Initially released just before the arrival of the new wave of consoles, Crash Bandicoot 4 is set to arrive imminently on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series machines – but Activision has thrown us a curveball with the simultaneous release of a port for Nintendo Switch. The arrival of this release is a good thing – Crash 4 is a worthy successor to the original trilogy that feels true to its roots, while offering some new ideas along the way. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a solid platformer that shines on its new host consoles.
You’ll note that we’re limited to just PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch for this piece – Series support is on the table, but it’s not easy for publishers to distribute Smart Delivery code to journalists when the title is already available publicly, something we hope to see addressed soon. Still, PS5 and Switch make for an interesting combination in that we’re seeing Crash Bandicoot 4 viewed through the lens of systems with a huge variation in horsepower – though both are powered with Unreal Engine 4.
To appreciate the upgrades and changes in this new version of Crash 4, let’s quickly recap the Xbox One and PS4 results. Users of the enhanced Pro and One X renditions had the best experience with a frame-rate that mostly hit 60fps, though both were limited to the same 1080p as the vanilla PS4, while Xbox One S delivered the game at 900p. The base version looks fine but runs with an unstable, uncapped frame-rate.
In terms of image quality, the PlayStation 5 version predictably improves this with a jump to 4K rendering, though dynamic resolution scaling can see some slight dips beneath. Switch, however, offers a very different visual experience. In docked mode, the average resolution we found is in the 720 to 792p range while portable is closer to 540p with dips below that in some cases. Most of the dips seem to manifest in the more demanding cutscenes. However, Unreal Engine’s temporal upsampling feature brings in accumulated data from prior frames, integrating with the current one to give a much higher level fidelity.
But what else has changed on PS5? Well, the visuals receive an extra touch of polish. Detail is improved slightly and any issues observed in that original version have been eliminated. It looks fantastic, as you’d expect. Loading times are also dramatically faster though perhaps not quite as fast as games built from the ground-up for the system. It also features 3D audio which becomes available when using headphones. But perhaps the more interesting story is how the game was squeezed onto Nintendo Switch.