Also available on: https://gamebanana.com/mods/527056

IMPORTANT: INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS can be found in a PDF file in the download archive.

WHAT IS THIS?

A mod for Crash 4 designed to make completion and general gameplay more fair and more fun. It aims to fix the flaws and weaker elements of the completion system and level designs to make the game into a better version of itself.

• Getting rid of the bloat – N. Verted mode is now optional, Timeline levels have been shortened and superfluous collectibles are removed
• Streamlining the completion experience by making the harder collectibles optional and reducing forced repetition
• Reducing difficulty spikes and making the game more approachable, while still retaining most of the challenge
• Tweaking level designs: obtuse or easily missable hidden crates are removed while retaining cleverly hidden ones, gem puzzles are more involved, and adjustments were made to level flow in both normal and time trial modes
• Quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes
  

THINGS TO NOTE:

While a lot of things has changed, the game is still Crash 4 in spirit, so don't be afraid thinking it's something entirely different. Also, while some of the elements were made easier, this is NOT an easy mode. The intention was to make the game more fair and approachable, while still maintaining the challenge

IMPORTANT: Save files are fully compatible, progress will NOT be erased if you switch between the modded and vanilla versions. However, it is highly recommended to play on a new save because a lot of things have changed. Remember, ALWAYS back up your save games!

What's new

A full changelog is included in the mod .zip file.

Version 2.1

Relic times were overhauled (again) in version 2.1, as they were sometimes way too difficult, especially in the timeline levels, due to the times requiring higher precision than is expected from the intended skill levels. The times were made more lenient for sapphire, gold and platinum relics (master relics are unchanged). No times were made harder, so if you already got a specific relic, you won't lose any progress.

IMPORTANT: Even though the relic times are more lenient, the game doesn't automatically give out relics based on your best time, so even if your best time is better than the next relic, you need to finish the level again and beat the relic time to get them.

OTHER CHANGES:

- Jetboard Jetty: The nitro detonator was moved before the Louise fight to facilitate a speedrun skip.
- Off Balance: Added metal crates after the first whirlwind after Checkpoint 4, to give a place for the player to "recharge" their jumps before jumping over the lion enemy. (As they would have no jumps after jumping into the whirlwind)
- Off Beat: The Nitros and golden wumpa crate on one of the jester blocks after checkpoint 6 were removed, as they would sometimes glitch the player out of bounds when they jumped on said crates.
- Off Beat: Nitros were added right before the Level End Crate to kill the player if they missed the Nitro detonator, for them to have a chance to retry this section, as the ending is pretty tricky to time right.
- Fixed 2 instances of fire crates appearing in time trials.

- Fixed typos in the Hungarian localization

Credits

• SpongeBandimark for the Version 2 Intro and Logo (based on this one)
• Demedi for the modeling work with the 3D collectibles
• HAWGT and LongerWarrior for "Crash 4 Exclusive PSN ActivisionBNet Skins”
• boycalledjames for the Version 1 Logo, which is part of "Retro HUD HD".
• Trizio, StefanGose, felipesm2020, Warden201 and Dastanovich for the Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic and Russing mod translations respectively
• Special thanks to members of the Crash 4 N. Hanced Discord group who contributed to the project with their suggestions, feedback and supportive comments!
  

DETAILED CHANGES

Optional N.Verted mode

N.Verted is completely optional with no separate collectibles. (included as an optional .pak). Collectibles can be collected as normal, and will count towards completion in normal mode.

KNOWN ISSUE: Due to an implementation detail, the screen is not mirrored in N.Verted mode. This was necessary to make it not count towards completion.

Completion % and Ending unlock changes

The total achievable percentage is now 108%. 90% is achieved by finishing all levels, 10% by getting all gems, and the remaining 8% by getting all other collectibles.

The first ending requires 100% (i.e. all gems), while the second requires only 104%, for which the intended way is getting all Flashback medals and Sapphire time relics. Both endings can be unlocked by other means if the specific percentage value is reached.

KNOWN ISSUE: While the percentage values for the ending unlocks have been adjusted, a bug causes the second ending to randomly stay locked, despite having fulfilled the new requirement (104%). Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem possible for me to fix it, so as a workaround, the Ending video files are available in the Lava/Content/Movies folder inside the game’s install location, they are called "C_BonusEnd.mp4" and "C_BonusEnd1.mp4" respectively.

Below is a breakdown for the percentage value of every element:

• Normal levels: 2%
• Timeline levels: 1%
• Boss levels: 2%, except first Cortex boss (5%) and second Cortex boss (10%)
• All gems: 10% (5% for half, 5% for all)
• All Sapphire time relics: 2%
• All Platinum time relics: 2%
• All Flashback Medals (previously Platinum Flashback Relics): 2%
• All Perfection Trophies (previously N.Sanely Perfect relics): 2%
  

Gems revamp

4 of 6 gems were removed, so now there’s only 2: the crate gem and hidden gem. Wumpa collection is still rewarded, as collecting 90% of all wumpa unlocks a level’s skin (as opposed to collecting an ever increasing amount of gems). These changes were done in an attempt to make gems feel more significant (due to there being less of them), and to up the challenge of wumpa collection, as 80% was too easy to achieve.

Redesigned levels

NOTE: A full list of level design changes is included in a PDF file in the download archive.

Levels underwent significant changes. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of the major ones:

Rush Hour was split into 2 levels

• The 2 new levels are unlocked one after the other and come between Food Run and The Crate Escape. They both have the usual collectibles, including new relic times and a new hidden gem, and count towards completion.
  

Timeline Levels have been shortened to the alternate character sections

• After the timeline event, the player is transported to the end of the Crash/Coco section, so the player doesn't have to repeat the same section in 2 levels.
• Crates, wumpa goals and relic times were all adjusted to reflect the change.
• The crate placements in the Crash/Coco sections of the timeline levels have been merged into the normal ones, including bonus rounds.
  

Crate modifications

• Hidden crates have been toned down significantly. Crates that were offscreen, obscured by or blending into environment or required highly specific camera movements were either: 1) removed or replaced with golden wumpas, 2) moved slightly to be more visible or 3) had wumpas added nearby to hint at their presence. Same was done with crates that were player could easily forget to re-break if they died at some point. (E.g. behind Run It Bayou's first checkpoint)
• Some crate puzzles were removed, added, or altered based on the difficulty and length of certain sections (so they are neither too short, too drawn out or too difficult). Some puzzles were also made more unique.
  

Hidden gems and colored gems

• Some gems had their location or method of collection altered, either because they were in unintuitive places, hidden in similar ways (offscreen, requiring leaps of faith), were too easily noticable, or didn’t require much effort to collect. They are now hidden in more clever ways and/or involve platforming puzzles.
• All crates near hidden gems that required manually breaking were removed, so the 2 gems can be collected separately.
• Some of the color gem puzzles were altered to be less trivial and more interesting. Additionally, a purple gem was added somewhere in the game, with a similar philosophy to the other color gems, and the hidden gem route in Off Balance was repurposed as the purple gem route. (KNOWN ISSUE: The purple gem doesn't appear in the main collectible grid, I couldn't find a way to make it work)
  

Level difficulty, length, and flow adjustments

• A few obstacles (especially in later levels) were made more fair, e.g.: the cars in Rush Hour were slowed down, the electric panels in Building Bridges now turn off for longer, and the Minecarts in Toxic Tunnels are not instakilling.
• A few levels now have additional Aku Aku and/or Checkpoint crates, in sections that were too long or too difficult to do without them.
• Nitro crates don't „hop” anymore to reduce unfair deaths, and randomness during time trials and Perfection Relic runs.
• Most bonus rounds that required backtracking because of Switch (!) crates no longer do so, so they aren’t artificially longer. Additionally, some crate puzzles were altered so that they are more interesting and don’t require as much trial and error and forced deaths.
• Most Gem paths (including the one in Toxic Tunnels) now don’t need to be visited to get the crate gem, as breakable crates were removed, or have nitros next to them. In turn, the hidden gem was moved to the end of these routes. This was done to make getting the Crate gems and Perfection relics in these levels less tedious and frustrating.
• A lot of bounce crates were turned into other types of crates (mostly Basic or ? crates), so as to not slow down the flow of platforming.
  

Flashback level redesigns

• Excessive crate bouncing was significantly reduced
• Obstacles are more varied and interesting, with all new puzzles
• Difficulty and section lengths are more balanced, with difficulty increasing steadily in later levels
  

Retro Mode Rebalance

• A large amount of wumpa was removed to prevent players accumulating lives without progressing to the next section (some sections had upwards of 300 wumpa)
• Some life crates were removed/changed, and some were moved into more strategic places (usually hidden or hard to reach).
  

Time Trial changes

• Flashback tapes are now collectable during TTs.
• Flame crates were removed entirely from TTs (they now turn into other types of crates), because their state does not reset when respawning at the beginning. This made runs inconsistent and luck-dependent (especially for high level play).
• Adjustments were made to levels so that finishing TTs is easier: reduced the number of explosive crates (especially ones that are in the way or are hard to see) added more Aku Aku masks, and modified some obstacles so that they're no longer instakilling (Aku Aku can save you from them)
• Crates that only turn into Nitros in TT were turned into other types of crates (mostly TNTs). This was done because of a bug that was introduced in a game update, whereby these specific Nitros don’t break time crates when exploded with the Nitro Detonator. Nitros that are the same in normal mode are not affected, so they remain unchanged.
  

Time Relic revamp

See mod images for the exact relic times.

The Triple Spin was upgraded to the Hyperspin. This version allows max speed to be kept as long as the player keeps spinning, instead of the speed resetting after the third spin.

Relic times underwent a major overhaul. As of version 2.1, the relic times are mostly close to their vanilla equivalents difficulty-wise (accounting for added time crates, level design changes and the hyperspin). Relics that were originally way too lenient were made stricter for a consistent difficulty across levels. Sapphire and gold relics don't require hyperspinning at all, much like the vanilla version.

Master Relics replace the Toys For Bob relics, and provide a higher challenge for skilled players looking to perfect each level. They require great usage of all advanced mechanics and high precision.

NOTE: Relic ghosts have NOT been adjusted, as such, they don't represent the skills required for each relic.

Other changes

Digital download and preorder skins

• The mod called „Crash 4 Exclusive PSN ActivisionBNet Skins” is included in this version, so all of the extra skins are unlocked by default.
  

3D Collectibles

• Collectibles have 3D Icons. Additionally, some collectibles have a slightly different design or color
  

Color coded outlines and brighter time crates

• Outline crates are color coded, so crate puzzles can be figured out without needing to hit ! crates, reducing forced deaths
• Time crates in solid form are brighter yellow so it's easier to tell them apart from normal wooden crates. Their outlines are also yellow, as there are instances where they need to be activated with a ! crate.
  

New Intro and Logo

• A New intro is included reminescent of the Crash 3 intro, but customized for Crash 4. A custom logo for the N.Hanced edition is also included.
  

Pass And Play removed

• Pass And Play mode was removed, because it enabled a Time Trial exploit, and because its usage slowed down gameplay unnecessarily, for almost no benefit
  

Leaderboards are disabled (due to a bug)

• Leaderboards and time record uploads are disabled. Without this change, the game would crash when On the Rails time trial is finished (Tawna's portion of Rush Hour), likely because the database entry for this new level doesn't exist.