Too hard, man. TOO DAMN HARD!
It may seem salty to knock this game solely for its difficulty, but in the closing few hours I really found myself playing purely to satisfy the completionist in me and not just give up. There wasn't a drive to learn it's nuances and master them; I just hate being beaten.
It lacks the 'thats on me, not the game' quality that something like a Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami has. While there are some genuinely great levels here that walk the line a bit better (boss battles in particular are all really good), so much of this feels like a chaotic Mario Maker level, where the user has just added one or two more enemies than needed -- just to be a dick. To that end, a lot of this game feels like trying to get jumps absolutely pixel-perfect (shades of the very first Crash game) and not very fluid or satisfying in a meaningful way, despite the bevy of cool tricks it has (time manipulation, gravity flipping etc).
Groussing aside, Crash 4 gets a lot right, and does feel like a more worthy sequel to the original Naughty Dog games than anything that came sinse. A great art style and fun writing channel the Saturday morning cartoon vibe that first made Crash one of my childhood favourites. There's a bevy of optional and replayable content if you're a sadist - although non-Crash playable characters are better on paper than in practice. Tawna boasts a wall jump and grappling hook, two of the sweetest traits a video game character can have, but both are stiff as all hell and not any more fun to use than the basic actions Crash can do. The same goes for the unique traits of other side characters I won't spoil here.
It may seem salty to knock this game solely for its difficulty, but in the closing few hours I really found myself playing purely to satisfy the completionist in me and not just give up. There wasn't a drive to learn it's nuances and master them; I just hate being beaten.
It lacks the 'thats on me, not the game' quality that something like a Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami has. While there are some genuinely great levels here that walk the line a bit better (boss battles in particular are all really good), so much of this feels like a chaotic Mario Maker level, where the user has just added one or two more enemies than needed -- just to be a dick. To that end, a lot of this game feels like trying to get jumps absolutely pixel-perfect (shades of the very first Crash game) and not very fluid or satisfying in a meaningful way, despite the bevy of cool tricks it has (time manipulation, gravity flipping etc).
Groussing aside, Crash 4 gets a lot right, and does feel like a more worthy sequel to the original Naughty Dog games than anything that came sinse. A great art style and fun writing channel the Saturday morning cartoon vibe that first made Crash one of my childhood favourites. There's a bevy of optional and replayable content if you're a sadist - although non-Crash playable characters are better on paper than in practice. Tawna boasts a wall jump and grappling hook, two of the sweetest traits a video game character can have, but both are stiff as all hell and not any more fun to use than the basic actions Crash can do. The same goes for the unique traits of other side characters I won't spoil here.
NumberOne
3 years ago