Overview
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time picks up after the events of Crash Bandicoot: Warped, with Uka Uka's desperate escape attempt tearing open a rift in space and time. That one catastrophic mistake hands Doctor Neo Cortex and Nefarious Tropy a doorway to the entire multiverse, and suddenly the stakes are bigger than any wumpa fruit haul. Crash and Coco have to chase them across dimensions before the two villains rewrite reality in their favor.
The story gives the game a solid reason to hop between wildly different environments, from prehistoric jungles to neon-soaked futuristic cities. Each world feels distinct rather than just reskinned, and the level variety keeps the pacing sharp across what is a genuinely long campaign by platformer standards. Toys for Bob packed in over 100 levels when you count the bonus stages and alternate character missions, which puts the runtime well above most genre contemporaries.
Gameplay and mechanics
The core Crash formula is intact: run, spin, jump, and survive. What Crash Bandicoot 4 adds on top of that foundation are the four Quantum Masks, each granting a specific power tied to manipulating the level itself. Key mechanics include:
- Lani-Loli: phases out sections of the environment
- Akano: enables a gravity-defying spin attack
- Kupuna-Wa: slows time to navigate fast obstacles
- Ika-Ika: flips gravity entirely
These powers slot into specific sections of each level rather than being freely available at all times, which keeps the difficulty honest. The game does not hand you a solution; it hands you a tool and expects you to figure out the timing. That philosophy carries through to the gem and relic challenges, where going for full completion becomes a serious test of precision platforming.
Who else can you play?
Beyond Crash and Coco, three additional characters each get their own dedicated levels with mechanics that play nothing like the main campaign. Tawna swings and grapples through stages with a hook that emphasizes momentum and verticality. Dingodile operates a vacuum cannon and works through enclosed arena-style sections. Cortex himself flips between ray gun modes that can alter enemy behavior, turning some obstacles into platforms. None of these feel like afterthoughts; each has enough unique levels to tell a parallel story thread that eventually ties back into the main plot.
Content and replayability
Two main run modes shape how you experience the game. Classic Mode gives Crash a limited life count, which recreates the pressure of the original trilogy. Modern Mode removes the counter entirely and lets players focus on exploration and gem hunting without the threat of a game over screen. Both modes share the same levels, so the choice is about personal tolerance for punishment rather than accessing different content.
Hidden gems, colored gems, flashback tapes, and N. Verted levels (mirrored stages with a visual filter twist) give completionists a mountain of reasons to replay every stage. The flashback tapes in particular are some of the hardest optional content in the entire series, demanding near-perfect runs through gauntlet sections that would feel at home in a precision platformer.
Impact and legacy
Crash Bandicoot 4 released in October 2020 to strong critical reception, with multiple outlets placing it among the best platformers of that year. The game arrived on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at launch, then expanded to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Battle.net and Steam. The cross-generation release gave it wide reach, and the Switch port holds up well despite the hardware gap. For a franchise that spent years in remake territory, It's About Time delivered exactly what the name promised: a real sequel built on everything that made the originals worth remaking in the first place.