Was the wait worth it?

 

FINALLY A GOOD GAME!!!

I’m not gonna mince words or anything here, Bubsy finally has a good game after years of utter garbage. I slaved through Bubsy 1, suffered with Furtales and 2, fought the reincarnation of God with 3D, and fell into a year long Coma with The Woolies Strike Back and Paws on Fire, but it was all worth it to get here. Who knew the secret to making a good Bubsy game was to hire an actual competent studio right?

The Woolies… are NOT BACK actually wow! Instead we got the Baabot’s, evil sheep that were kidnapped by the Woolies ages ago who ended up taking over the Woolies homeworld and stole the technology for themselves. They once again steal Bubsy’s Golden Wool and it’s up to him and his “friends” to save the day. They still do not try here plot wise, and the game is short enough to where no one really gets a focus. You’re mostly going from place to place here with each world changing up the next villain. Bubsy is still as annoying as before, though the game is a lot more self-deprecating with its humor, making fun of Bubsy’s past and while I can understand the intention, it does make it come off as more annoying. That’s all Bubsy is after all, a joke of a franchise with barely any positives to it, there’s no redeeming characteristics in this plot here, and my time spent on this story just felt wasted. I liked Bubsy’s niece and nephew I guess, they were kinda funny, but everyone else just spends the entire game making fun of Bubsy, there is nothing more to each of these characters. Graphically, the game is fine, I enjoy the style enough, but environments can be a little bland, and the only real notable world I can think of is the 2nd, as it leans heavily into a yarn aesthetic this time instead of a generic grass and factory world. Granted, the game was made on a budget so I can excuse some of it, but it does mean the game doesn't stick out much from the platformer crowd, and it can be kinda bland as an experience overall.

Levels are pretty standard here, tasking you with getting to the end of each one, collecting various yarn balls and blueprints along the way in order to get some extra goodies to spice up your playthrough. For the first time ever, Bubsy actually controls great here! He still has his intense speed from the 1st game, but this time he’s actually controllable and I had no issues directing Bubsy to where I wanted him to go! He also has a bunch of new moves here making it a lot more of a movement platformer this time around compared to his other works. You got the basic dive back, thought functions a lot more like the Hat in Time dive, just with way more speed and distance with it, but you also got a double jump and a roll move that lets you travel at intense speeds. This is a very fast paced platformer, and this can take someone off guard on a first playthrough, but it wasn't hard to really adjust to and the game offers a sandbox area to run around in if needed in order to better adjust to his controls. While the level themes may be rather generic, the actual design isn’t, being a lot more open then previous Bubsy games, letting you take full advantage of his moveset here. If you go through the game at normal speed, you won’t really have that great a time here, it can be a little boring, but if you try speeding along and aiming for those leaderboard times, you end up playing through one of the most fun platformers I’ve played recently. Bubsy’s moves flow into each other incredibly well here, and there are a lot of instances where you can just zoom past major parts of the level if you're clever enough to do it, so a lot of the fun comes from making your own routes and destroying everything that comes in your way.

It’s not all perfect though, there were quite a few things that held Bubsy back here like usual, and it was bad enough to stick in my mind the whole run through. Collectibles seem neat in practice but the rewards for them are rather lame. Yarn Balls just get you more costumes which are fine but they have so little here that I ended up barely using most of them as you easily default to one or two. Blueprints are the other collectibles, letting you buy various upgrades to Bubsy, further expanding his arsenal and making him more capable moveset wise. The issue though is that a lot of these moves aren’t really that useful and the only one I really got used out of was the checkpoint teleportation move as that helped me get 100% a lot quicker. I also find that the moveset itself can be a little lacking. I feel like there’s not a lot of variety with the moves itself and it started to have the Mario Odyssey issue where you kinda rely on the same move most of the time. The roll makes it a lot better thankfully as the burst of speed you get from that is incredibly exhilarating, but making long distances really amounted to bouncing off from a roll into a dive, it got a little repetitive. I’m also not a big fan of the “walljump” here, it’s very magnetic in terms of how it’s used, so you don’t really gain much use from it and the game barely uses it to begin with. It felt like a let down because I know this team can do more movement wise, but for Bubsy it very clearly got the budget treatment. The game is also incredibly short, you can beat this in an hour and a half easily, it takes no time. The only reason it took me a bit longer is because I idled a bit due to checking in on some conversations and I ended up going for 100% which required me to beat the game without getting hit 9 times. For a 20 dollar price tag too, it’s a little egregious, especially when I can buy other Bubsy games for much cheaper for the same length, sometimes even longer. Granted, those aren’t as high quality as 4D, but I should not be spending more time playing Bubsy 3D and Paws on Fire than this, come on man.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Bubsy 4D decently enough. It wasn't the best game in the world, far from it, but it’s an actual good game from Bubsy and I’ll take that over yet another garbage release. The main thing holding it back is really the fact that it was made on a budget, and if it was given more time then it could have been something incredible! Still though, I don’t regret playing through this, and for now it seems my Bubsy journey has finally come to an end! Unless they make a new one then I guess I'm back in the mines but let’s hope that doesn't happen! Please save me! Please!!!