Bubsy 4D - Switch 2 Review

Do you like nostalgia? Did you have an SNES during the mid-90s, through which Bubsy was afflicted upon you? Did you enjoy that? Did you, for some reason, continue this disastrously questionable string of experiences by playing Bubsy 3D on the PS1 and… kind of liked it? If the answer to all of those questions is "yes", then good news: I, too, am a freak, and Bubsy 4D is definitely for you. Those who don’t enjoy trash or a good practical joke need not enquire.

The Good

Bubsy 4D proves that someone out there really loves Bubsy, and that someone is Fabraz. This is the strangest labour of love that I only have some understanding of because of the unique time in which I lived relative to the rest of the human race. I can only assume that the developers at Fabraz are also of this time because, otherwise, my biggest question about this game would be “Why?” That’s not to say it’s bad… Kind of. I mean, it is, but it’s complicated because this is less of a video game and more like a piece of performance art.

It’s stuff like the tutorial level looking very much like the opening levels of Bubsy 3D or how choosing the low-res PS1 skin also changes the death screen to that of Bubsy 3D. It’s incredibly bad jokes like superseding the Woolies as the antagonists with… All new woolly creatures. Or having the Woolies still hanging around like enslaved creatures, remarking on how much that sucks, mixed in with a few that still attack you because of course you need that. 

It’s the way they opted to design the game more like Bubsy 3D and only fix the way it controls just enough for it to not be unplayable but still be torturous. The same way this 3D environment is coloured, textured, and themed heavily based on the SNES games but using the rendering power of the Switch, which makes everything garish and hard to look at. That was a deliberate choice, which I’ll touch on in “The Bad". The fact they did it still counts as “the good", though, because that’s the joke. It’s one you almost have to have a history with to understand unless, and this is important to the success of the whole thing, you’re a very young player. 

It’s not exactly Mario but it’s a decently put-together collectathon with a bunch of dad joke humour sprinkled throughout. It’s designed and animated far better than Bubsy probably deserves, with a kind of modern Saturday morning breakfast cartoon vibe that looks slick as hell. Those visuals are at their best when the characters are seen up close and not when the “scenic vistas” of the in-game environments are on display; more on that later. The music, of course, is cheery and “fun” in the weirdest and most off-putting ways possible – perfect for a Bubsy title. It’s the kind of thing that’s likely to appeal to a younger generation of gamers. 

Something they’ll carry forward as cherished but confusing memories of a Bubsy game, compelling them at some point in the future to play a subpar and terrible sequel. This is because time is a flat circle and all of mankind’s sins will catch up with us in the end. Truly, that is the greatest victory of Bubsy 4D.

TL;DR

• Beautifully designed and animated
• Everything else is a big inside joke
• Almost certain to be enjoyed by younger gamers

The Bad

Yeah, of course there’s bad stuff! It’s a vital ingredient to making a Bubsy game that celebrates Bubsy a whole! Remember how I mentioned before that the controls were kind of bad? Bubsy 4D sees our titular hero flailing around the screen, barely heeding the player’s input. Frustrating and difficult-but-not-impossible to handle with any kind of precision, Bubsy remains as floaty as the series is notorious for and building momentum will throw any kind of ability to steer him out the window. 

So, if the controls are really that bad, then you may be wondering, "What's the catch?” This is the most apropos moment to bring it up because there is an upgrade system of sorts whenever Bubsy goes back to the home ship. With enough upgrades, they do make the controls more agreeable by the end but that is the extent of it. Operating on the assumption that even this design decision plays in the central joke of what Bubsy 4D is, I can’t think of a better punchline than, “And at the end, the controls are just fine.”

This is more or less the same as the gaudy environments that are nauseating to look at for too long. So, too, the irksome music that puts one in mind of that experimental music to simulate the feeling of living with Alzheimer's. In a vacuum, these things are terrible and should be lambasted for the harm they inflict upon the human psyche. If this were any other game series, I’d be saying exactly that but there is an artistry involved in how this trash was crafted. Marvellous!

TL;DR

• Frustrating, floaty controls
• Earworm music in a bad way
• Garish environments

Final Score: 9/10

Yes, you read that correctly – I gave it a 9! Bubsy 4D is a purrrfectly imperfect Bubsy game from people who understand this series on a level I couldn’t possibly, for reasons I cannot fathom. Beyond, of course, nostalgia driven by childhood trauma. Every last part of it is both a celebration of what came before while… Elevating the series to new heights? I originally wanted to give this a perfect 10 for the way it embodied Bubsy so well but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that for something so objectively bad. And yet, being just shy of that figure feels perfect for Bubsy in its own way.

Thank you for checking out our Bubsy 4D Switch review, thank you to Atari (via Plan of Attack) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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