What a stupid timeline we live in where of all the legacy franchises to give to a talented indie developer, Bubsy was the one we got.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/72845/bubsy-4d-pc-demo-preview
Bubsy is such a meme nowadays that all Atari really needed to do was release something half decent and it would’ve made headlines. Evidently they weren’t willing to settle for the bare minimum since they handed the reins over to Demon Turf developer Fabraz, revitalizing this aged brand with some of the magic that its contemporaries from the ‘90s never quite managed to achieve in 3D.
It’s probably not controversial for me to say that the original Bubsy on SNES wasn’t great, but I don’t think it’s a game without merit. “Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind” is a platforming game that places a heavy emphasis on momentum. Bubsy is slow to start and once he gets to a high speed he can be a bit difficult to control. I really love games where inertia is a critical part of the mechanics, and while the original Bubsy has some pretty bad level design (and is deeply derivative of Sonic the Hedgehog), I do like the high concept of what it’s going for.
With that in mind, Bubsy 4D is a really smart way to translate Bubsy’s appeal (if you can call it that) into a 3D platformer. This is a game that begs you to speedrun it because Bubsy has an entire moveset of traversal options that give you a lot of freedom in how you approach platforming. There is a certain magic to rolling around at top speed and determining the exact moment that you should jump out of Bubsy’s furball form in order to dive, double jump, and glide your way to a platform you can just barely reach to skip a huge chunk of the level and shave around twenty seconds off of your leaderboard time.
The variety of moves Bubsy has can also be great for recovering from mistakes—while flubbing a jump would inevitably slow me down and cost me a lot of my momentum, it almost never caused me to outright fail a platforming challenge. It’s not the most graceful control scheme in the world, but I’d liken it to the difference between an automatic car and a stick shift. An automatic car is much easier to use since it Just Works™, but there are undoubtedly enthusiasts who prefer having that granular control over their engine as they take their car’s performance into their own hands. That’s a big part of Bubsy 4D’s appeal to me as a fan of speedrunning, though it definitely comes at the cost of making the game a little tougher for casual players to get the most out of.
That might not be so bad if exploring levels at a slower pace was engaging, but sadly I don’t think that’s the case in Bubsy 4D. The three levels available in the demo I played aren’t very interesting to explore, and there’s not much to find other than over a hundred balls of yarn that are plainly visible and not far off the beaten path. Since I’ve only played the early levels that are offered by the demo, it’s possible that the game will shine later on with slower, more methodical platforming challenges for completionists. However, the levels featured in the demo were only interesting when I was figuring out the fastest route through them to get better speedrun times.
Bubsy 4D isn’t going to set the world on fire, but it is clearly a polished experience that a talented developer put thought into. As a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, I can’t help but feel a little envious of Bubsy fans (all three of them) for getting a game that translates that classic momentum-based platforming into 3D so well. It’s a bit ironic that the game also translates the frustrating lack of appeal for slower casual play that bogs down 2D Sonic, but for those who’ve got the need for speed like I do, Bubsy might have a bright future ahead of him.
Topic: Bubsy 4D (PC Demo) Preview (Read 22 times)
