I want it on record right now that as a fan of the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy, I despise this one. Somehow the people who made this game completely missed the memo on what made Crash Bandicoot fun. Forget about Tawna and Dingodile, I can't care about them when the rest of the game is this infuriating if not plain broken.

You're supposed to run around, jump on boxes, do some platforming, have a few rides here and there, find some hidden gems that you can actually see and get clues on how to get them, the lot. Meanwhile this game makes everything just frustrating for all the wrong reasons. From puzzles that require precise timing with WOODEN BOXES THAT SPEW FLAMES with inconsistent flames that seeming randomize upon death and thus making the puzzle locked until you die and see if RNGesus is on your side next time to actually annoying hidden boxes that are straight up out of your view or you simply cannot see as them they're hidden in spots you expect to be part of background or straight up death pits. Even the very basic mechanics are occasionally just straight up broken. How can a game studio justify being able to land on a Nitro box, the one thing some people have accepted as a "universal box of instant death on touch" and just bounce off it while (although rarely) your spin attack deals no damage to basic boxes when you spin right next to them?!

Just... no. This is just not a fun platformer that runs itself dry faster than I can drink myself to alcoholism to keep my sanity through this excuse for a Crash Bandicoot -game.

---EDIT 23.5.2024---

Done. Took me just under 78 hours to get through the slog-fest. And boy howdy do I just despise the way how the people who made this game decided to force people to playing their garbage. Just because they gained access to Crash Bandicoot's IP doesn't mean they were good and sensible at making a Crash game!

Like I said before, doing things like smashing all crates and completing a time trial are fine, that's what Crash is all about. But the way how some of the crates are hidden in a way that they're straight up impossible for some people, including me, to find without some help. Platforms you simply cannot see in what you assume to be
nothing but a pit of death were the biggest offense in this regard. And then there were the hidden gems. I understand that the idea behind them was for them to be hidden, but straight up hiding them inside walls so that they are completely out of view simply enraged me.

The way how the devs of this game also force out more playtime out of people by flipping the levels, adding horrible Instagram filters and moving the hidden gem was also a horrid design choice. Especially the filters. For example, who the actual fffffF*** allowed the comic book -filter to be a thing? It's a genuine health hazard as that filter alone gave me two headaches. Yes, they're that bad. Go ahead and look up some comparisons, preferably videos, so that you can see how much of a genuine eye sore the filters were. Granted, not all of them were bad, like removing the colors of the world and having you spray paint that colors the world was a charming idea... but then they screwed it up by making the spray of paint look like clown diarrhea that covers you so much that you can't properly see what you're doing every time you try attacking something. At worst when the camera was a bit too close, the paint effect would cover pretty much your entire screen!

It also has to be said that after almost four years since the release of the game, the devs should've been able to fix some of the actual bugs in the game. For example the level "Crash Landed." Alien world, wild animals, weird alien environment, all that jazz. Oh hey, there's slippery goop here that replicates the behavior of ice. That's fair enough, can't expect for what is effectively a wild alien jungle to have clean floors. But when that goop bugs out so that you can stand on regular ground normally but your movement during every single frame you're in the air after something like jumping has the physics of slippery motion and they've been amplified to be even worse, that's when you know that the devs simply either do not care or they've too inept to fix a bug that is more than enough to kill a run. Or what about Cortex's blaster? Did no-one think that it might be a major inconvenience for the projectile to have a larger hitbox that the model of said projectile, especially when in some places you might end up shooting at walls next to you? Or how about those spinning wooden discs in Cortex's castle you have to jump on? Did nobody think that it might be more than just a whiff of bulls*** when you can fall through them and die to either the pit of acid or the spiked trim surrounding the wooden part? I could go on with other examples but I think I've written enough about such run-killers already.

Speaking of the runs, I have one question. N. Sanely Perfect Relics. Complete a level while you collect 100% of the crates and without dying single time. Why? Why just? What was the point of that besides inconveniencing the players and forcing yet more playtime out of them? We have to smash all the crates and complete time trials already, which require you to speedrun the level without dying. Just thought I'd mention and especially question that "design choice" as well.

The last thing that genuinely got so far up my nose that I considered ditching the entire game early were the time trials. No, the time trials themselves aren't the issue, they just need a bit of muscle memory. But the way how the levels live differently, that's what got me. Most commonly at the start of almost every level, there are things like platforms and static hazards moving and performing other attacks in their own timed cycles. If you start a time trial at the wrong 1/10th of a second, you will most likely mess up the timing you need to run through the level from the start. In other words the devs made sure to inconvenience the players from the very start of the trials by not having a prefixed starting position of the map objects. Sure was funny to watch the ghost of a dev to just run though a moving platform that was conveniently just sitting there in my way right at the start. And the rest of the levels were rarely any better, especially when you, as a player, don't know where exactly the triggers for things like activating platforms are, unlike the devs. And I swear, after following some of the actual dev ghosts (the ones you need to beat to gain purple time trial relics), they just live in their version of the game. Damage-boosting through hazards with Aku Aku is one thing, but when you're literally doing the exact same things at the exact same time with the dev ghost to a point that you spend almost as much time as you'd spend foreplaying a girl but still get f***ed by moving platforms because they're not synced with the dev at all, then you're going to get mad. Because at that point, that's it, you've lost.

But now I'm done and out of this mistake of a purchase and an insult to the fun the Crash games are supposed to. And thanks to this game, I may never buy another platformer again because of how inexcusable annoying this game was forced to be. Or, well, I might. Probably will the next time I see a platformer that looks like actual fun and I happen to have a platformer-itch, but I will never ever buy another game that has something to do with Beenox or Toys for Bob.