I can’t think of a more appropriate subtitle for this game than “It’s About Time”. Discounting the recent remake via the N Sane Trilogy, and the Nitro-Fueled version of Crash Team Racing, the last Crash Bandicoot game to come out was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 for mobile phones in 2010. If we further remove mobile games from the equation, that would be Mind Over Mutant back in 2008.
Either way, it’s been over a decade since the orange marsupial has had his time in the limelight. I and many other fans, for the longest time, assumed that the franchise had been fully abandoned by Bobby Kotick and our Activision overlords. While the N Sane Trilogy rekindled the hope of seeing the symbol of our childhood once more, it wasn’t until this game was announced back in June that we were able to truly celebrate his triumphant return.
And frankly, I’ve waited long enough to talk about it on stream.
Bringing back a classic franchise is never an easy task, even more so when that task involves making new content for it rather than remaster that which has already been released. Even though Toys for Bob had people on staff who were familiar with the old games, it was still necessary for them to do extensive research into what would work best.
While I enjoyed both The Wrath of Cortex and Twinsanity, it only makes senses, when creating a new Crash game, to set it immediately after the end of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. The original trilogy is the only set of games that most, if not all, fans consider core to the franchise. So when making a new game, it would only make sense to focus primarily on those games, both PS1 and modern versions, as the object of inspiration.
And it shows. This is the exact type of platforming that one would expect from a Crash game, with a few modern design sensibilities throw in to keep gameplay fresh and exiting. We’ve already seen two of the four quantum masks, and one of the three new playable characters, but already they’re making their effects known. Praise should also be allocated to the new Modern mode, which ditches the archaic system of lives since they always a holdover of arcade game design than a truly necessary aspect of the experience.
There’s smart game design a foot, and It’s About Time I gave it its due.
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