Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s time arrives tomorrow on Xbox Series X / S, PlayStation 5, PC and Switch, offering us some of the most stylish versions of last year’s excellent platform game, along with one that struggles a lot but makes the work. Digital casting compared the PS5 and Switch versions side by side, and the differences are, not surprisingly, quite dramatic.
Jo revised Crash Bandicoot 4 and PlayStation 4, where it worked mostly well. I remember some strange slowdown during the especially busy levels, but never enough to condemn the game for all eternity. I’ve been playing the PlayStation 5 version for a couple of days now and it’s pretty much perfect. It’s locked at about 60 frames per second constant at 4K and I haven’t seen it wobble yet. As a fan of faster monitors, I would love to see a 1440p mode running at 120 frames per second, but here I have no quick love. I like it to load a little faster. I was really looking forward to the PS5 version for the challenge cards, but for some reason they made me have to make my way into the main story before the cards helped me finish collecting all the collectibles and time trial rewards.
Did anyone be surprised that a video game works better on a more powerful system? No? How about a video game that works worse on a less powerful system?
The Switch version of Crash Bandicoot 4 obviously not working on 4K60. It doesn’t even reach 1080p in docked mode, keeping a fairly stable 720p at 30 frames per second, which of course means it looks a lot more cinematic (cough). Unlocked, the resolution drops to 540p, which sounds very dramatic, but it doesn’t matter much when looking at a smaller laptop screen.
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It’s still a good-looking game on Switch. It’s not as nice as PS5 or even PS4. One reason for this is the light effects. The Switch version only emits dynamic lights when nearby, or removes them completely. Digital castingThe video shows some great examples of this, such as the absence of lightning in an early stage of the Switch.
In order for the Unreal Engine 4 game to run smoothly on Nintendo hardware, the Switch version also makes less use of particles and loses landscape details. Textures, water representation, and shadows are reduced for the Switch.
The older version of the Switch version, which I can’t see now that I’ve seen the Digital casting vid, is the lack of motion blur by object. The more powerful systems use post-processing motion blur to soften the animation, giving the game a more CGI cartoon feel. The Switch doesn’t use these effects, so the animation looks a little louder. It’s something I might never have noticed if I hadn’t seen the comparison side by side, and now it catches my eye every time I notice it.
As long as you don’t watch the Digital Foundry video, you’ll be fine with any version of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s time. That said, here is the Digital casting video.
It’s good to see all the little things that change when it comes to scaling a gaming engine from a glorified Android tablet to a next-generation high-powered console, even if it completely ruins a version of Crash Bandicoot 4 for me.
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