‘Bubsy’ should have stayed in the ’90s

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I hope you like looking at rocks because there’s a lot of them. image from steam.com

“Bubsy” is a bobcat who starred in a series of terrible games in the ’90s. In the age of “Mario” and “Sonic the Hedgehog,” there were a slew of platformers that featured some type of animal mascot. Most of these games were bad and “Bubsy” was at the bottom of the barrel. After over 20 years, like a case of herpes, “Bubsy” returns in “Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back.”

 

A key part of any good platforming game is level design. Most of the levels in this game look like they were copy and pasted over and over with only a few changes. Not only are the levels extremely similar to one another, but all of the bosses in the game are just the same alien spaceship with different attacks. Repetition is excusable in a game that’s long, but I beat this thing in under two hours.

The presentation in the game has a weird, cheap feeling to it. The opening cutscene isn’t animated; it’s just a camera moving around a static picture. All of the sound effects and character animations look and sound like they were taken from some kind of public domain trash can. If you like bad puns, you still won’t like this game because most of the attempted jokes don’t even count as puns. Levels have names like “No Country for Old Cats” and ” Star Claws: The Fur Awakens.” There’s no cleverness or wit, it’s just replacing words in movie titles with cat stuff.

“Bubsy” himself never shuts up and never says anything funny. He has a very limited pool of one-liners that are all terrible. There’s no charm, self-awareness or even a funny voice to redeem him. If there’s one thing the developers did right, it’s recreating the irritating train-wreck of noise and gameplay “Bubsy” is known for.

There’s not much else I could say about “Bubsy” even if I wanted to. This game is short, uninspired and has no reason to exist. The best thing about “Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back” is that I was able to beat it fast enough to get a refund from steam. The final nail in the coffin is the $30 price tag, which is $10 more than “Cuphead.” Giving this game anything more than one star would be a charity it doesn’t deserve.

[Final Score: 1/5]

Ulises Duenas can be reached at [email protected] or @OrionUlisesD on Twitter.