Another Turd in Bubsy’s Litter Box.

Despite some decent pre-release buzz brought about by the solid-looking announcement trailer and a demo that reportedly a lot of people somehow actually enjoyed, this latest adventure for Accolade’s notoriously awful failed mascot is not the big redeeming moment I think many were expecting it to be. In a lot of ways, it’s just as bad as anything else the talkative orange feline has been in before. There are significant shortcomings in the form of how Bubsy is exactly as unwieldy to control as ever, with his rather extensive moveset often sending him wildly careening across the screen in fairly unexpected ways, but I feel 4D’s real problem is budgetary in nature.

Did you know that Choice Provisions had to resort to a Kickstarter campaign in order to be able to deliver their full vision for the franchise’s previous installment? Thus far I feel there’s been a pretty good plan in place for what I’m dubbing the property’s “revival era.” Namely, placing it in the hands of small indie studios with proven track records of developing well-received platformers in the past. However, evidently none of the publishers who have owned the rights to the IP over the past decade or so (they’ve recently changed hands again btw) have been willing to properly fund the projects. This latest outing is sadly no exception.

This is about as barebones a package as you can get. There are only a mere 15 stages spread across 3 themed worlds that took me less than 6 hours to complete despite taking the time to grab every collectible yarn ball and blueprint hidden throughout. Time trials and a permadeath “Nine Lives” mode could have allowed me to squeeze a bit longer out of the experience, yet I ultimately wasn’t up to do any of that because of how poor the general core gameplay feels.

As if that pitiful amount of content wasn’t proof enough of the lack of monetary support Fabraz received to make this mess, the majority of the levels themselves—with exception to the last few set on the trash planet—are filled with solely the most rudimentary and uninteresting platforming challenges that cause the whole element of being able to purchase additional abilities to come off as entirely pointless. They’re also largely empty expanses where you’re usually lucky to come across a single, lone enemy lazily patrolling around. Then there are the technical issues that forced a few checkpoint reloads as I clipped through the ground or into the side of a building…

Because of all that, I found this to be an offering that was boring and downright tedious to finish. I do have to give the Demon Turf devs credit for a couple of things though, they didn’t let the limited amount of cash they had to work with prevent them from delivering what are easily the series’ most enjoyable boss battles to date or successfully rebooting the titular bobcat’s personality for the better. Neither are enough to make this a worthwhile purchase, but both are deserving of some praise regardless considering how lackluster everything else surrounding them is. Particularly the latter of the two, as the way the writing cleverly leans into how terminally uncool the character has always been and gives him some seriously amusing “unc” vibes effectively causes him to finally be funny rather than annoying. The handful of silly unlockable alternate costumes are also an appreciated touch.

Yet, at the end of the day this is nonetheless simply not worth the $19.99 asking price. It’s dull, low quality, and doesn’t even get the basic act of jumping right. Perhaps in the future somebody will be willing to take the risk and invest a meaningful amount of money into one of these outings. Until that happens, the best and truthfully sole good Bubsy outing continues to be the underrated and relatively obscure Paws on Fire!

4/10