Bubsy 4D

Bubsy 4D's skill-testing movement makes for sharp platformer with a ton of energy, but it’s also a brief one that ends up feeling a bit safe.

If Bubsy 4D is an attempt to bring new players to this 33-year-old franchise, though, its poor level design, characterization, and platforming will ensure it won’t.

In some ways, Bubsy 4D is the best the series has ever been; the bobcat's wide range of abilities affords him a huge amount of freedom to move through levels with style. However, a fairly narrow focus on movement means other aspects suffer; enemies may as well not be there, and stages are static and sparsely furnished. The result is a good 3D platforming character stuck in a pretty bland 3D platformer.

At $20, Bubsy 4D is a solid budget platformer with levels that are consistently fun, if somewhat underbaked. Admittedly a low bar, it is comfortably the best Bubsy game ever made, with genuinely great controls and speedrunning depth that will reward players who relish climbing leaderboards and shaving seconds off their runtimes.It's an easy recommendation for anyone with a soft spot for '90s mascot platformers or morbid curiosity in the Bubsy franchise. For a series that spent decades as a byword for bad game design, Bubsy 4D is a long-overdue course correction for one of gaming's most persistently maligned characters and a strong foundation for future titles.

Bubsy 4D is, straight up, a bad time. It’s fun to jump around a little bit and play with the tools you get, but in a fleeting, shallow way that isn’t enough to sustain a multi-hour platforming video game.

Bubsy 4D is exactly what a new Bubsy game should be: a full 3D level-based platformer featuring the wise-cracking (but no longer insufferable) bobcat.

Bubsy 4D isn’t a spectacular comeback that would turn the once-ridiculed mascot into a new star of the genre, but it is certainly the best and most ambitious instalment in the entire series. Fabraz has managed to capture the energy of classic platformers and enrich it with more modern movement options, making jumping around in the fur of this chatty, cat-like beast more fun than ever before. On the other hand, the game doesn’t feel quite as polished as earlier projects from the same developers and is unlikely to charm many players who haven’t yet developed a positive relationship with the platformer genre.

Instead of pretending the past never happened and opting for a “quiet” reboot, Bubsy 4D fully embraces the series’ historical missteps with plenty of humor, evident from the title all the way to the very last line of dialogue or menu option.

Yes, you read that correctly – I gave it a 9! Bubsy 4D is a purrrfectly imperfect Bubsy game from people who understand this series on a level I couldn’t possibly, for reasons I cannot fathom. Beyond, of course, nostalgia driven by childhood trauma. Every last part of it is both a celebration of what came before while… Elevating the series to new heights? I originally wanted to give this a perfect 10 for the way it embodied Bubsy so well but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that for something so objectively bad. And yet, being just shy of that figure feels perfect for Bubsy in its own way.

Bubsy 4D is a charming but rough-around-the-edges platformer that offers accessible gameplay, enjoyable exploration, and plenty of collectibles. While technical issues, weak level aesthetics, and dated design hold it back, it remains a pleasant adventure for younger players and nostalgic Bubsy fans.