[WARNING OF SPOILERS AHEAD. PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON PLAYING THE GAME(S). OTHERWISE, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. THANK YOU]

After the success of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and semi-success of Crash Team Racing Nirto-Fueled (I say semi-success because of the backlash of microtransactions within the game), I was pretty excited for a new Crash game. However, I think my excitement and somewhat vision blurred by the success of the previously-mentioned games was something I should have taken into consideration.

I’d like to note that I had quite a bit of faith in Toys for Bob due to their involvement in the N. Sane Trilogy as well as their successful involvement in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, I really thought they would do a good job. I’m not solely blaming them for everything I didn’t like about the game, but they some responsibility.

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The Story

It starts where Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped‘s special ending took place – essentially, Dr. Neo Cortex, N. Trophy and Uka-Uka are trapped in a timeless dimension thanks to the implosion of the failed Time Twisting Machine. It seems many years have passed as N. Trophy and Cortex are adults again (they were previously turned into babies) and using the last of his magic, Uka-Uka opens a hole in time and space to send the other two back, and essentially dying. Because of this, they manage to open the multiverse and decide to conquer its’ entirety with the help of previous bosses N. Gin and N. Brio. Aku-Aku senses a power emulating from N. Sane Island and sends Crash to investigate. Crash discovers Lani-Loli, one of the four Quantum Masks. The Quantum Masks – you guessed it – control time and space and only appear if time and space has been disturbed. Lani-Loli asks Crash, Coco and Aku-Aku to help find his brothers and sisters to stop Cortex and N. Trophy’s Rift Generator and thwart their plans.

Along the way, they discover previous characters Tawna (Crash’s old girlfriend from the first game) and Dingodile (and old boss from Crash 3). With their help, and eventually Cortex, they travel across 10 dimensions to stop N. Trophy and his female counterpart from another dimension. The other 3 masks – Akano (Dark Matter), Kupuna-Wa (slowing down time) and Ika-Ika (changing gravity) – aid the team, only to be betrayed by Cortex himself. He kidnaps Kupuna-Wa to travel back to where it all began in 1996 so Crash and Coco were never created and therefore not thwart his plans of creating a creature army to take over the world. This leads to Cortex being banished (yet again) and leaving the cliff-hanger ending of Uka-Uka reappearing before Cortex once more.

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What I Did Like About the Game

The game begins straight off the bat and within my first minute of playing, I saw Easter Eggs – two to be precise. The first being a fridge (on the edge of a tropical island, don’t worry about it) – a set of fridge magnets spell out ‘Crunch’ – a character who first appeared in Wrath of Cortex (quick fact: in Japan, this game was actually known as Crash 4 as well as Twinsanity – the next in the series – as Crash 5, making them official a part of the original trilogy, despite no other countries doing so. Not sure why though). The second Easter Egg is a Spyro floatie – nodding to the age-old rivalry between Crash and Spyro as well as Toys for Bob’s involvement with other the remakes. This game has nods and elements used from previous installments (made outside of TFB), which is a nice touch. There’s even a point in the game where Loni-Lali addresses the fact that Crash and Coco have defeated Cortex 3 times but “seems like more (than that)”.

This was made on the PS4, so graphics-wise it was as smooth as butter (even with me playing it on my original PS4 console and not a Pro) and everything is bright and colourful. Not saying that the original trilogy wasn’t or it was a bad thing, but it was definitely more cartoon-looking than previous games. Again, not a bad thing.

As well as playing as Crash (or Coco, player’s choice), you could play various levels as Tawna (who has a sling-hook thingy); as Dingodile (who has a cool-ass hover gun) and as Cortex (who has a phaser that turn enemies into platforms). They all played differently and made my think about how to play as them, making a welcoming change to pace to game every now and then.

From reviews I read, players had problems with longer level designs and ‘vehicle’ segments, but I did not have a problem with this. I liked that levels were longer than the original trilogy (there’s around 3 – 4 levels per hub world) and added more to the play time. I’ve often seen/heard players complete the original games in 3 – 4 hour sitting, which I don’t enjoy. Having the game longer means I have more time to enjoy it.

I also liked that you could get multiple gems in one level by collecting wumpa fruit (there’s one for getting 60% of all wumpa fruit in the level; 80%; smash all crates; dying less than 3 times in one level and a hidden gem. Some levels have coloured gems too which were in the old games). Gems go towards unlocking skins for Crash and Coco. It wasn’t something that encouraged me for get more gems but I can see other players doing it.

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What I Didn’t Like About the Game

I found the story lackluster – which is really saying something for a Crash game. Maybe I’m spoiled now because the huge amounts of cinematic games I’ve played, but there was something about the story that was off for me. On paper (or screen in this case), it’s fine and makes a lot of sense me to. I liked the direction it was going in. But watching the cutscenes didn’t grip me. I found the humour unfunny and trying too hard in some places.

The music was unrememberable. I’ve always enjoyed the Crash Bandicoot music (I especially love the Twinsanity soundtrack for obvious reasons. Not-obvious-reasons: the music was done by an acapella group called Spiralmouth) but I don’t really remember any of themes or even remember liking them. They were underwhelming.

Crash is a simple game with simple controls – jump, spin, crawl, move. The added controls with the masks that came into play made it more…’fussy’, in a way. I liked the mask powers (apart from Akano, the mask of Dark Matter which allowed you to spin longer and use on magical enemies and Locked Crates) but they added mechanics (and later in the game multiple mechanics) that complicated the game further. I’m dyslexic (in case you couldn’t tell) and this is not a dyslexic-friendly game, especially if you struggle (like me) with directions (specifically being upside-down which is when Ika-Ika’s power up came into play).

Speaking of controls, even though I praised having multiple playable characters, I found Tawna the most difficult to handle, and died multiple times when trying to use the wall jump. I also didn’t like only playing as Tawna, Dingodile or Cortex for only half a level then replaying the second part of a level I just played. Just allow me to play as another character for a whole level otherwise I feel like I haven’t played the character as long as I would like to.

Crash is known to have a hard difficulty, but that only tends to happen when going for 106% completion. I’ve never attempted it myself (or have the desire too) so I stick with the base game. However, I couldn’t (and haven’t at the time of writing this) finished It’s About Time. I got to Neon City and it got too difficult for me. The difficulty in Crash does fluctuate in previous games, however I found this one in particular more difficult than the others combined. 

The amount of replayability in this game is ginormous thanks to flashback tapes. These are found in most levels which essentially put a filter over the level or adds something different, like the spin attack adding colour to colourless backgrounds (in other words, painting the level yourself). Combined with inverted stages (playing the game in a different direction) that have a separate amount of gems to collect and time trials making a return means you could play some levels up to 5 or 6 times. That to me, does not sound fun. This is all optional, of course, but players are rewarded with a less-than-a-minute final cutscene of Uka-Uka coming back to life and baiting a sequel. Doesn’t feel like much of a reward.

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Conclusion

Despite my negative takes on the game and despite me not completing it, I still enjoyed this game. It’s a must-play for old Crash Bandicoot fans, however I would advise to go in with an open mind. This game was just too difficult for me, maybe for my own reasons or because of the game, but nonetheless I can tell the developers of It’s About Time were fans of the previous Crash Bandicoot games and they wanted to make something as faithful to the originals as possible. Herse hoping Toys for Boy learn a thing or two for Spyro 4. And just because I didn’t complete something (regardless of skill or game difficulty), doesn’t mean I shouldn’t like or enjoy it.

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• Crash Bandicoot: It’s About Time is available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Switch and PC now.
• Here’s the announcement trailer.
• Want to know the story but not play the game? Here’s all the cutscenes in one video for you.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed!