is enough to make you yell wow this is pretty difficult you will accidentally hit explosives you didn't mean to accidentally hit the square button consecutively at the incorrect rhythm and lose the speed boosts all of this while trying to go as quick as possible through the difficult levels while trying to break all the time stopping crates and trying to time your square button presses around moving jumping and breaking those boxes it is literally impossible to get the platinum relics without using this technique at the very least not including this new slide spin that also gives you a boost after a slide so you'd better get used to using it because of this ridiculous setup i can say hand on heart these are the worst platinum relics to get in any crash game there's just too much to focus on and yes even though i don't think the platinum relics in this game are the worst thing about the game they are the worst relics to try attempting in the crash games i don't know who thought this was a good idea or a worthy change to the formula but it made the relics ten times more frustrating than ever because of it and i really wouldn't be surprised if they ended up bruising people's fingers but hey if you're feeling just that little more smug you can always try going for the dev times and earn yourself a purple relic but christ almighty no if i tried going for all of these you would never see me again most of my platinum times were maybe six seconds or so slower than the required time which sounds doable on paper but then i'd say equal amounts were around 15 to 20 seconds too slow if me performing at my absolute peak was still 20 seconds too slow i'm not doing these i refuse and luckily the purple dev relics are the things that you can brag about they do nothing to the progression they do nothing for completion they are just there to say you got them but they're way too bloody [ __ ] for me to even bother but hey at least i got one purple dev relic by complete accident on cortex castle yeah it's really not that hard of a level guys it's not that bad i'm the best vest the real question though is was all of this for 106 worth it well no because what you're rewarded with is another secret ending that lasts less than 20 seconds and shows you that okay isn't actually dead that's it 70 hours of pain and repetitive strain injury for that and there you have it my stupidly long video chronicling my entire journey of the long and laborious road to 106 percenting crash bandicoot 4. and after everything i've said and everything i've gone through can i still recommend this game of course i can it's fantastic but when looking at all the optional stuff for getting all the secret endings which is par for the course in every other crash game it's some of the worst stuff i've ever played in a platformer mainly because of how much it recycles for the sake of extending the length of the game artificially and just all for the sake of making numbers in an inventory go up and nothing else i mean yeah there's the costumes i guess but that's all there is really so i'm just confused why the hell they made it as massive as they did is it because of the 60 price tag and toys for bob worrying they didn't have enough content to justify it was it activision i mean who knows fair enough if that's what they were worried about but even if you cut out all of the inverted gem collecting on its own that would have removed maybe 15 hours off of my play time and that would still have left me with 53 hours of completion which is crazy amounts of game for a 60 platformer and still overly excessive with what they want you to do in all the other levels to get the secret ending plus this is that many hours of a cartoony platforming game not a massive sprawling open world game this will eventually give you a headache i can't even look at crash four as two separate games one great game for casuals and one great game for completionist because even if i did look at it like that that means that me personally got five hours worth of a casual game just going from the start to the end and 63 hours of a completionist game but that's 63 hours of grinding frustration and repetition i know i'm saying that word a lot which is very ironic but i suppose that goes to it i'm being generous with the five hours of my casual play too because i'm assuming i would have tried to have got a few gems in order to wear a specific costume every so often the sad thing is that not even the flashback tapes are worth going for if you're playing casually purely because all they do is contribute to the hidden endings which if you weren't already going for every other gem and every other solitary item is pointless to do in and of itself so the question i have for you is do you think sixty dollars is worth it if you want a really damn good platformer that you can breeze through in four to five hours depending on the player because i think that's where the game is best at that's where it excels but jesus christ the completion of stuff went way too overboard especially for crash bandicoot 4 following on from the original trilogy i personally think crash 4 would have been more worth the time and money even if they removed all of the inverted stages removed the second half of all the alternate character scenarios removed the three deaths or less gem to save yourself another level replay for the sake of getting one more gem and removed the perfection relics due to the glitches and inconsistencies it's the replays of the same stages coupled with the stupidly hard reasons why you are replaying the stages that ultimately ruined the experience for me because even then to complete the game you'd still need to get five gems in every stage you'd still need to reach a certain point without dying to unlock a flashback tape and figure out how to beat it and you'd still need to replay the stages to get the platinum relics from the time trials even with all the stuff i just mentioned on the sofa being cut i reckon that would still have taken me a good 35 hours to do which is still ridiculous on its own for a crash game but i think i would have enjoyed it way more it would have been way more manageable less tiring less padded less bloated and it would have made the hidden endings feel just a little bit more worth it because i didn't put a bible's read worth of time into it did toys for bob at some point not take a step back look at what they had and thought hmm maybe this is enough as it is crash 4 doesn't only have imperfections like with the stupid triple spin mechanic for the time trials and the weird control problems i have with the animal riding but it's also ridiculously bloated and needlessly extended especially for it being a fourth game following on from a classic trilogy and i have played through all of these levels so many damn times i have no desire to ever go for completion with this game ever again the original trilogy i could play to 100 whenever wherever even with getting all the platinum relics on the n sane trilogy but here there's too many cracks at the seams when it comes to completion and it takes way too long to bother even if you don't care about the terrible second hidden ending and there we go i got five hours of the best crash game in the entire series and 63 hours of pointless busy work that i don't feel was worth my time in the slightest so i can only end this video with a question do you think that sixty dollars is worth it for five hours of some of the best 3d platforming you may ever play let me know in the comments below and i won't read them subscribe and hit that bell follow me on instagram and twitter or i'll never make another video again special thank you to my executive producers on my patreon page in the description below the real kids nathanials eric branky arthur atwell brianne the goblinoid inflam the classy one harper onions cards the mage dredging bungo michael o'donnell kenneth d lizzy lizzy in a tizzy heart fire karl burke stephen leblanc matthew heinemann iron ninja steve the weave daniel and alex ex-shadowhunter zx fat houdini red eyed critics skull man tardis type 40 the game shed coal at giant firing ramen wool 1485 slow punk mitchell reed 80 thornton smith anderson dell nightshade 96 basil and exo pass stan the cereal industry is heavily reliant on the milk industry [Music]

Channel: Caddicarus

Views: 1,801,715

Rating: 4.9075804 out of 5

Keywords: crash bandicoot, crash 4, crash bandicoot 4, its about time, crash bandicoot 4 its about time, playstation, crash bandicoot 4 review, crash 4 review, dingodile, crash bandicoot review, crash bandicoot gameplay, caddicarus, completionist, jontron, PBG, AVGN, crash mind over mutant, naughty dog, cortex, review, game review, gaming, game reviews, game grumps, ps5, nintendo switch, bad games, worst games, activision, neo cortex, crash bandicoot skylanders, twinsanity, n sane trilogy

Id: 5yapbT_FgFQ

Length: 83min 35sec (5015 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Undefind_L]

I started smiling watching the first half of the video, then started to get mentally exhausted and tired as he went hard and in-depth on the flaws of the game. Exactly how I felt playing the game.

[u/forever_a10ne]

I agree with every criticism he had.

[u/Zeebor]

JESUS!

Wait, no. Apparently his real name is Jim.

[u/NessaMagick]

I completely fell off the wagon and didnt bother going for the max% and plat in the end. After seeing just some of the box placements and hidden gems in this video, I am so unbelievably glad I did.

[u/avd9271]

I definitely agree with a lot of the criticism, but it does bring up an interesting question in terms of game design: can a game still be great if parts of the optional content are tedious and frustrating?

 

For me, the way I've seen it, is that since they are optional, the perfect relics and time trials don't need to impede on your fun. If they're frustrating and take up too much of your time, don't do them.

 

For me, I only focused on getting all the gems and had a blast. But I also understand that people like seeing that 106% and that the game can block you from ever reaching that if you hate the harder segments.

 

I feel like there are two categories of issues that I can see with the game that I think different people will have different reactions to.

1. the bullshit issues. This would be:

• the absurd hidden box placements

• the animal controls and ridiculously small hit boxes

• the time trial triple spin mechanic

2. the padding issues. This would be:

• inverted levels doubling the gems

• perfect relics

• repeated segments on alternate character levels

 

I think the first set is inexcusable, but for the second set the only part that I see as a real problem is the repeated segments for alternate character levels. The other stuff is optional and should be ignored if it's either not fun or you're getting burnt out.

 

With that said, people are gonna have different mindsets around optional content, and I think for people who are hardcore completionists, the optional stuff is "all or nothing," when I think it's generally more enjoyable to just do the stuff you like and ignore the rest

[u/[deleted]]

This video more or less closes the book definitively on Crash 4 criticism. It’s so all-encompassing. Considering Activision gave Caddy and other Crash influencers pre-release goodies to hype the game, it’s fair to say someone is paying attention to what they have to say. If nothing else, Beenox is lol.

[u/AsuhoChinami]

That was a great video. I at least take some comfort in knowing that 100 percenting the game is so obscenely, stupidly difficult that I'm not even going to try. I can be a little bit of a completionist, and if something is brutally difficult but technically something I'm capable of, I'll go for it. I'm not capable of this, and attempting it isn't something I'll even consider. Casual playthrough for me.

[u/HvyMetalComrade]

I think the only thing I disagree with in the whole video is his estimation that a casual player could breeze through the game in about 5 hours. I really do think that its more time than that albeit probably not by a ton. Maybe 10 hours or so, would also depend of they’re going to touch anything else like timelines or flashback tapes.

Im glad he didnt hold back on Nverted levels, especially where he didnt like the filters. A neat idea, but the most obvious case of content padding ever.

[u/MisterGrey3000]

I pretty much agree 100% with his praise and 95% with his criticisms. I think that marathon-ing the game the way he did likely exacerbated the 100-106% balance issues (Which they absolutely need to address in a potential sequel, I really hope TfB is listening). That 5 hour figure sounds a little warped (lol) as well, both core and casual Crash fans report the game taking 9-10 hours to beat on "vanilla" platforming run (which puts it on par with contemporaries like Super Mario Odyssey). This is a meaty fulfilling game even if you're just occasionally breaking boxes and getting skins, which makes its completion balance issues all the more puzzling.

Btw, I loved that finger breaking gag as he's praising the game in the first 30 minutes lol. That's some good buildup.