Even if you like Bubsy, this is criminally short for the pricetag. Cleared it no-effort in under an hour on my first run.

This game is worlds better than any other Bubsy Sequel and for the most part less rude as it progresses than the original (I maintain that the original is a fine game for the first two or three worlds, but...)

The thing is, it's waaay to short for the price tag. I realize a lot of effort has gone into the art assets and devs need to get paid, but when stuff like Sonic Mania has 3 or 4 times as much content for less money, this just isn't cutting it.

At the current price I just can't recommend it, you're going to feel short changed. Get it on sale.

$30 for less than 2 hours of content that wasn't even fully playtested and lazily constructed. Expect bosses to glitch out. Expect cheap deaths. Pointless collecting that serves absolutely no purpose. None. There are goals in the levels that do NOT affect your progress. There are keys to collect, and you collect them all to collect more wool. What do you do with the wool? Nothing. They don't add anything. They don't unlock anything AFAIK. I'm not willing to replay this to find out.
Controls that are mediocre at best, and sometimes just frustratingly bad. The pounce gets you killed because you completely lose control of the character once it's used.
Nothing memorable or funny happens. At all. The levels are just generic assets. You could replace the characters with anything and you wouldn't even know this was supposed to be a Bubsy game. They're not wacky looking or even full of weird quirky characters like the other games. They're just boring, and full of the same recolored enemies. Over and over for about 10 levels. There are 3 bosses. Each boss is pretty much the same boss with maybe one or two new attacks. The boss fights are incredibly slow, and they also don't recover HP when you die. This is probably because you can die to them in incredibly dumb (and sometimes broken/glitched/unfair) ways and it's a lazy way to excuse just not making them actually fun encounters.
The cutscenes aren't even animated. They're just still images sliding around. That's it. Super lazy.
Bubsy has nothing remotely funny to say. Gex has wittier dialogue than this.
The levels themeatically are nothing like the rest of the series. They are very very very uninspired and I would not be shocked if they used generic assets for them.
The lighting engine is so amazingly terrible and basic. Half the time you cant even see Bubsy's face because he's obscurred by shadows -- not that it ever does anything interesting, but he is the main character. Dont get me wrong. He has no facial expressions, really. That'd require effort.

This feels like they were clearly intending for this to sell based off the "Bubsy is bad" meme alone with absolutely no effort put into making the game. If anything, it feels like they reskinned some mobile game made as someone's first attempt at being an indie developer. The price tag just makes that aspect alone feel scummy.


I'd refund this had Accolade not sent me a key for it to stream.

Overall 4/10, and a 5 at best, just because it's playable. I'd say buy this for a kid who doesn't know better as a bargain bin game to keep them occupied, but it's THIRTY DOLLARS.
THIRTY.
DOLLARS.
FOR 2 HOURS.
Whoever says this game is good or "fine" didn't actually play it themselves or understands just how scummy the devs are for making it the way it is.

I dont care if any aspect of this review is actually wrong or something. I really didn't like this.

short, yet sweet
i like bubsy

edit: you know what i change my mind **** you

I'll unashamedly admit that I'm a Bubsy fan. The first Bubsy game is a game I literally GREW UP playing. Yes, it was super-challenging and you only had one hit, but that was kind of the point of a lot of old-school games; they're MEANT to be hard, as a means to keep the player coming back to try and beat a level that they couldn't on their last playthrough. That was Bubsy for me. It took YEARS for a much-younger version of me to beat the first game, but I still have fond memories of the game. It had a sense of charm, personality, catchy music and a difficulty that never seemed unfair to me (because I never rushed through a levels like a speedrunner so speed was never an issue for me).

I was cautiously optimistic about this game when I first heard that Bubsy was making a comeback. Even a Bubsy fan like myself can admit that Bubsy 3D was an absolute garbage game, and previews of this game at least seemed to bring the bobcat back to his roots.

I'll start with what's good about the game. This is definitely the easiest Bubsy game to date, and it's something newer players can step into without getting bombarded with difficulty and annoying deaths (at least at first). The game looks good and the music is pretty good as well. The company seems to be going back to the roots of what certain people enjoyed about Bubsy in the first place, and I can appreciate that they don't seem to be adding anything new for the most part and are just keeping it as a platformer like Bubsy should be.

Bubsy is back to taking one hit before death, but the game adjusts this by making the first T-Shirt you pick up in each level act as a shield until you get hit. Each shirt you collect while still shielded will net you the 1-Up that you expect them to, but at least Bubsy has a bit of a reprieve if the player mistimes a jump and hits an enemy or obstacle.

Unfortunately, there are also a number of gripes I have with this game. The first is that I find the game too easy and too short. This was the first game in my library that I got 100% of the achievements on, and I was able to do it in under five hours. The easier difficulty may be good for a lot of people that had problems with how difficult the original game was, but I personally think that the lower difficulty here makes the game too easy for someone who was expecting a difficulty level akin to the original game.

Bubsy has some in-level dialogue for almost every action he does, like jump, glide, pounce, defeat an enemy or collect a T-Shirt. While it's nice to have a little bit of talking in the level, he really doesn't have that much variety in how many different lines of dialogue he has for each of his actions. Putting the voice level all the way to the max will cause Bubsy to say something constantly, and only then will you realize that he only has about three or four lines of dialogue for each action. I personally would have liked to see a little bit more variety in what Bubsy says.

All in all, I definitely enjoy the game because it's a good throwback to a game that I grew up playing, but for what it's worth I don't think it's worth the full price. I'll give this game a recommendation, but NOT at full price. If you see this game on sale for AT LEAST 50% off, then I'd say pick it up and give it a try. I just hope that this isn't the last we see of Bubsy, and that this game was more of a test to see if the interest in the character was still there...

It's better than Bubsy 3D.

I'll be honest: I bought this game expecting it to be an absolute train wreck.
However, that's not quite what I got, and that surprised me a bit.

• Controls feel a bit solid once you get used to them. Bubsy never felt "slippery".
  
• Fall damage is no longer a thing!
  
• Level graphics looked alright, albeit somewhat generic.
  
• Glitches were few and far between.

• It felt a bit difficult controling Bubsy's pounce sometimes. I would've liked it better if it could've honed in on objects/enemies.
  
• This game is short. With only 10 levels and 3 boss fights of mild difficulty, the game's going to be over a lot quicker than it really should.
  
• Soundtrack somewhat repetitive, feels uninspired.
  
• Level design did feel somewhat cheap at times.

I feel Black Forest Games and Accolade were going for quality over quantity with these stages, which, while lead to a shortage of bugs and glitches, also meant there wasn't much "game" in their game. If you're going to buy this, keep in mind you're only going to have about three hours worth' of playability here, and the music isn't exactly memorable. But, I feel they've definitely progressed with this game. I'm honestly a little bit excited to see what Accolade has up their sleeves next.
That being said, however, I don't quite think it's worth $30. I'd probably put it at around $10, maybe $12.50, given the amount of content in the game and the quality of the game itself, so I wouldn't really get it unless if it's on sale. But, if you're really curious about this game, I'd definitely say it's worth a try.

It's okay. Most certainly not worth full price.

This isn't a bad game, but it's certainly mediocre. It's a basic platformer, and that's all I can really say about it. Except for being based off of a notorious game (which Black Forest Games seems to like to do), there's nothing special about this. Walk, jump, attack enemies, collect balls, reach end of stage. In this sense, it's actually worse than the original, because the original Bubsy had more variation in it.

For more than $10, Bubsy: The Woolie Strike Back is nothing short of an utter waste of money. Let me be quick, frank and honest;

Graphics: Fine, though there isn't much 'life' in the character models but it doesn't looks as painful as the PS1 or SNES Bubsy games.

Sound: Really bland score, obvious stock sounds are obvious and I wish there was a way to keep Bubsy's voice acting on but also limit how many one-liners per second he was allowed to spew.

Controls: The game controls well, it doesn't feel like you are delayed or not getting inputs through.

Mechanics: Trash. Your pounce has a 50% chance to just kill you instantly, easier to use as a means to quickly get through levels or simply avoid enemies rather than attack them. Jumping on their heads works fine, but has about a 30% chance of killing you as well because...reasons? Gliding is meh, it was in all the others so it makes sense to keep it around, but like Sonic's spin dash, you sorta question why it exists when the levels aren't really built to take full advantage of the ability.

Collectables: Something close to 300-600 per level of mutli-colored yarn that...has no reason to be there. The yarn does nothing but give you a better score and maybe an achievement. Getting them all isn't hard at all and is mostly there to pad out the game for obvious reasons.

Enemies: Boring and forgettable. You can mostly just avoid them and you'll be fine, they never chase you (except the bee's) but every enemy can also be killed, so just jump on their head and the problem is gone.

Boss fight: There are 3 in total, and all of them are pretty much the same exact ship doing a slight variation of moves in an almost identical space. None of them were hard, but trying to find where to hit them or when to hit them can be tricky and one hit is instant death meaning you have to go through all the motions of their phase again just to get a chance to nail 'em.

Overal: I beat this game in 1.5 hours. If I had stayed to collect all the yarn, it might have taken me 2-2.5 hours to finish. The game is just a blur of noise with nothing standing out as being memorable, it is so short that you question how the math of 2 hours = $30, and this game exists when for $20 you could own Mario Odyessy or $10 more and you could own Sonic Forces or Sonic Mania. Bubsy has no reason to exist, it isn't fun or enjoyable, it isn't well made or thought out, it exists because someone needed money and it clearly shows.

P.S. the game ends claiming that "Bubsy will be Back" which is a thing only you can help stop. Become a hero today, save us all, don't buy this game so there will never be a Bubsy 2.