Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

Cheeky name aside, back then I was pretty happy to hear that there would be a new Crash Bandicoot game, made by the folks from Toys for Bob: I thought they did a marvelous job with the Spyro remake, and a very good one with the other 2 games of the trilogy. They also made, uh, The Unholy War, but I don't hold it against them. Specially considering the whole Majokko Daisakusen situation, as the former was the base for the latter game. Which is really funny.

Anyways, going back to Crash 4. I was pretty pumped back then! I got the game early, and I was quite happy with everything (except maybe my PS4 controller for some reason autopressing the right trigger, but that's unrelated to the game). Well... mostly everything, really.

If you have heard anything about the game, you will hear people complaining about the lenght. That the game is way too long. And in a way... I do agree with that. Most people focus on the N. Verted levels (a mirrored version of the level with a new, fancy filter and maaaybe made a bit faster, slower, or floatier) are just not different enough, and are just a way to add padding. And while I like them, I do think this is a valid point.

Now that this common complaint is set, I will tell you that I didn't manage to beat it back then on my PS4. Things were going on with my life (and the pandemic of course was not helping) so I found little time to follow up the game. And then I moved, leaving all my stuff back in my country, so just continuing it later wouldn't be possible.

After I managed to get a new PC and stablished in my new country of residence, I bought the game (again) digitally, over steam. As it was paid in my heavily devaluated coin, I thought it was probably fine. This was on the last days of December 2022, more than 3 years ago. And I have beaten the game just a week or so ago.

"But Ammu" you might think, "the game can't be THAT long". And you are right! It's not. It's just that I did something that seems to be a bit odd when it comes to game completionism: I played it when I felt like it. This is not exactly a revolutionary concept: one should play games when they want to play them. But we do judge things in the period of time they are most relevant, and for videogames that's exactly around the release date. Maybe the same year of release. So when it came out, and people had to pour like, 60 hours into the game, it felt like an eternity, and maybe that exacerbated the feelings of "too much padding" with the game.

Well, my strategy of just picking it up sometimes, do some levels, and maybe go back to a previous one and do the mirrored version kinda made me appreciate it a lot more, I guess. I still think that it's a bit of a wasted opportunity, alongside the alternate character levels also just going back to both main characters when their section is done. But replaying them after a while I haven't touched the game felt kinda nice, the problem with being the same is lost when you have so much time since you last played the game that you have forgotten how the level goes.

I've still not 100% the game (well, 106%, but that's a fancy way to put 100% anyways). Sometimes when I have a bit of time to kill I just hop on, try to do one of the time trials, then hop off and continue doing anything else. I think I have put like 45-ish hours total in this run. Maybe soon I will drop it again as I play other games or focus on something else, but eventually I will pick it again and finish it. But I think it's been quite interesting in retrospect: having a game that you are on-and-off again has made me think a bit about how we deal with long games. Also about picking back games that you did enjoy but for some reason stopped playing. I don't know if it's possible to do with every game; I think it's very common to just forget what you were doing if you haven't touched something for a long long time. But I guess years of playing the OG trilogy as a kid has trained my muscle memory to just pick it up again.

Where was I going with this? That maybe we don't have to beat something all in one go? To take time and enjoy things at one's own pace? I dunno. I just think it's a fantastic game. Back then and now in retrospective. Maybe someday I will sit down to make a better "review" of the game, but for now I just wanted to rant a bit about it. Peace out~