Partridge Senpai's 2026 Beaten Games:
Previously:
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
* indicates a repeat
1.
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
2.
We Were Here (Steam)
3.
We Were Here Too (Steam)
4.
Tales of Graces f (PS3) *
5.
Retro Game Challenge (Switch) *
6.
We Were Here Forever (Steam)
7.
Tales of Hearts R (PSVita) *
8.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered (PC)
9.
Mega Man 11 (PC)
10.
Gravity Circuit (PC)
11.
Mario Party DS (DS)
12.
Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)
13.
Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island (PS5)
14.
Astro's Playroom (PS5)
15.
Michael Jackson: The Experience (PSP)
16.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)
17.
Control (PS4)
18.
White Album (PS3)
19.
Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (GBA)
20.
Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
21.
Breath of Fire III (PSP)
22.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2) *
23.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS2)
24.
Army of Two (Xbox 360)
25.
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (PS2)
26.
Jak II (PS2)
27.
Jak 3 (PS2)
28.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)
29.
Pokemon Sapphire (GBA)
30.
Watch_Dogs (PS4)
31.
Watch_Dogs: Bad Blood (PS4)
32.
Legend of Hero Tonma (TG16)
33.
Alan Wake: American Nightmare (PC)
34.
Banjo-Tooie (N64) *
35.
Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (PSP)
36.
Super Robot Spirits (N64)
37.
Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)
38.
Tales of Arise (PS4)
39.
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (PS2)
40. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (PS5)
I played the old Crash trilogy and other PS1 spin-offs a few years back and rather liked them, and I played Wrath of Cortex just over a week ago. We call Wrath of Cortex “Crash 4” over here in Japan, so I thought it’d be funny to go right from old Crash 4 to new Crash 4, as this is one of the collection of games my partner is digitally lending me via her PS5. I had heard good things about Crash 4 back when it came out but ultimately was pretty convinced that it’d be just pretty good. I had my expectations utterly blown out of the water with this one, though, and that was such a wonderful surprise after how badly my last experience playing a game on my PS5 went XD. It took me around 39 hours, but playing the English version of the game, I got 100% completion (though not 106% completion) for collecting all the diamonds and all the platinum medals (with 1 gold ankh and 14 N. Sane Emblems).
As the title clearly states, this is Crash *4*, so we start right at the end of Crash 3. Well, more accurately, we start where things left off back in Crash 3’s true ending. Uka Uka, Neo Cortex, N. Tropy, and the bad guys are all still trapped in the wasteland dimension at the end of the universe. They’ve been trapped there for decades, and Cortex completely gave up hope of escape a *long* time ago. N. Tropy and Uka Uka haven’t been deterred, though, and they’ve been working on getting out all this time. Their hard work finally pays off, as one final massive blast from Uka Uka blows a rift open in the space time continuum and allows them to escape (at seemingly the cost of Uka Uka’s life). Crash, Coco, and Aku Aku are chilling on the beach on N. Sane Island when a massive explosion disrupts their good time. Aku Aku quickly informs them that not only can he detect Cortex’s escape, but something is seriously wrong with space and time, and only they can stop it! They’ll need to gather the power of the legendary Quantum Masks if they want any hope of saving the universe, so it’s time to get off the couch and wreck stuff up like a bandicoot does so well!
The story is ultimately rather light, as one would expect from a platformer, but it’s still got a ton of charm and humor, nonetheless. Toys For Bob have had a lot of fun not only with the whole multiverse and time travel aspects of the setting, but also with the whole notion of insisting that this is “Crash 4” in the first place. All sorts of returning characters get some fun time to shine as good guys, bad guys, and sometimes even both. The way Cortex, in particular, is written in this game is loads of fun, and getting Uka Uka out of the picture lets him show a lot more agency, which really helps with the comedy and story beats. If you’re someone who’s got a lot of love for the classic Crash games, there’s a lot to appreciate here, as Toys For Bob clearly have no shortage of Crash Bandicoot super fans among their dev team to pack the game with silliness.
This extends to the gameplay, too, because holy heck is this one solid platformer. Rather than the hub levels of the later Crash games, levels are approached linearly via a world map much like Crash 1 used. You’ve got dozens of levels to play and a ton of collectibles to find in each. It ultimately still boils down to collecting lots of wumpa fruit, breaking all the boxes, not dying much, and finding the secret gem hidden in each level, but there are some really sicko-mode levels of difficult challenges to master for the truly daring. Not only are there N. Verse (inverse) mirrored versions of each level with their own diamonds to collect, there are also the trusty Crash Bandicoot time trials to throw yourself into as well. The time trials are pretty neat this time around, too. In addition to being viciously hard (you'll need speedrunner-level tech to get those platinum ankhs!), they also do a series first by changing the level a bit, adding in extra danger crates along with all the time trial-specific time bonus ones. Toss that in with special challenge levels you can only unlock by not dying for nearly a whole stage (much like the classic Crash skull’n’crossbones platforms had) and even the N. Sane Emblems you can only get for completing a stage both not dying AND breaking every crate, and you’ve got a mountain of replayability for those mad enough to attempt it.
There’s a lot of reason to dive headfirst into the Bandicoot madness, too, because this game plays GOOD. Crash and his sister Coco both play the same (thankfully), and they both handle really well. The basic movement works just fine, of course, but between the double jumps, slide dash-jumps, and extra height from your ground slams, there is a ton of movement tech to explore to really refine how you play the game if you so choose. The other three playable characters don’t have quite as much depth to their move sets, granted, but they all handle more than differently enough to make for a nice change of pace. Their usually optional stages make for much better palette cleansers than the old vehicle stages of old Crash did.
On that note, Crash 4 is effectively entirely devoid of the old Crash games’ vehicle stages, instead favoring lots of 2D and 3D platforming segments, and it’s a far better game for it. The stage design is all around really solid, and it does a great job of giving you tons of fun challenges and environments to wield your Bandicoot-ing prowess. The big new gimmick is the aforementioned Quantum Masks. Appearing in certain stages, you can tap R2 to activate their power to get through the stage, and this can range from toggling surrounding objects/platforms in and out of existence, to slowing down time, to even reversing gravity for yourself. It’s a really clever approach to a new central game mechanic, and it weaves in really well with the Bandicoots’ existing move set.
The only aspects of older games that *are* still present, outside of the platforming, are the auto-scrolling “riding an animal” sections (which are tough as ever), alongside some all new rail grinding sections. While the former handle a bit funky, and they can definitely be a bit irritating with just how hard they can make getting all the boxes in a stage, the latter are definitely my biggest major problem with the stage design. The game occasionally has some issues with depth perception for jumping across boxes in mid-air, but a very discrete yellow circle directly below you generally alleviates any confusion as to where you are in your jump. You lack this circle when you’re rail grinding, so some of the more cinematic camera angles can make it awkward to judge where you are in relation to obstacles or crates around you sometimes. The only real issues I have with the controls are really specific edge case-level stuff, like the window for doing a double jump very rarely overlapping with that of holding down jump to get a boost off of a box, so the double jump never triggers. It's certainly annoying when it happens, but unless you're going for 100+% completion, you'll probably never even notice it.
A lot of the rest of the jumping, spinning, and movement tech you can pull off take some getting used to (especially the Quantum Masks’ stuff), but at the end of the day, Toys For Bob have made not just a really tightly designed platformer, but a really tightly designed Crash Bandicoot game. While far from a negative in and of itself, that is where my only real hesitation to recommend this game comes from, because this game is inescapably a Crash Bandicoot game: It’s not easy and gets tough quick. There are thankfully unlimited extra lives (though you can play a special classic mode with limited lives if you’re feeling bold enough), and you actually get free protection masks upon respawn and even new mid-level checkpoints if you die more than 5 times in a stage. Crash 4 is a tough game, but it’s one that’s definitely still interested in helping give you the tools to finish it. It’s also just not a game that’s going to significantly compromise the challenge in a section if you’re having trouble. There’s no optional feature to skip you past something you’re having trouble on, so you live and die by your own skills and not much else. While a lifelong fan of the genre like myself didn’t find the game that terribly difficult (the most times I ever died on a level is around 20), those who are less confident with platformers or are relatively new to the genre will need to be up for a real challenge if they want to pick up Crash 4. For veterans and lovers of the genre like me, though, you’ve got one of the strongest platformers of this console generation (Nintendo or otherwise, imo) waiting for you.
The presentation of this game is really great! The music, for starters, is all really fun and fits the Crash vibe really well, and the versions of classic tracks are a really nice touch as well (in the little sections they're used in, anyhow). The graphics, for their part, are well detailed and packed with color. The animations for characters and enemies, especially in cutscenes, are fantastic and packed with personality. Crash and Coco have a ton of skins to unlock by collecting diamonds and doing various challenges, and they were all so cool looking I ended up unlocking absolutely all of them because I just had to see each and every one! X3. The voice performances especially are so great at bringing the cast to life, and Neo Cortex was my easy favorite. He’s probably got the most spoken lines in the game, and he steals every scene he’s got. He’s such a wonderful loser, such a wannabe evil genius in search of a purpose, and his VA does *so* much to execute it perfectly, and it’s easily one of my favorite parts of the game.
While it *is* all tied to optional content, my only real issue with the presentation has to do with the mirror versions of stages I mentioned earlier. Not only are they mirrored, but each world's mirror stages have a new graphical style for that world as well as a remix of the respective normal stage's music. Sometimes that comes along with a slight addition that modifies how you play (like speeding up or slowing down all movement), but generally the only differences in these mirrored stages is that they have their own unique hiding spot for that level's hidden gem. Why is this down here in the aesthetics section of the review? Well, those new graphical styles are *very* much not made equally. Some are so minor you'd barely even notice them (like my personal favorite, the one where your moves throw paint around that colors in the black & white level), some are definitely present but not too bad (like the pixelated final world's stages), and some are genuinely so unpleasant that friends watching me had to close the stream while I played those levels. The bayou's flickering colors & sepia (to make it look like an old movie, complete with sped up movement speed for the whole stage) and the ice world's comic book filter were both *so* bad to look at, and I really didn't like doing any of the mirror levels there. A lot of the mirror stages' effects also make it significantly harder to see boxes, the ground, and (most importantly) the little yellow circle that shows the spot you're above in mid-air. All of these are ultimately optional content, so it's hard for me to dock the game terribly meaningfully for it (especially because these are really just the main level again with virtually no gameplay changes, so they're hardly particularly compelling content in the first place), but some of those graphical effects were just so damn awful that they could not go unmentioned here.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Graphical problems in unimportant side content aside, this game is heckin' brilliant. I’ve already said it before, but even though I expected this game to be good, it still absolutely blew my socks off. I haven’t had a game I just couldn’t stop thinking about like this in a *while*. This was the kind of game that’s so fun to play that you wake up every morning thinking about it. Every day was Christmas morning, and Crash Bandicoot was my biggest present (and also Santa!) XD. While I imagine that newcomers to the genre will probably find this a rather difficult game to get to grips with (on account of how, well, difficult it is), veterans and genre enthusiasts like myself will find piles of joy to dig through here, because Toys For Bob have given us one of the best 3D/2D platformers in a good long while.
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
