Bubsy 4D Review – A Surprisingly Welcome Return

Bubsy debuted all the way back in 1993 as an attempt to capitalize on mascot games like Mario and Sonic by creating a game series based on the titular orange bobcat.

Unfortunately, after two well-received games on the SNES and Genesis, the series started to show cracks with an Atari Jaguar exclusive third entry before going off the rails entirely with the infamously bad Bubsy 3D for PlayStation that killed the series for over two decades.

Two different developers tried to revive the series in 2017 and 2019, but failed miserably, producing once-again awful games. That brings us to today, where Atari acquired the rights to the series and has enlisted developer Fabraz to save the franchise before it is out of its nine lives with Bubsy 4D.

A New Enemy Appears

The story begins in Bubsy 4D with Bubsy and his friends realizing that the Woolies have returned once again, but this time they haven’t come to steal Bubsy’s Golden Fleece. Instead, they have come to steal the planet’s sheep population to make their own, which Bubsy doesn’t seem to care about. This comes back to bite him though, as the sheep escape and take control of the Woolies’ technology to become what are known as BaaBots and end up stealing Bubsy’s Golden Fleece after all. This sets Bubsy off onto the Woolie’s planets to try and take down the BaaBots and get back his Golden Fleece piece by piece.

Bubsy has never been known for having a spectacular story, but this works well here, and the characters themselves are quite fun when they interact with one another too. You even get the two younger family members who are clearly based more on a Gen Z personality, so there’s something to appeal to multiple age groups here. There is a lot of fourth-wall breaking as usual, which is befitting of the game’s title, and lots of self-deprecating humor that felt reminiscent of games like Conker’s Bad Fur Day at times, though toned down quite a bit.

After the failure to transition the series to 3D, the last two entries in the series returned to the 2D style of the original games. However, Bubsy 4D is looking to make up for the sins of the past and is an entirely 3D platformer. From the very start, you can tell how much more fluid and in control you are than back in Bubsy 3D. This isn’t just a difference between modern and old-school 3D either, as plenty of 3D platformers from that era, like the Spyro series, still hold up well today.

The game starts with a VR tutorial that you can partake in to learn the controls of the 3D world here. This is a good teaching tool on how to navigate across gaps and move upward, which becomes very important later on. As Bubsy, you can move around rather easily, jump or flutter jump for an extra boost in the air. From there, you can combo the usage of a glide and a pounce technique to making it across difficult jumps in the platforming. The biggest adjustment in the gameplay, though, is Hairball Mode, where you turn into a ball and roll around with controls similar to Super Monkey Ball. You can switch back and forth between these instantly, but this can get a little dangerous when moving too fast and trying to make it across large gaps.

While there are times when the movement can feel a little floaty, this is easily the best and most in-control Bubsy has probably ever felt. Most of the time when I fell into a pit, I felt like it was my fault by making a miscalculation rather than the controls being bad. For the developer to jump right into the series with 3D was an ambitious choice, but it seems to have paid off with the controls.

Exploring the Planets

Besides the VR sims, Bubsy 4D consists of three worlds, each with five levels. As you enter a world, you can explore it to your hearts content. There are essentially a few goals for you to complete within each level in the game, which will certainly take at least two playthroughs to complete. The first is to make it to the end and collect the Golden Fleece item. While making your way through the stage, you can also collect one of the 150 colored yarn balls that are found in each stage, as well as the one tutorial scroll found in all except the boss stages. You can make it to the end without earning any of these, but it’s smart to get as many as you can so you can use the yarn balls in the in-game store we will discuss. The other goal for each stage is to beat the time trial, which will be very hard to do. By completing each level in the goal time, you will earn a medal for that specific one.

As you play through the various levels in the game, you will not notice too much variance in the overall level designs. Rather than a Mario with such distinct level designs throughout, here it started to feel a bit samey at times, even with small changes in the design. That said, these designs do not manage to overstay their welcome due to the scale of some of them, where you are moving up and do actually start to feel different. In fact, some of my favorites were the ones that felt more like they were out of Super Mario Galaxy or Astro Bot, where you were making dangerous jumps from platform to platform in mid-air with no real place to go below them.

At the start of the game, you have three chances to get hit per level, though you can replenish your health or even increase that amount by one eventually. Thankfully, there are checkpoints found throughout the level in the form of litter boxes, which allow you to start back there in the case of death instead of going back to the beginning. With the scale of some of these stages moving upward, this is especially helpful.

Each of the worlds culminates in a boss battle at the end of the fifth level against the stronger BaaBots. These do not just follow the same formula like some platformers do with bosses, either, as each feels distinctly different. The first of these against Baarbee challenges you to use your Hairball form more to follow the enemy after breaking them out of their protective ball each time. Then you have Baartholemeo on planet two, that is a full-on 3D battle in a circle around him, where you have to expertly avoid his attacks and strike back when the window opens. Lastly, the boss fight against Baaptiste features help from the other two bosses in a completely unique fight as well.

Once you beat the trio of BaaBosses together in the 15th stage, you really realize just how short this game is, unfortunately. Not including the tutorial VR level, the game is only 15 total levels across the three players, which is when games like this usually just get started. Bubsy 4D is definitely considered a budget game, but I was hoping for a little more length to the adventure. In fact, I never thought I’d actually be asking for more Bubsy, but here we are.

As aforementioned, the collectible yarn balls in each stage can be used within the in-game store, though they can only be exchanged for one thing, skins. From the start, you have access to purchase any of the eight available skins for a mix of 150 or 300 yarn balls each. These include some cool, nostalgic, and even funny skins to unlock here that don’t take that much, really, to obtain. These include a leather jacket skin, a classic skin with a plain white t-shirt and a red exclamation point like in the original games, one based on Bubsy 3D (if you feel like reliving pain), and even a funny Hedgehog Style skin that takes all of his clothes off to look like Sonic, but censors the private parts as a joke when literally that part of the body is shown in other costumes. They had some fun with these, and I appreciated how easy they made them to unlock in the game.

The collectible scrolls in each stage can also be turned into the shop to unlock upgrades for Bubsy. These include special jumps like the Twirl Jump and Crouch Jump, an ability to sniff out collectibles, the previously mentioned extra health hit per stage, some Hairball Mode upgrades, and more. If you collect all 12 scrolls during the game, you will be able to purchase all of these upgrades.

Bubsy 4D also has a number of alterations you can make in the game’s menu that affect gameplay. This includes being able to switch to the tank controls of Bubsy 3D for those crazy enough to want to do that, as well as adjusting the game speed and turning on invincibility for the younger gamers who may just want to have fun. Bubsy 4D isn’t that difficult overall, but this is a nice feature to include for younger audiences anyway.

Visuals in the game are nothing mindblowing, but they are solid enough for what they are trying to do. It features an animated, almost cel-shaded design with the characters, but the actual levels do not get quite enough time to show off the environments’ look with so few stages. The soundtrack for Bubsy 4D is also very well worth mentioning, as I quite enjoyed it while playing. It features a jazzy style that fits the tone of the game well, and I just wish there were a jukebox section in the game to listen to it.

The game wasn’t without its occasional bugs though. The most common one that happened a few times was that I would try to go into Hairball Mode, but instead of doing so, Bubsy would break through the floor into nothing and die instantly. I’m not sure why this happened, but at least the checkpoint system kept this from being too overal annoying when it did.

The Verdict

Bubsy 4D could have easily been written off as another disappointing attempt to revive the series, but developer Fabraz put some love and care into it and gave us the best Bubsy game since at least the original two. The controls actually work well, the humor is there, and the actual gameplay is quite fun in a 3D environment. The biggest downside to the game overall is just how short it is, with only 15 levels, which feels more like a demo in that way. Even so, at least the series appears to be on the right track, and hopefully, this will be just the foundation to build upon for more fleshed-out adventures for Bubsy.

Bubsy 4D was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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