Back in the 1990's we were all about the extreme, so much so that even the word "extreme" wasn't extreme enough for us. We went in for the upgraded, new and improved XTREEM. Similarly, when we made video games starring animal mascots with attitude, the word "attitude" was ironically not sufficient to convey just how much attitude our animal mascots had. No, they didn't have attitude. They had 'TUDE. And it was XTREEM.
Of all the animal mascots with 'tude, none had more 'tude than Bubsy the Bobcat. Accolade really tried hard to make Bubsy the next big thing. It never quite worked. Still, at the risk of losing my internet writer's license (and with the guarantee of repeating a joke I already used when I reviewed Wild Wild West) I have to admit that I never hated Bubsy. Maybe that's because I wasn't a hardcore enough gamer at the time to be sick of the genre. Maybe it's because I only played two of the games. Who knows?
In the interest of fairness, science, and relieving my own boredom I decided to play all four games in the Bubsy series and give my honest opinion on them. What could paw-sibbly go wrong?
(Note: I am aware that there are actually five Bubsy games out now, with a sixth coming this spring. I originally wrote this review something like three years ago but due to life circumstances I never got around to finishing it. At that time Woolies Strike Back had not yet even been announced. I considered holding off on this review until after I played the most recent game in the series... but I'm too broke for that and I'm not sure I care anyway. Instead, I just decided to post this review mostly as it was. I get a blog post out of it, and you get to watch my "salty" level steadily increase from "almost none" to "enough to cause total kidney failure." Everybody wins!)
Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind
Let me start out by saying that I don't find puns nearly as offensive as a lot of people do. In fact, I love puns. I annoy all of my friends with them, and Piers Anthony's Xanth series remains a favorite of mine to this day. That should give you an idea of how I feel about puns, and this game's title should give you an idea of how punny it likes to be.
The one good thing I will say for Bubsy is that he was a character with personality. Well, sort of. More on that later. Even compared to other animal mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog, Bubsy's animations are all notably very expressive. They even gave him a diverse variety of cartoony death animations for whenever you get killed in the game, which was a nice touch.
Hell, Bubsy was one of the first video game characters to actually talk to you. (Though not THE first, the first video game with voice clips was 1980's Berzerk.) He had a sound bite of dialog before every level, though that did turn into a bit of a downside because there's only one dialog bite per level and you have to listen to it every time you die.
And oh yes, you WILL die.
If you've ever read or watched a video about Bubsy then you should already know that it is a hard game. To be completely fair, it's not nearly as hard as internet people like to pretend it is. Yes, there is fall damage, but as long as you remember you have a glide button that cancels all fall damage, you should never die from it. Yes, Bubsy is a one-hit-point wonder, but enemies and traps are generally easy enough to avoid if you take it slow.
That said, don't get me wrong. It is a hard game, and not all of that is legitimate. Alright, I'll admit it: very little of that is legitimate. The controls are wonky, you slide around a lot and if you build up too much momentum Bubsy can become nearly impossible to control. Your field of vision is too small, so you can't tell what's coming up ahead. Enemy hitboxes are off and I got hit a lot at times when I could swear I never touched an enemy. This isn't helped by the fact that, as mentioned, one hit from anything will kill you instantly.
The game also has a lot of cheap shots and blind jumps. For example, when you see this pipe, do you go down it?
Look at that smug face. He knows you're about to lose a life and he takes pleasure in it.
The answer is no, it kills you. However, not all pipes are lethal. Some of them have power-ups and yarn balls in them. So how do you know which is which? You can't. You just have to guess. To be fair, you do have 9 lives (because he's a cat, get it?) and you can get more by collecting one-up t-shirts. To be unfair, you can burn through all your lives pretty fast. It's almost like the developers were so proud of the death animations they made that they wanted to make sure you'd see them as much as possible.
Overall, Bubsy is not nearly the unmitigated train wreck you've probably heard it is. I respect the ambition that went into it and I do like a lot of the ideas they had. The game is quirky, the main character was very expressive, and I liked the idea of having multiple paths through each level. Still, the controls are just way too wonky and the game takes too many cheap shots at you.
It probably won't surprise you at all to learn the lead designer had never created a game like this before. Prior to Bubsy, his only projects had been text-based adventures, and Accolade even refused to invest in this game until he first played through Sonic the Hedgehog and wrote them an essay on why he thought it was successful. No, I'm not joking. I guess it is cool that the designer went outside his comfort zone and tried his hand at something new... just a shame this game is what he ended up with.
Looking back, I think the main reason I didn't mind the game as a kid is because I sucked at games. Every game I played back then felt super difficult to me and I used cheat codes to get through them all anyway, so I didn't notice how much BS this game was.
KR Rating: BAD
Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales
Although this was the second Bubsy game I played for this review, it wasn't actually the second Bubsy, that was the creatively titled Bubsy II. This was actually the third Bubsy, though it wasn't the official third Bubsy. That "honor" belongs to the notorious Bubsy 3D.
This game was more like Bubsy 2.5. After his first two games, Bubsy made his first foray into another system, on the Atari Jaguar. I never played this game as a kid, due mostly to not owning a Jaguar. It was actually the game I looked forward to playing the most for this review. Part of this was the hope that the fairy tale angle would give them some more interesting ideas for levels and enemies to work with.
On this one point, at least, the game didn't disappoint. I'm reminded of a story about how Steven Spielberg chose to make Temple of Doom as a prequel because he didn't want Indiana Jones to be defined by his fighting Nazis. That's this game, in a nutshell. It is certainly refreshing to see Bubsy get to fight something other than woolies, woolies, and oh hey look it's more woolies.
I'm not sure what mohawk flamingos have to do with Alice in Wonderland, though.
The other reason I looked forward to this game was the hope that being on a more powerful system would allow them to fix a lot of the game's problems. IT DID NOT. The graphics are... okay, I guess. The sound is just as bad as it always was, and the voices are even worse now because the sound bite now changes with every world instead of every level, meaning there's even more repetition.
The controls... they actually seem to have gotten worse. There's still the weird, floaty jumps and the momentum issues, but where starting up used to be quick it now feels like Bubsy is running on fly paper.
Worst of all, the ability to figure out different paths through the level is also gone. The levels are still big, but now you actually need to go through every nook and cranny in order to open up the way forward. It makes every level last way too long and turns the game into a slog.
The first game could be fun once you got past its problems, but this game has nothing going for it.
Also, I feel like they wasted the potential for a good pun by not calling it "Fractured Furry Tails." That alone is enough to earn it a rating of...
KR Rating: HORRIBLE
Bubsy II
The big problem with the "animal mascots with 'tude" genre is that they tended to rely too much on the wackiness of their premise and the charisma of their characters, and so gameplay tended to suffer. The most successful of these games were the ones that managed to find a happy balance, like Ratchet and Clank and Spyro the Dragon.
Comparatively, Bubsy's gameplay is barely passable at best, its premise isn't really all that wacky, and as much as I respect the expressiveness in Bubsy's sprites, the character has basically zero charisma.
The point I'm making here is that Bubsy was always bad, but at least the first game was trying. This game? Not even a little. There's even a story going around about the lead designer from the first game visiting the studio during this game's development and seeing Bubsy dolls hanging from the ceiling by shoestring nooses. That's how much the developers of Bubsy II cared about making a good game. They couldn't even be bothered to give it a wacky pun title. For shame.
All I have to say about this game is that it sucks. The gameplay sucks, Bubsy sucks, and his obnoxious nephew and niece, added in this game, are two of the worst characters ever made.
KR Rating: SHOVEL
Bubsy 3D in Furbitten Planet
Along with the first game in the series, this is the second of the two Bubsy games that I actually played as a child. It's also hands down the worst one they made, and the only one of the four games that I refused to play again for this review. "But what about journalistic integrity?" That went into the same meat grinder that I'd rather shove my face in than play this game again. Look, I'll still defend Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind to a certain extent, but not this game. Never this game. Claws Uncounters might be "Love It or Hate It" but this game? This game is just "Hate It or Hate It." Anyone who claims to enjoy this game is either trying to be ironic, or is a drooling imbecile.
I guess I do need to talk about this game just a little bit... Bubsy 3D came out in the wake of Super Mario 64, when every 2D platformer had to become 3D. Sometimes it worked out really well, like with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which led to a reinvention of that entire franchise. Other times it merely turned out "okay" like with all the 3D Castlevania games.
Bubsy 3D does not fall into either of those categories. This game is a total mess. Just look at this crap, and remember this came out a half a year AFTER Super Mario 64.
Above: Bubsy 3D. Below: A real game.
Not shown - the terrible camera, unusable tank controls, or the gas oven it will make you want to stick your head in. It's no surprise this game finally killed off the franchise for good. (At least until 2017.)
KR Rating: SHOVEL
Bubsy, the Cartoon
At last we come to the last piece of Bubsy out there. (Aside from the other two games which, as mentioned, were not out when I wrote this review.) Well, sort of. Technically there never was a Bubsy cartoon. There was a pilot, but no network was ever stupid enough to pick it up.
The biggest problem with the Bubsy cartoon is that IT NEVER SHUTS UP. Other reviewers have already pointed out how the show fills every solitary second with sound. Personally, I feel like they're selling it short. Bubsy somehow managed to fit an entire hour worth of dialog into 22 minutes of show. By the end of it all I just felt worn out.
I couldn't even bring myself to feel upset about how they milked Arnold the Armadillo's fear of getting run over by a truck for comedy. Normally I hate the Butt Monkey trope and this show's use of it is almost as bad as Meg from Family Guy, but in the end I was just too tired to be annoyed. That's how bad it is.
The worst part is, none of it even matters, even by the standards of kids' shows from the 90's.
The plot makes no sense, revolving around a "virtual reality" helmet that somehow makes things real for people who aren't even wearing it. It's basically a wish-granting genie in stupid hat form.
The writing is atrocious. Despite all the dialog they crammed into this thing, there's actually only like 5 jokes in it, each repeated ad nauseum despite not being funny the first time. The writing is definitely going for a "quantity over quality" approach. Three guesses as to whether you think it works, and the first two guesses don't count.
Oh, and the characters.... GAH! The characters! I mentioned before that Bubsy only "sort of" had personality... this is where I first realized this: Bubsy doesn't have personality, he has attitude, and there's a difference. See, I know how Bubsy acts. I've seen his expressions. I've heard his insipid catchphrase and his stupid lisp. ...but I don't know who he is. What does he believe in? How does he feel about stuff? What are his goals? No one knows.
It's the same for all of these characters. Every single one of them can be summed up in a single sentence or even a single word. They barely qualify as characters. They're just platforms for one of the five terrible jokes.
Well, at least it's still not Bubsy 3D.
KR Rating: THE CRAP GLASS IS HALF FULL
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