There is apparently a storied and infamous history to the Bubsy series, but I know little of it. And after enduring Bubsy 4D, a modern platforming take on the orange and obnoxious bobcat, I have no desire to learn of it. Bubsy 4D features a passable platformer style built upon comboing from one move to the next. I rarely felt the tight control I wanted over the mascot character, and it’s held back by repetitive and bland level design. That this platforming is placed within a nonsensical world with threadbare characters and villains, an unsightly visual style, and terrible writing doesn’t help. Six hours of Bubsy 4D felt like an eternity – if only I could travel through the fourth dimension to get my time back.
The Woolies return in Bubsy 4D, capturing the sheepish BaaBots in an effort to gain more power. The BaaBots revolt, gain control, and steal Bubsy’s Golden Fleece, sending the titular character off on a collectathon adventure to find yarn, scrolls, and more. The leftover Woolies pose zero threat, and attacking them is a chore due to Bubsy 4D’s poor targeting; the BaaBots pose a slightly bigger threat, thanks to projectiles they fire, but still feel like a chore to defeat. There are only a couple of different BaaBots and Woolies, exacerbating the combat’s quickly earned staleness. Boss fights, which cap off the three five-stage worlds, present more of a challenge, but I was still playing Bubsy 4D, meaning the ceiling of fun remained claustrophobic.
Combat, though, is an admittedly small slice of Bubsy’s adventure. The majority of Bubsy 4D tasks you with reaching the end of ludicrously designed levels – you’ll roll through pipes that string areas together, climb atop floating platforms and walls, and dodge desultory hazards in doing so. Finding the 150 yarn balls in each, which can be used to purchase a decent slew of costumes, and the hidden blueprint scroll, which is used to purchase upgrades and new abilities, are optional diversions. I took them on hoping to find fun, but these only compounded my frustrations. Some decent platformer bones exist here with a long-jump pounce, double jump, and a glide that can be used to create distance-gaining combos, but there’s no joy to be found in the staging of each level.
Random buildings, vehicles, and pedestrians hint that these planets might be home to civilization, but muddy visuals, a wonky camera, and bizarre obstacle progression make it hard to focus on any of the surrounding environment. Even the color palette of Bubsy 4D feels like an affront to my eyes. Moments of genuine fun tried hard to break through the paper-thin framework with which Bubsy must exist in here in Bubsy 4D, like in sequences where I climbed towers high into the sky, utilizing my entire platformer toolkit to ascend, but for most of the runtime, it felt like developer Fabraz’s efforts were working against me, not with me.
There is voice acting, though it’s deployed poorly and randomly, and wasted on terrible writing void of humor, drama, tension, or anything worthwhile, really. These characters, which include Terry and Terri, Bubsy’s annoying nephew and niece, Virgil Reality, a scientist who feels as embarrassed about his association with Bubsy as I was, and Oblivia, whom Bubsy wants to impress but simply cannot, add zero to Bubsy 4D. Remove them, and nothing would change.
I’ve heard little about Bubsy in my life, but what little I have heard hasn’t been great. In that sense, Bubsy 4D is a return to form; it’s bad, and perhaps fans will find fun in placing this game in Bubsy’s timeline of infamy. If Bubsy 4D is an attempt to bring new players to this 33-year-old franchise, though, its poor level design, characterization, and platforming will ensure it won’t.