I’m a bit biased in this regard, mainly because I’ve never really owned any other series of console (a Nintendo Switch interests me, so perhaps I will pick one of them up at some point), but there’s nothing quite like a 3D platformer for me, especially one of Sony’s mascot platformers. Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Crash Bandicoot. All four franchises find themselves comfortably and permanently nestled in various nooks and crannies of my heart.

See, a 3D platformer really only needs to do one thing well to be playable (i.e., the jumping), but it needs to have a special kind of appeal to be something worth sticking with, worth making a franchise out of. While I’d love to get into the merits of the other platformers I love so much another day, a common calling point about Crash Bandicoot is the difficulty.

Crash 4 is a hard game, there’s not really any getting around it. It starts gentle, but the difficulty curves at somewhat alarming speed at several different points throughout the game, which, I imagine, would be enough to leave anyone in the dust. I was fortunate(???) enough to have spent enough time mining the original three games to completion both on PS1 and PS4, meaning I thought myself some kind of master of the difficult 3D platformer, which relies on an understanding of Crash’s movement capabilities, as well as a slight bit of extra patience to deal with the occasional camera angle that leaves you desperate to know where you’ll land. Alas, Crash 4 ended up humbling me.

See, these kinds of games, I love to complete and drill down that elusive 100%. Or 104%, or whatever the actual completion sweet spot is. There’s a lightness and fluffiness to Crash Bandicoot, which makes it easy to pick up and play, but the oftentimes intense difficulty and ramping complexity of levels make it engaging and addicting in a way a purely easy game might not be. I love Kao the Kangaroo, for instance, but that game never really approaches any form of difficulty. Which is great! Because it’s a game made for kids, and of course, Crash is, sort of, too.

But while Crash 4 might be a blast to play through from start to finish, ignoring all the boxes you have to smash and gems you have to collect, it’s when you turn back and face these challenges that you realize the difficulty put before you is on a scale you will rarely see in a platforming game. Getting through the game is easy enough, mostly (aside from perhaps the last world, which is a fine test of intricate platforming), but when you have to engage with these really intricate platforming segments, collecting every single smashable box along the way, and also not dying once, the game becomes an almost insatiable platforming god, demanding pixel perfect… well, perfection.

The characters pop off the screen in a way that’s infectious. Crash’s goofy walk, Coco’s big grin or flabbergasted sigh, Dingodile’s Aussie drawl, or Tawna’s self-assured attitude; they’re all rendered in a way that makes them truly engaging every second you see them on the screen. The worlds and environments are rendered with just as much love as the characters, and the bosses are just as much fun to listen to as to dodge. Everything about the game engages, aside from when it oversteps those boundaries of difficulty.

The extra circle that appears around the playable character’s feet when you jump is a fantastic addition, but it doesn’t help all the time when you are jumping across enormous pits, or when the ground is constantly shifting beneath you as you constantly move.

What you get out of Crash Bandicoot 4 will undoubtedly vary on what you want out of your video games. For me, it’s one of those games that recreates the fabled difficulty that I experienced when I was a child; seemingly insurmountable obstacles that crack ever so gently when you finally figure out the secret. But the time to figure out those secrets can be a drain on people’s time, and annoy the living hell out of those who are dedicated 100% completionists. In this way, Crash Bandicoot 4 is a you should not play, provided you are a dedicated completionist who hates rocks being unturned. This is a game that will suck up hours and hours of your life, if you let it, and this will perhaps taint your memories of playing it through for the first time.

You know, that first time? When you are dropped into a level, and gorgeous vistas expand out before you, and the game asks you gently to try make a jump, not punishing you overly if you fail? That is the magic of a 3D platformer. It is the joy and simple, unadulterated fun of understanding that a video game doesn’t have to be a layered masterpiece, that not everything must be designed with purely modern sensibilities of “you can collect everything, doesn’t matter how good you are”. Crash Bandicoot 4 is a marvel of modern platforming that beguiles and enchants more than it frustrates. It understands that it is a game. It doesn’t chase realism, or deep, complex messages. It is a game to unwind with. Mostly.

Only the best will see the final percent click over. I hope to be among them one day.

You can get Crash Bandicoot 4 on a variety of platforms, including PlayStation, Switch, and XBOX. On PC, you can get it from the Blizzard store.