Highlights
- Crash Bandicoot 4 brought back the original trilogy's difficulty in 2020, making 100% completion a daunting task.
- Fans of Crash Bandicoot may enjoy platformers like Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Yooka-Laylee.
- Celeste and Super Meat Boy offer challenging gameplay akin to Crash 4, providing a fun and engaging experience.
Activision delighted Bandicoot fans in October 2020 when the company released Toys for Bob's Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. The game took the series back to its roots, with linear platforming and box collecting making a welcome return. The series also bought back the original trilogy's punishing difficulty. Completing Crash 4 normally isn't too taxing, but beating it 100% can be an absolute nightmare. Grueling flashback tapes, developer time trials, and longer levels with more boxes to break are among the new challenges.
Crash Bandicoot: 6 Characters That Would Be Great To Play As In A Sequel
The Crash Bandicoot series has many great characters that could be a fun inclusion to play as for a potential sequel.Fans who have been around since the original games and new fans of the series will likely be searching for similar platforming games like Crash Bandicoot to play next.
Updated on April 10th, 2024, by Jack Pursey: There was once a time when platforming games flooded the market and populated the tops of sales charts. Unfortunately for platforming fans, those days are over, with Super Mario being one of the only franchises not to suffer from the post-90s slump. Thankfully, though, although platform games aren't as popular as they once were, there's still a solid selection released every year, most of which come from indie developers. To help players find their next platforming adventure, this list has been updated to include some more information.
1 Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Metascore: 79
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a spinoff to the LittleBigPlanet series that was released on PlayStation 4 and as a launch title for the PlayStation 5 in November 2020.
The game ditches the 2.5D perspective of the LittleBigPlanet games in favor of 3D and gives Sackboy far more moves than ever before to create an enjoyable and fleshed-out platforming experience. The game isn't the strongest platformer on the market by any means, but it still offers a thoroughly enjoyable time for fans of the genre and carries over the charm and unique visuals of the LittleBigPlanet games.
2 Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair
Metascore: 82
October 2019's Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is the sequel to 2017's Yooka-Laylee, which tried to be a modern take on the classic '90s collect-a-thon Banjo-Kazooie but struggled to impress.
Playtonic Games went a completely different route with Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair by shifting from 3D to 2D, with Donkey Kong Country being the new source of inspiration. The game was far better received than its predecessor and is one of the strongest side-scrolling platformers of the 2010s. Interestingly, the game lets players tackle the final level at any point during the game; however, the stage is brutally difficult unless players collect members of the "Beetalion" by completing levels.
3 Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
Metascore: 89
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
- Platform(s)
- Switch
- Released
- February 12, 2021
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo EPD
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury was released in February 2021 on the Nintendo Switch and bundled the Wii U's Super Mario 3D World with a new game titled Bowser's Fury.
Every Crash Bandicoot Game On The PS1, Ranked
Crash Bandicoot has long been synonymous with Sony's console. Here is a look at the franchise's best entries on the PS1.Super Mario 3D World was originally released in 2013 and offered an interesting combination of 3D exploration with classic 2D-level design and gameplay mechanics of earlier Super Mario games. Meanwhile, Bowser's Fury is an open-world platformer that draws inspiration from Super Mario Odyssey by offering enormous explorable spaces packed with things to do and collect.
4 Celeste
Metascore: 94
For those who relished in Crash 4's difficulty, Maddy Makes Games' Celeste may be the best option. The platformer requires players to make countless precise jumps and dashes, especially if they want to grab all of the hidden strawberries. Despite this, Celeste never gets too frustrating, which is a testament to the quality of its gameplay and level design. The game has a generous checkpoint system of resetting players at the start of each screen, and the playable character's movement feels tight and responsive, ensuring that mistakes always feel like the fault of the player and not the developers.
5 New Super Lucky's Tale
Metascore: 76
New Super Lucky's Tale is an excellent choice for fans of classic collectathons like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64. The platformer differentiates itself from Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time with its difficulty, as Playful Studios' game is aimed at more casual players. New Super Lucky's Tale may not be up to scratch with some of the top games on this list in terms of sheer quality, but it's still an enjoyable 6-10 hour adventure.
As the name suggests, New Super Lucky's Tale is an enhanced version of Super Lucky's Tale. The game comes equipped with an improved camera angle and remixed levels.
6 Spyro Reignited Trilogy
Metascore: 82
Spyro Reignited Trilogy
- Released
- November 13, 2018
- Developer(s)
- Toys for Bob
- Publisher(s)
- Activision
Spyro Reignited Trilogy should jump out to fans of Crash 4 as Toys For Bob developed both games. Similar to N. Sane Trilogy, Reignited Trilogy is a remaster of the franchise's three PS1 games. Spyro is comparable to Crash in many ways, with one of the most prominent being how both games' levels are simple to complete but challenging to 100%.
Hardest Levels In A Crash Bandicoot Game
The Crash Bandicoot franchise has put players through extremely difficult levels, and the following are no doubt the hardest ones.The main difference between Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is that Spyro leans more into the collectathon side of the genre than tricky platforming gameplay. Across the three Spyro games, players will need to collect Dragon Eggs, Orbs, Talismans, Gems, and more.
7 Banjo-Kazooie
Metascore: 92
There's a reason why Banjo-Kazooie has been mentioned so many times in this list. The game is one of the most influential platformers of all time, with its open levels packed with collectibles to find being a blueprint for many of the genre's releases. Collectibles in Banjo-Kazooie include musical notes, Jinjos, Honey Comb Pieces, jigsaw pieces known as Jiggies, and more.
Although fans have been crying out for a modern sequel or remake for years now, the classic game still holds up and can be played on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S thanks to backward compatibility and Rare Replay.
8 Super Meat Boy
Metascore: 90
Like the aforementioned Celeste, Super Meat Boy is a great choice for fans of Crash Bandicoot 4's punishing difficulty. The indie game was a huge success, with Team Meat announcing in January 2012 that the game had surpassed 1 million sales. The game was influential to not just modern platforming but modern gaming as a whole for three reasons. Firstly, it proved that gamers were still interested in difficult games at a time when they were becoming increasingly easier; secondly, it proved - alongside games like Braid and Spelunky - that indie games could be major financial successes; and thirdly, it popularised unlimited live systems.
Despite being over a decade old now, the game doesn't show signs of aging and is still the fun and engaging challenge that it was back when it first hit stores.
