Some games get a bad wrap from the get-go, and their legacy is tainted from the start. Their reputation is almost on an infamous level, and you just simply wonder "how the hell could a game get so badly criticized." You see all the videos saying "THIS IS THE WORST GAME EVER" and you start thinking "no way it could be that bad! I have to try it out for myself."

So I did. And wouldn't you know it? It's even worse than they said. I have played my fair share of 3D platformers, and I have played some bad ones too. I can accept the quality not being that great, like maybe the graphics are a bit bad, or the controls suck. However, when the game literally has no textures, and is just a total polygon city of blandness, then it's starting to become a problem. You get losteasily, and figuring out where you're supposed to go is very troubling too. It's also just not fun to look at. It has it's charm at first, seeing how there's not really any other game that looks quite like it, but it becomes a strain on your eyes to look at by the end, and makes navigation a mess.

But hey, graphics aren't everything, and if a game doesn't look very good, it can still be saved by fun gameplay and tight controls. And let me tell you. These are some of the most godawful controls in any 3D platforming game EVER. I usually don't see what people's problem is with tank controls. Good examples of it working fine is Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. So why is it that it just fails on every single level in this game? Well Resident Evil doesn't require moving around as much, and Tomb Raider at least has the camera pointing to an enemy when they pop up, but in this game running off a platform or into an enemy is just so easy and frustrating. What's even worse is that you run so goddamn fast if you keep running for a while, so running off a platform in the air and falling down in the water is really easy and can easily cost you one of your precious lives. You can actually use the shoulder buttons for strafing, but strafing moves so horribly slowly that it's basically pointless. Your best bet is to just jump all the time, seeing how you can move yourself like normally when you're in the air, but the camera changes angle to ponting downwards when you're jumping, making it really hard and annoying to see what the hell is in front of you. Hitting into enemies, getting hit by a projectile or jumping somewhere you think is a platform, but there really isn't.

And speaking of jumping on platforms, a nice thing is there being a mechanic where you climb up the side of a platform by jumping over to it, almost like it actually was Tomb Raider. The bad news is, unlike Tomb Raider IT DOES IT AUTOMATICALLY. If you have 2 platforms in the air, parallel to each other vertically, jumping down on the bottom platform is a real ♥♥♥♥♥, because you just climb back up on the top platform. The only way to do it is moving far away from the top platform and then forward again to the bottom platform, but thanks to your slow momentum when jumping, falling into the water or far down in a "no point of return pit" is really easy. And aiming for moving platforms, ohoho, it's just so much fun. Platforms often move faster than you do in the air, so you really have to time it when you go for them, and guess what happens if you fall. That's right, you lose a life and back to the last checkpoint. It's really unforgiving.

And how about the enemies? They're a ♥♥♥♥ing joke, the first enemy types you see do nothing but just stand there and wait for you to walk over and jump on them. Then you get enemies that shoot projectiles. Okay, the game is getting a little bit trickier, but getting hit by their projectiles is so annoying because they stun you, and also turn the camera 180 degrees because of course it does that. This can make you disoriented and not know what's happening in front of you, and thanks to the stun you can easily get hit again by another projectile the very second you regain control. And it doesn't take many hits before you die, and getting another hitpoint back is very rare and basically pointless because pits are what kills you most of the time anyway. But then you get enemies that shoot even more projectiles and I don't even think are possible to kill by jumping on. And then there's the flying enemies and you might as well just give up on trying to jump on those, because they move way too fast and can easily shoot you while you're slowly waiting on falling down. Shooting them is also impossible, because you can only shoot directly in front of you, not up or down. This really becomes a problem in the underwater stage, where there's only two ways to attack enemies, shooting them or speeding into them, but just using the speedup attack for 1 second can drain almost all of your air and easily end up killing you, and shooting is out of the question because... well, the shooting mechanic is broken and idiotic.

Like any other game, there's collectables scattered throughout every level and getting 100 of them of course gives you an extra life. But that's not all they do, because if you hold down a button while moving into them, you actually pick them up and stand in place, with the ability to turn around and shoot them in a direction. Sounds cool, right? No of course it doesn't sound cool, this means you can only shoot enemies that or on the same level as you, and you can only shoot when there's a collectable around, which you pick up and OH GUESS WHAT, NOW YOU CAN'T SHOOT THAT COLLECTABLE. And there's secret rooms behind breakable walls that you get rid of by shooting them with a collectable. BUT GOOD LUCK GETTING BEHIND SAID WALL IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY PICK UP THE ONE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SHOOT WITH. And they don't come back if you die! No, you have to exit the level and come back in order to break that wall now. And sometimes when you shoot and miss, the projectile flies back, I'm-rubber-you-are-glue style, AND IT DAMAGES YOU! And getting out of it's way in the can be really tricky and missing is for several reasons. And when you shoot another collectable, guess what, BOTH DISAPPEAR AND YOU BASICALLY HIT NOTHING.

And here's a thing I was shocked to hear, there's actually proper things to collect throughout the game (think like the Stars in Super Mario 64 or the Gems in Crash Bandicoot games). You can beat the whole game without collecting a single one of them, but you can also collect all of them, and guess what! Get a good ending! There's actually multiple endings in this game, I know, I was shocked to find out too, but we'll get to the endings in a bit. But there's these Stars in the game that you collect, there's hidden throughout each level and there's different ways to get them. Some levels you just have to explore the place and collect them when you find them in a forked road or something like that, other times you need to remove a wall to get them and that's really fun because there's NO INDICATION THAT THE WALL IS BREAKABLE, YOU JUST HAVE TO GUESS, AND AS MENTIONED EARLIER YOU CAN EASILY REMOVE A COLLECTABLE MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO BREAK THE WALL. Another thing you might have to do at times is play Simon Says. YES, YOU PLAY SIMON SAYS, THERE'S A BLOCK THAT CHANGES COLOR AND YOU HAVE TO JUMP ON 4 PLATFORMS CORRESPONDING TO THE SHOWN COLOR, Needles to say, it's ridiculous and awkward to do. But there's also no indication of where one of these Stars can be, and sometimes you can spend hours going throughout a level to find where those goddamn Stars are at, and because the level design looks so bland and textureless, getting lost or forgetting where to go is really easy. But alas, I pulled through and actually made it to the end. I first got the bad ending and it was pretty bad. Then I get the good ending, and guess what. IT'S STILL A BAD OUTCOME. All those hours spent trying to 100% the game, for a slap in the face. Honestly, Bubsy 3D might be the worst platforming game I ever played.

Also GoGo Nippon sucks