Bubsy's 4D Review: Is the Sequel Nobody Asked for Actually Worth Playing?

A long time ago a game character managed the paradox of being popular enough to justify a trilogy despite nobody liking him very much. Which is great for the distant past, but Bubsy 3D was almost thirty years ago, so maybe it's time to let go of the disdain those games earned by being pretty bad. Sure, Bubsy was remembered well enough that there were a couple of attempts at revivals in the intervening decades, but when you think of the character, the games that spring to mind were on SNES, Genesis and the original PlayStation. Somehow Bubsy became the poster-child for "incredibly annoying mascot with attitude," but again -- it's been thirty years. That's more than long enough for a fondly remembered character to get another chance.

Taming the Attitude, Powering Up the Moveset

Bubsy 4D is pretty much exactly what you'd expect a new Bubsy game to be- a full 3D level-based platformer featuring a wise-cracking (but no longer insufferable) bobcat hopping, pouncing, and gliding through linear levels while collecting every yarn ball he can find. The woolies have returned again but this time they didn't target anything Bubsy and his friends care about, so they ignored it. Which was working great right up until the kidnapped sheep went semi-mecha and became baabots, overthrowing the woolies and stealing Bubsy's golden fleece. The crew promptly steals a baabot flying saucer, tricks it out in a cat theme, and sets off to retrieve their stolen property. Or to have Bubsy retrieve it while the rest of them sightsee, which is close enough.

Each level of Bubsy 4D is set on one of three planets in the baabots' home system, five levels apiece. Yes, that means fifteen levels total plus the tutorial, and if you blow off the time attack, that means you can complete the entire thing with all pickups found in six and a half hours or so. It's a relatively short game but packed with platforming mechanics, and the levels are built so you can put them all to work finding your favorite way to get the most height, longest distance or fastest speed. Bubsy starts off with a strong set of skills and each level has a single blueprint hidden in it, which can then be exchanged back at the saucer for yet another skill to add to the bobcat's arsenal. It's a great way to give Bubsy a huge moveset without it being overwhelming, even if you don't end up using every ability.

The basic move-set is jump, double-jump, pounce, and for some reason, glide. It was never explained in the earliest games why a bobcat could glide, but it's a great way to get serious jump distance, and it's nowhere near the weirdest thing a game character can do without any justification so...OK. New to Bubsy is a hairball move, where he puffs up into a rolly-ball that can spin with serious momentum plus bounce off surfaces. Wall-jump is a standard ability but being in hairball form makes it both quick and automatic, for those wall sections where spikes or other timing elements aren't making life difficult. All the moves can be chained in various ways, such as making a high-speed hairball roll off a ramp and then switching back to bobcat-standard form, then double-jump, glide, pounce to get maximum distance. And if you end up not quite making it, saving the pounce until last automatically has Bubsy do a short wall-run straight up, which can be a lifesaver when you almost but not quite land on the platform's edge.

Purchased skills tweak the standard moveset, either straight-up adding a new move or adjusting the abilities of the current ones. Twirl-jump is great for extra height, while zoomie has Bubsy instantly flying off at top speed and giving the momentum to turn what should be impossible gaps into handy shortcuts. The item sniffer is great for cleaning up levels when you've only got a handful of yarn balls left, while the best I can say about the hairball air slam is that, like all the extra skills, it can be disabled. Nothing like hitting a ground-slam on the left trigger, killing all a jump's momentum, when what you meant to do was use the left bumper to change out of hairball form to combo abilities into extra distance. All the buttons on the gamepad have a use, and it takes a bit of practice to build up the muscle memory to pull off a move-chain when you need it.

The full list of moves is nicely deep without being overwhelming, giving the player plenty of room to experiment, and the levels require every skill to master. Getting all yarn balls and blueprints in the game is about medium in the challenge level, thanks to the sheer number of moves Bubsy has to keep himself alive, but the time trials require practice not just with the skills but also level layout, knowing when a long jump will open up a shortcut that will save a few seconds better used when rotating platforms need a little time to line up, or for spikes to retract. When in doubt the leaderboard ghosts can show the best way through a level, although it may be best to avoid the top times as they pull off sub-forty-second runs for maps that mere mortals take twice that time on.

The full list of moves is nicely deep without being overwhelming, giving the player plenty of room to experiment, and the levels require every skill to master.

While the move-set is solid and the level design nicely varied in its challenges, there's still a feelling that Bubsy 4D isn't quite the game it should be. There's a lack of polish that's hard to ignore, whether it be how the characters' mouths very clearly move independently of anything they're saying, or how Bubsy can sometimes not quite know what to do when on an edge. The camera is generally useful but during the half-pipe sections where you'll want to roll through at top speed it can set itself at unhelpful angles, enemies are rare enough you can almost forget they're there, and there are occasional jumps where you just don't have enough information to place either yourself or the platform you'll land on in 3D space. None of these are deal-breakers, but they're also hard to ignore, not much helping a game that already feels a bit thin on its content.

Closing Comments:

While a bit short and unpolished, I did enjoy my time with Bubsy 4D, going back to pick up every collectible in the game and even doing half the time trials, which aren't normally my thing. Once you know Bubsy's move-set, it's easy to want to put them through their paces, and after cleaning out the levels it feels nice to tear through them at top speed. It also helps that if you've only got a few yarn balls left, once you pick them up you can just quit the level rather than have to commit to completing the whole thing, making the scavenger hunt feel much more approachable. A few months more polish and a little extra content would have helped Bubsy 4D properly reintroduce the bobcat as a prime platforming mascot, but even so it's a solid adventure for a character that nobody's really quite sure why they're happy to see return.