I really enjoyed the original trilogy once I finally got around to playing them, and to say that I was estatic for an official follow-up that was in the works and all about travelling between dimensions would be an understatement. Finally putting the time in to play it myself and I walked away with a satisfying adventure. You can tell that the devs at Toys For Bob really love the Crash series as a whole and their admiration for it oozes through every level, cutscene, and general UI flair. Every sector of the Crash franchise is homaged in some way, and even other adjacent franchises like Spyro the Dragon and Skylanders (a childhood favorite of mine) get some nods as background elements. There's a lot to love about Crash 4, but the obvious elephant in the room is seeing how they changed up the post-game. With the original trilogy, you had a fairly sizable chunk of the game to chew on after beating it organically through items like the colored and box gems. Time trials were later introduced with the relics, which got you additional levels and a final completion gem that ticked the percentage over 100%. It's a really cool way to incentivize coming back and mastering the levels. However, with Crash 4, the team 100% went overboard with the requirements of getting those rewards. You're required to get all of the gems in all of the levels twice over (accounting for N.Verted levels), get Platinum Relics instead of only needing Gold Relics in the Time Trials, and complete additional content exclusive to 4 like the Flashback Tapes and Perfect Relics, which makes the whole experience tedious. I messed around a little bit trying to break all the boxes or go for a Relic, but holy crap dude some of these levels are long and can have upwards of 500 boxes to break with some of them being super hidden and yada yada yada you've probably heard this before from a lot of sources online. As much as it is optional, it's kind of not at the same time because Crash games are associated with incentivizing full completion and in that case Crash 4 fails at giving that satisfaction because of the trials and tribulations required to make it happen. I do love the foundation though and it's a damn shame that the next entry was canned because it could only go up in terms of quality...the floor they sat on wasn't that low in the first place.

DOOM 64 is kind of a banger. It feels like it took the problems I had with DOOM II's maze design and keycard/skull searching and made them way less tedious, making the experience better while retaining the classic level design. It was cool to see the introduction of the Unmakyr as someone who started this series with 2016 and Eternal, even going so far as to having special keys to unlock its true power lining up with the Empearyan Keys in the latter. It gives more purpose to searching for secrets outside of health/armor pickups and getting certain weapons early. Sadly I did not get to abuse it in the final boss level as I'm bad at finding secrets, but it didn't matter as the Mama Demon was kind of pathetic and went down faster than the army of demons I had to take care of right before she came in. The only other nitpick I really have is the lack of the rock music that appeared in the original duology, but I think by committing to a more creepy and dark atmosphere it makes the ambience feel less out of place. In fact, I really like the direction of DOOM 64's artstyle and presentation. If I'm not mistaken, the monster redesigns are kind of contentious but I have to disagree. I love how otherworldly and disturbing they made the demons by taking their original designs and really twisting them. The main standouts have to be the Cacodemon and Pinkies (or Demons as they are generically called here), where the admittedly goofy designs of the past are made more insidious by giving them more pronounced claws and jaws. That coupled with the darker corridors and muted lighting really adds to the creepy factor. I honest to God think DOOM 64 ranks pretty high within the games I've played in the series, or even overall. It's a very distinct take on the classic DOOM formula that I sincerely enjoyed.

This is a really fun direction to take Bookworm, but I just kind of got stonewalled and no matter how many times I visit Moxie's minigames and get a bunch of items and powered tiles I can't beat Chapter 2. I could chalked it up to me not being a walking dictionary, or picking an unoptimal loadout of items (which I haven't looked up what to use), or to not grinding. I've been playing this in short 10-15 minute bursts for the most part for the last few months but I think I'm just gonna move on for now.