Late to the Party: Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

ow that the character is over 24 years old, Crash Bandicoot has amassed a generation of fans that look at him with the same reverence as Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog—he’s a household name among Generation Z. On that token though, beyond the remastered releases and cameos, just how relevant is the property today’s gaming climate? Ironically enough, one of the biggest attractions the marsupial had over its competition was its sense of exclusivity, both in terms of gameplay difficulty and the platform brand the property wore heartily on its sleeve.

Interestingly, the Crash Bandicoot property made its bread and butter on appealing to the public as the coolest outlier on the market with the PlayStation, but as the years have passed, the marsupial mascot has evolved into a far more accessible franchise. That sentiment couldn’t be more apparent than the latest entry from developer Toys for BoB, and publisher Activision, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

With the success of the remastered trilogy, the developer was tasked with releasing a new sequel that would invoke the initial spirit of Bandicoot’s PlayStation outings, and thankfully, Toys For BoB answered that call with a game that successfully caters to everyone like no other entry before it, and is easily the best Crash game to date.

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QCF: Crash Bandicoot: N Sane Trilogy

hile there are dozens upon dozens of gaming franchises that are languishing in obscurity these days, none have quite sparked the sort of fiery demand that Marsupial Mascot Crash Bandicoot has. The once revered Sony icon had recently resurfaced as a cameo character in the latest Skylanders entry, and the fan service in response proved that plenty of folks had still held onto their memories of the edgy Jorts-wearing furball fondly, which didn’t go unnoticed by Activison or Sony.

Wisely banking off of the nostalgia of the Bandicoots earlier titles during his prime, the two companies had finally decided to pull the trigger, Crash Bandicoot: N-Sane Trilogy, exclusively for the PlayStation 4, a remastered collection of the first three titles newly developed from the ground up by Vicarious Visions.

The question here however was never whether or not Crash Bandicoot could be brought back but rather, whether or not he SHOULD be—many of the charming elements of the series are also some of the same rough-edged quirks that relegate the games into being the clumsy 3D relics (pun gratifyingly intended) that they ultimately are.

While there are few conventions that haven’t aged well, and a few new glaring issues that weren’t there before, the trilogy still manages to iron out a lot of the wrinkles of the originals, delivering a wonderful compilation of the Bandicoot’s early outings that both fans, and new comers alike.

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QCF: Skylanders Imaginators

t some point, I think we all knew that this “Toys to life craze” was going to hit its peak much like the way Guitar Hero did around the sixth of seventh iteration—as much as we all want to deny it, we knew.

Skylanders Imaginators is a testament to that; a sequel that that promises an ambitious premise, and fails to deliver on anything more than just another Skylanders game, and that’s when the game doesn’t return to some gross old habits the series worked hard to break either.

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PPR Presents Play Play: Skylanders Superchargers

hile the announcement of Skylanders Imaginators (or Imagineers, George keeps mixing it up honestly, and he’s one we expect to keep better track of that shit) was a bit expected and yet still surprising all at the same time—mostly to the reveal of a certain iconic gaming mascot making a cameo.

The Imaginator gimmick seems like a hodgepodge of the Trap Team gimmick, and that sound like an awesome return to form, because like Banjo Kazooie, these critters had their own car “phase” in Superchargers.

Join Ser and George as they talk about how the Skylanders series hasn’t slowed down for the last 5 years, and whether or not that this is good thing; and a bunch of grown men groaning on about hard it still is to buy children’s toys, plenty of that too in this new Play Play.

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