Bubsy 4D Review

First Impressions

Bubsy is back baby!

The bodacious bobcat that first burst onto our consoles way back in 1993 returns after a long hiatus, this time in 4D.

Despite this title being a indie with a smaller budget than other games of this genre, Bubsy 4D delivers all the elements of a modern-day platformer.

Published by Atari, the fourth wall breaking bobcat jump, pounces and now rolls onto our screens with a brand new look and a new adventure ahead of him on current generation consoles.

Plot

The plot for Bubsy 4D is expectantly weird and wacky as you would expect, Bubsy’s old foes the Wollies have returned, creating an army of ‘Baabots’ from poor, helpless sheep. Who then go on to steal the golden fleeces from Bubsy’s world and turn the tables on their creators.

After ‘borrowing’ one of the Woolies flying saucers, Bubsy and friends head off into the galaxy to find the Baabots and retrieve their Golden Fleeces. Making for a truly intergalactic adventure across multiple craft- themed worlds.

Bubsy’s supporting cast of characters return once again for this fourth outing, including hard of hearing and potential romantic interest Oblivia the cat, Virgil the vole who provides scientific and technical help and the overeager twins Terry and Terri. Fun fact: these characters first appeared in the Bubsy cartoon TV pilot that was never picked up for a series.

Gameplay Overview

Bubsy 4D obviously takes it’s platforming cues from classic games of the genre, such as Sonic The Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. but as I played through the levels, I felt a lot of comparison to another more recent fur covered anthropomorphic character, Lucky from Super Lucky’s Tale. The presentation and art style of this latest outing is different to it’s forbearers as Bubsy is now rendered in full cell shaded glory. Bubsy himself has ‘grown up’ as he now sports a jacket and tie instead of his classic white shirt with red exclamation mark attire. This new style suits the characters and the varied wacky worlds they inhabit nicely.

Bubsy is controlled the usual way with the left thumb stick taking up movement duties, ‘A’ for jump, ‘Y’ to talk to the supporting cast of characters

The options menu is rather unique as Bubsy himself ‘narrates’ the option selections, often cracking very bad jokes whilst doing it. The ‘X’ button accesses the Moveset Menu, were the basic controls for movement, jump, glide, pounce, crouch and hairball (more on that last one later) can be found. ‘RB’ brings up the ‘Game’, ‘Sound’ and ‘Input’ tabs to allow you to customise Language, Handling, Camera, Music/SFX Volume, Zoom and Camera Inversion settings. Along with support for Mouse as well as controller, which makes it one of only two recently games I’ve reviewed to offer dual support. This I find is a smart move by the developer in this day and age to allow gamers to play their titles with the control scheme that best suits them and they find the most comfortable.

The game begins with Bubsy and his friends aboard their borrowed Woolies spaceship heading to parts of the galaxy unknown. And acts like a start hub to get to grips with the controls and camera. Talking to Virgil onboard allows you to try out the VR Sim tutorials to ease you into the game. These do a great job at not only explaining all the controls, but give you plenty of opportunities to use them before the game starts proper, acting as the game’s tutorial levels to try out Bubsy’s new movement and traversal abilities. On top of the usually run and jump, Bubsy can also glide in midair with LT, while RT allows him to pounce to cover greater distances. The jump button is also pressure sensitive, so the harder you press the higher Bubsy jumps, allowing for greater precision during the many platforming segments (this is a platformer after all). My only minor gripe with this is that it can sometimes be hard to judge just how much pressure to use to land successfully on some platforms, requiring some trial and error until you get the hang of it. However, the movement is nicely handled and camera control is buttery smooth and pans and tilts nicely at your command. You can even combine double jumping, flutterstep (which is when Bubsy momentarily hovers in midair for a split second afterwards, with glide and pounce to cover greater distances. Pounce can also be used on some round platforms to allow you to go high and reset your jump, with RT also letting Bubsy scale vertical surfaces straight up (he is a cat after all).

The newest control feature is when you press LB, Bubsy goes into ‘Hairball’ Mode, which basically turns him into a round and fluffy sphere of rolling chaos. In this form RT allows you to boost to traverse long rolling segments, with the A button used to jump whilst in ball mode. Using LT allows you to switch back to the typical bobcat form. These segments are obviously signposted as you play, but the game allows you to decide if you want to play the way it intends, or you can totally freestyle it using any combination of movement for traversal. Mastering this bobcat’s full moveset is essential to progress through the numerous levels.

Litter trays, ahum, litter the levels and act as save points to return to in case, as the game puts it, goes sideways. Fortunately, the game is rather forgiving with these as there’s many to be found. This helps to keep the frustration factor of being sent back long segments of a level to a minimum.

When all this is done and you land (well crash) on the first world, Bubsy’s adventure begins proper. Throughout the worlds you collect balls of yarn, with each level having a certain amount to collect. So, the completionists among us like myself have a reason to reply levels to collect ‘em all. You can then spend these to unlock new outfits. There’s also a secret blueprint in each world that will allow you to unlock some new moves and important upgrades as you progress too.

Bubsy has three ‘lives’ in the form of exclamation marks shown in the top left corner of the screen. Lose all three and you’re back to the last unlocked litter tray to try again. So be ready for a lot of trial and error with mistakes and missteps costing you.

Presentation

Full cell shaded platforming goodness is the order of the day for this fourth outing for the bobcat. This is a massive upgrade to Bubsy’s first entry into the world of 3D (the famous for all the wrong reasons, 1996’s Bubsy 3D from the original PlayStation era).

The voice acting, although very cheesy at times (there’s only so many Bubsy one liners and self aware injokes anyone can handle) is top notch with each character voiced completely by a set of actors who play their parts well. With plenty of cutscenes to move the plot along. The gameplay music and soundtrack are also upbeat and catchy.

The inclusion of a Time Trial mode for each world is also neat, as you can upload your best times and scores and compare them to other players via ghost data. This helps with the replayability of the game by making you want to try a level one more time to try to top the scoreboard.

The Bottom Line

Overall, Bubsy’s return after all these years isn’t a milestone in platform gaming history. It’s certainly great to see an icon from the 90s return for the modern age and Bubsy’s charm, wit and self-awareness (which is either a blessing or a curse depending on your sense of humour) is still in place which grants him a certain level of charm. The game doesn’t reinvent the wheel as far a platforming goes, however, this in my book is necessarily a bad thing.

Gameplay is solid, with a good variety of worlds and the move to 3D, Sorry 4D this time around agrees with this Bobcat. Although it is easy to break the camera slightly during rolling segments at high speed, the game as a whole holds up well overall. The fact that you’re allowed you to complete each world using whatever type of movement and controls you want is a neat touch, despite the frustration of insta-death and respawn with a single misplaced step or hit as this could certainly frustrate and put off younger players new to the series.

My only gripe really is that the worlds can often feel barren, with very little in the way of enemies initially. Although I only managed to complete the first world during play for the writing of this review, the levels, although varied, seem to have a lot more platforming than enemy encounters. This might change as the game progresses, but like I said, could be off putting to some people. The Baabot boss encounters provide a good challenge at the end of each world, meaning you have to master Bubsy’s full range of moves if you want to stand a chance.

One of the best things for me though, is that the game isn’t charging full price on the Xbox Store at launch, meaning that it’s going to be a lot more tempting for the casual gamer to try.

If you’re looking for a solid, fun, yet challenging, colourful slice of gaming goodness reminiscent of the old school platformers from the early days of 3D, then Bubsy 4D might just be the game for you to scratch that platforming itch (great, Bubsy’s humour has started to rub off on me too).