Bubsy: Paws on Fire! (PS4)

Over time, Bubsy’s platform game adventures accrued quite a negative reputation, and with some instances like Bubsy 3D it was well earned. That infamy made it feel a little inexplicable when the franchise was revived after over 20 years of silence with Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back, a game that ended up having its own design problems that kept it from catching on. This certainly seemed like it would be a one-and-done revival attempt back in 2017, but two years later and it seems the Bubsy brand still has life left in it after the revival. Bubsy: Paws on Fire! is the second attempt by the wise-cracking anthropomorphic bobcat to endear himself to players after the long disappearance, and this time around, it actually manages to somewhat work.

 

Bubsy: Paws on Fire! is actually a remarkably reverent new installment in the series, containing many callbacks to previous games and even the failed pilot for a Bubsy television series. Bubsy’s nephew and niece Terry and Terri run the game’s shop, the player is able to play as the scientist vole Virgil Reality despite him never having appeared in a video game before, and the plot of the adventure actually kicks off when one former foe of Bubsy’s alerts him to the actions of another. The two-headed queen of the Woolie alien race Poly and Ester contact Bubsy to alert him about the actions of Bubsy II’s main villain Oinker, the literal capitalist pig grabbing animals from all around the universe for his zoo. Unfortunately, Oinker is barely a presence at all and it can end up easy to forget why you’re even on this adventure during play as up until the final world things barely connect to his plans and you only even see his face when you reach that final boss battle. Poly and Ester feel like they impact the plot more since they get Bubsy and his friends to head out while also providing one of their Woolie underlings to serve as the game’s third playable character for the regular stages.

 

The neurotic Arnold the armadillo joins Bubsy, Virgil, and the Woolie as the fourth character you’ll play as in Bubsy: Paws on Fire!, each character playing in a different manner. When you start a stage you’ll hear a one-liner from the character before the action kicks off and after that the character won’t speak unless they die. In a series known for its motor-mouth protagonist this actually ends up giving the quips more room to breathe, and even in the game’s two cutscenes the dialogue has the kind of silliness appropriate for a children’s cartoon. There are some actual humorous lines, the game spacing out things like jokes about being in a video game so that they can land better than if the characters were constantly acknowledging their fictional nature. The four main characters mostly have a distinct angle as well, Bubsy a smug and self-absorbed hero, Virgil leaning into typical nerd stereotypes, and Arnold always anxious about needing to get back into action. The Woolie, having not even earned herself a name, perhaps unsurprisingly turns out to be the least defined as a character. She is helping the others begrudgingly and she sometimes feels at home in enemy territory but most of the time her death quotes and level starting lines feel a bit broad or not like they’re even attempting to be jokes. Overall though Bubsy: Paws on Fire! feels like it found a sound way to add a dash of humor to the adventure without being overbearing or insufferable about it, there not even a need for things like the setting in Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back that made his constant chatter less obnoxiously persistent.

Bubsy: Paws on Fire! is a side-scrolling platforming game focused on jumping, making your way to the end of the level, and occasionally attacking foes who block your path, but the actual forward movement has been taken out of your hands. During a stage you have no control over your forward momentum and instead you need to act at the proper times to avoid danger or make use of jump aides like balloons, spinning fans that launch you upwards, or the bouncy pads you need to slam down onto to activate. Character specific collectables like yarn balls for Bubsy or atoms for Virgil float in the air to give you a hint on how to move, but it’s not as simple as merely following a dotted line to the exit. Breaks in their placement ask you to consider how to hit the enemies ahead so you might still have the necessary maneuver to grab the collectibles and the need for precise timing becomes tighter as later levels start placing many more hazards around the items. In some stages you can just ignore collectibles you don’t wish to grab and avoid some of the potential risk involved, but at other times they may lead up to the only safe path so following the suggested action line ends up key to survival after all. It takes one bump into a wall, enemy, or anything that doesn’t help you to instantly kill Bubsy, Virgil, or The Woolie, but well placed checkpoints manage to make getting right back into things easy while also asking for you to master the movement enough to reach the next respawn point.

 

The rhythm of your execution ends up a pretty important factor in clearing a level successfully, and smoothly executing the character specific abilities to properly navigate a stage keeps it challenging enough despite how it’s almost always telegraphing how you can safely progress through the level. The automatic walking proceeds at a good pace to keep it manageable too and splitting up play into multiple levels could have offered chances to shake up the action more than an endless runner design could, but there are a few issues in overall differentiation that prevent this Bubsy adventure from easily being called good. To unlock new levels in Bubsy: Paws on Fire! you must earn victory tokens, and acquiring enough of these absolutely requires you to replay stages. However, the level will be different, as every normal stage can be played as Bubsy, Virgil, and the Woolie. During a run through a level you might notice hazards that won’t really challenge the intended route you take as Bubsy only for you then to play through as Virgil and see how those come into play, and the three main heroes all have different skills so the action is somewhat new when you replay a stage.

 

Bubsy and Virgil both navigate levels somewhat similarly, both having a jump and the ability to quickly plummet downwards by pressing down in the air, this important for hitting targets like the top of enemies or special objects. Bubsy also has a pounce attack that sends him launching forward, this working as a midair dash while the bobcat still packs his inexplicable glide for covering more distance but not quite as quickly. Virgil instead gets a double jump, a slide, and special objects like the pads he can bounce off of by slamming down onto them that only work when he’s the selected hero. The similarity in play can make it sometimes feel like the two just lack useful options the other has, but the skill differences at least leads to a small amount of guaranteed changes between two versions of a stage. The Woolie unfortunately comes up short again as her concept is a bigger split away from how the other two play while also making her segments too easy. The Woolie can fly through the air freely in her flying saucer and fire shots forward, her mobility only limited by the slow scroll of the screen. That free movement and effective attack don’t get tested too often outside of boss battles where Bubsy instead hops in the UFO for the action, but the collectibles in the Woolie’s version of stages at least urge her to move close to danger so a player trying to grab every item they can will engage in a little risk taking. It is not quite enough to make this more than a breezy break after the more demanding play of the two runners though.

You might notice Arnold hasn’t come up for these running levels, and that’s because his stages are actually fully unique and separate from the main adventure. If you are able to find the three pieces of Arnold’s medal in each of the three varieties of a normal stage, you’ll unlock an associated Arnold stage where he rolls through a large pipe. Moving away from the screen rather than running along side it, these bonus stages are mostly about moving him to grab the crystals in his path to try and grab as many as possible before easily reaching the end. There is no true danger in Arnold’s stage, and since sometimes it can feel like Arnold’s movement suddenly stops being responsive if you try to move him too quickly while riding on a wall, it is probably for the best. However, there are bags of farts and glue containers you are meant to dodge, but besides some visual obstructions, these only really impact your combo. Each character can build up a combo meter with actions suitable to their play style that will make them glow more and earn more points, but score only really counts towards online leaderboards. Collectibles do have a clearer purpose in that they can be spent at Terri and Terry’s store to buy new costumes for the four heroes, although display glitches can make you ponder why you seemingly can’t afford a costume until you see the actual amount you have in the currency display that isn’t having issues.

 

Arnold’s levels do feel a bit bare since it’s all about grabbing crystals and the bags and glue don’t even really dissuade you from just ramming through them if that’s easier than weaving around them, but the three main ways to play in normal stages do start off rather enjoyable… at first. Bubsy: Paws on Fire! takes a long time to introduce new ideas since you’ll be wringing three ways to play out of every level and even when new ideas appear they can often essentially be the same as old ones. The game’s three worlds each have their own essentially harmless foe used more as something to bounce off of than fight, the goop whose eyeballs pop out to be extra platforms seems neat but is essentially just three objects to bounce off of without any sort of challenge to it, and its not like the bumblebees you shoot down as the Woolie are doing anything different from the slightly more durable mosquitos found later on. There is still enough minor evolution in what levels include that it doesn’t lose all of its energy, but few levels have truly defining ideas, a fact made a little more obvious by stages with names like Apocalypse Meow, The Vole Enchilada, and Arnold MacDarnold just being slapped onto any stage, Virgil not given special focus in the vole stage and Arnold not even present in the level with a similar name to him. Instead the game mostly tries to mix around the variables its already introduced to challenge you, and the rise in difficulty does help that with staving off some of the repetition, a fact made a little stranger since the alien base and zoo world do have a few new ideas each but they sit on them or pile them in all at once rather than doing a gradual roll out that could better explore them to make for more memorable stage designs.

THE VERDICT: Bubsy: Paws on Fire! has some solid ideas for how to format its running stages and it even balances the presence of its brand of humor fairly well, but the approach to level design ends up wringing those ideas dry until they stop having much interesting left to give. The Woolie and Arnold’s stages both struggle to put up a fight, but Bubsy and Virgil are both giving platforming levels that turn into precise and enjoyably challenging gauntlets over time. The slow iteration keeps it from evolving at a proper pace, the need to make three versions of each normal stage likely forcing them into less distinct layouts. The moments of smooth action can still give the player a sense of satisfaction when they skillfully pull off moves just as expected, but few moments really stand out as unique trials and more just a sequence of gradually more difficult obstacle courses.

 

And so, I give Bubsy: Paws on Fire for PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. Bubsy’s humor has found a surprisingly tolerable level of sassiness and references without substance that allows for a few funny moments to slip in and make the overall sarcastic and wacky tone a good fit for the adventure, but the real shame is the gameplay letting down this step up for the Bubsy series. Slipping into the rhythm of a level and expertly landing each move as laid out by the collectibles does feel quite rewarding in the early stages, but before you’ve even left the first world things start to blur together as few levels have a defining style to them or a meaningful gimmick that really tests you in a novel way. Boss stages can do a bit better due to their inherent uniqueness but only three exist, and while the Woolie and Arnold play quite differently from Bubsy and Virgil, their levels sacrifice too much of the difficulty and successfully clearing them ends up less of an exciting challenge for it. If the bags and glue were actually dangerous for Arnold to touch then maybe his bonus stages could have a bit more bite and the Woolie perhaps needs some more active enemies rather having you spend time passively flying towards foes who don’t react to your existence, but a good deal of strong identity to the Bubsy and Virgil stages would go a long way as well. There are a few memorable instances of the game piecing together some enemies and hazards in a way that tests the player rather well but mostly it feels like a series of mixtures that don’t consider their company very well. The rhythmic progression and timing windows for ability use still ask for enough involved play that it doesn’t die out before a fairly early ending, but the enforced repetition of playing most stages with each of the three main heroes wasn’t approached with enough creativity to help the concept thrive.

 

Bubsy: Paws on Fire! is still a bit of a win for the bobcat, its issues more mundane and tied more to a lack of ambition and imagination over bad concepts for how to play. Arnold sometimes isn’t as responsive as you’d like and the store display glitch is odd, but mostly it can pull off its need for precise movement because the action is fairly tight and works for what it needs to do. The game should be willing to ask you to do more than overcome the same few ideas in arrangements that don’t really consider how the obstacles gel with each other, but Bubsy: Paws on Fire! achieves mediocrity by not aiming too high and making sure it can at least pull off the basics this go around.