Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back Reviews

Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back attempts to recapture the magic of the original but sadly fails to deliver a nostalgic experience.

And so the initial joy you feel at leaping into Bubsy’s colourful, retro-influenced world becomes tempered by the nagging sensation that you’re just going through the motions and the game starts to become a grind. As eye-pleasing as The Woolies Strike Back’s levels are, the change of scenery is largely cosmetic and does little to shake things up; you’re still dodging familiar hazards and leaping on enemies you’ve dispatched a hundred times before. Admittedly, the game’s final four levels do spice things up a little – throwing in enemies that need to be lured to their doom and hazards that can’t be tackled quite so easily – but then it’s all over, the game taking a mere two hours to complete. While you could go back to 100% each level, with no option to up the game’s difficulty and no clear reward there’s no compelling reason to do so.

Through an extremely short, inconsistent, and annoying slog of mediocrity, Bubsy shows us why he probably should have stayed down for the count.

The sound in The Woolies Strike Back is straight out of a lazy app from the Google Play Store. Droning and “wacky”, the tunes are some of the least memorable I’ve ever heard. I can’t remember a single one, I only remember how grating they were. Then there’s Bubsy’s voice, good lord who could forget about his voice? Cat puns, general observations, and movie references litter Bubsy’s lexicon in a way that makes poor JRPG fan translations from the 90’s look competent. As hilarious as it is to hear Bubsy say the same lines every five minutes, I recommend going into the options and turning his “verbosity” (read; “humor”) all the way down, and just to be safe, his voice as well. While you’re on the pause menu, you could actually just quit the game if you have any respect for your own free time.

Video game companies strive to give the players what they want, be it a sequel, prequel, spin-off, or other creative outing featuring their unique protagonist. After Naughty Dog’s Nathan Drake had finished adventuring, the Uncharted series continued down a new path. God of War is set to take Kratos out of his natural Greek element and drop him in with the Norse to continue slaughtering anything that does or did have a heartbeat. Bubsy the Bobcat, however, is probably the most confusing resurrection in video games that left most people scratching their heads to either “why is this cat back?” or “who is this cat?”

Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is an extremely short and completely forgettable platformer based on nothing but irony and nostalgic notoriety. I’d honestly rather replay the original Bubsy than this - for all of its serious flaws, at least that game was memorable. The Woolies Strike Back isn’t even that.

I really wanted Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back to be good, or at least entertainingly bad, but I was just left with a tepid, overpriced, and somewhat generic 2D platformer that wasn't funny or fulfilling enough to justify a $30 purchase. If you are really dedicated to the character, I would wait until it drops to around $5 or $10. Once you beat the game, Accolade promises that "Bubsy will be back soon," so let's just hope his next outing is funnier, lengthier, and more memorable than Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back. Bubsy 3D 2 anyone?

When Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is at its best, the words I would use to describe it include "soulless", "mediocre", and "annoying". Somehow the game is rarely at its best, leading to a total disaster.

I do admire the effort, but in a year where Sonic Mania outdid its franchise’s reputation and Mario stands tall, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is a mere afterthought. Its length is pathetically short and, surprisingly for Bubsy at least, the game is really easy. Not everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong, yet if this is the pinnacle of Bubsy games, then the poor Bobcat should be laid to rest in peace.