Don’t expect that Crash Bandicoot remaster to ever get any easier

Nostalgic Crash Bandicoot fans agree that N. Sane Trilogy, the series’ PlayStation 4 remaster collection, is much, much tougher than the original PlayStation games were. They’re just going to have to get used to it, hints developer Vicarious Visions in a recent blog post that details what accounts for the PS4 ports’ difficulty spike.

“Now, we can all agree that some of the Crash levels were, and still are, not easy,” wrote Kevin Kelly, editorial manager of publisher Activision’s blog. “The challenge of the games is one of the things we all love, and that’s why it feels so, so good when you beat them.”

Vicarious Visions’ goal was to cut down on the frustration of the original Crash Bandicoot, and it sounds like the team thinks it succeeded. The developer tweaked Crash’s jump in the first game, drawing from the mechanics of the trilogy’s final installment, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. It also changed the game’s collision system and added physics, a process meant to “make it fair to all players and as faithful to the original games as possible.”

But Vicarious Visions acknowledges that some players don’t feel that way. The game’s subreddit blew up with theories as to why the original Crash Bandicoot is so much harder now shortly after the game’s launch, with much of the blame pinned on its ultra-precise, very delicate handling system. Crash can fall much more easily off a platform now, with players needing to time and angle their jumps just right.

“For those of you who played the originals and acquired a fair amount of muscle memory, re-learning the handling in our game may present an additional challenge you weren’t expecting,” the blog post reads.

For those struggling through the game, the developer suggests only that they start not with Crash Bandicoot, but one of the two sequels instead. These have less of a learning curve, the developer suggests, with fewer overall modernizations introduced to mess with the original feel.

Anyone hoping for a total change to Crash Bandicoot’s difficulty level — like many frustrated commenters on Reddit — should probably let go of that, because Vicarious Visions sounds happy with the N. Sane Trilogy’s challenges.

Here’s the team’s kicker for fans struggling their way through: “We’re sure you up to the task.”