This is the best Bubsy game I'll ever play. I've only played the first game, and I'm not looking to play the others at all. I only grabbed this cause it was on sale for $5 and honestly that's a perfect price for what you get on it.

14 levels, you can breeze through it in about an hour or less. Bubsy feels good to control especially with his pounce move. It just feels satisfying to blaze through the levels like that. His corny one-liners got a chuckle out of me because he really acts like he's "the shit" when he isn't. He never was. That's what makes him somewhat endearing to me as a goofy mascot character. Music is solid too btw.

The game runs and plays well, there's visual glitches but that aside, it's stable. This ain't a must play game, but on sale for $5 you could do alot worse (and better). Don't buy this game at full price.

I was honestly surprised by this game. It plays well, the quips from Bubsy are tolerable (plus you can alter their frequency if they get on your nerves), and the game never feels too punishing.

It's also a platformer that does not feel confident in itself in any way and is desperately afraid of scaring you off with challenge. Almost every area where there's a challenge to get lives/wool has a path that lets you completely pass it by without issue. It's good for speed running and clearing stages without dying, but it also screams "We really REALLY want you to be able to beat this game!" I want to make it clear that I'm never against developers doing things to make a game easier for their audience, as accessibility features do a great job of allowing newcomers to games get a full experience, but Bubsy did accessibility in a way that neutered the stage design and turns stages from fun obstacle courses into straight lines that are over in under two minutes.

The only real sense of challenge you'll get from this game are from the boss fights, that are all just okay at best. It's your typical "Watch them do some moves and jump on them when they're vulnerable" routine that's common with games like this, for better or worse. Thankfully bosses have a good amount of moves to use and their attacks even get enhanced as you widdle their health down, so that helps to keep things interesting.

My final note regarding this game is how absurdly short it is. If you're playing casually and not going for trophies/achievements, you'll easily clear this game in under two hours! It's honestly very sad to see, since by the time you reach the end you'll be going "That's it?" This game could have easily lasted an extra two areas at least, but sadly that wasn't the experience we got. I'll never know why this game is as short as it is, but I can say with confidence that the length of this title leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall, this game is okay. When you're going after challenges and trying to clean out stages and take your time, you'll find a decent amount of fun here. However, the short length makes it difficult to recommend picking this up at full price. If you want to play this game, either wait for a VERY steep sale or try it out on PS+ Extra.

The most neutral I've ever felt on a game ever tbh. I played it, it was eh. Game looks eh, the physics feel eh, the level design's eh, just a bunch of eh all around. It's like watching your friend that's a fuck up try to get his shit together but he only made a half effort and now he's just a mildly depressed painter that insists on giving you his paintings. You don't WANT the paintings, the painting's don't look good, they're not remotely interesting and they smell kinda funny, but at least you're happy(?) for him that he's trying now.

Bubsy's back! And he's still as mediocre as he was when he first debuted, except now this game is somehow more bland and boring than the original one. The only thing really separating the 14 levels and 3 worlds in this game are just the backgrounds. Nothing else about how the levels play out or what happens in them changes. Plus the game is easily beaten in one sitting in about 2 1/2 hours. What do you get at the end. A static screen and one quip from Bubsy. I don't begrudge the people at Black Forest Games as they've done good work in the past and since this game, but it's obvious they were given no budget and a couple of months to throw this game together. The end result is a game that doesn't play as bad as the originals, but is worse in every other way just due to how straightforward and simple it is. The music was alright though.

The people at Black Forest Games are no strangers to reviving long dormant platforming franchises with less than stellar reputations. Just look at what they did with the Giana Sisters. So who better to resurrect Bubsy? While they succeeded in giving him his best game, the series is just as bad as ever.

The first thing that becomes noticeable is how few one-liners the bobcat has. I heard everything he had to say by the time I reached the second level. As a result I quickly made use of the option in the menus to decrease the amount of talking he did. Given that the characters personality is supposed to be such a big part of the experience, shouldn't they have tried harder at giving him more dialog?

It is not hard to see why they thought it might have been a possibility to get away with the verbal repetition. There is remarkably little content in the game. There are fourteen levels in total including the tutorial and boss stages. While there are collectible yarn balls and T-shirts throughout, there isn't enough here to justify the price tag. Perhaps this would have been better off as a $10 downloadable game. Even then it wouldn't have been good.

Serviceable platforming and tight controls make this much more playable than any of the previous Bubsy titles, but the shoddy hit detection and frustrating boss fights bring things down. Your pounce move is completely useless for anything other than breaking through certain walls. Even the simple act of jumping on the enemies' heads is unreliable. This partly due to the hit detection issues, and partly due to the weird physical design of the enemies themselves. This can be especially annoying when jumping on foes is necessary as a part of a platforming challenge to reach a collectible.

When all is said and done, I think it's safe to say that Bubsy can be retired again. The time wasn't taken to make this a truly memorable comeback. If anything the lack of wit and variety in the one-liners and the poor gameplay are a reminder of why some series should just stay dead. Maybe someone will come along again in the next 20 years or so and finally do Bubsy right. Until then, I don't think he should be showing his face around these parts anymore.

4/10

Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is a mind-boggling journey into the abyss of horrible 2D platformers, serving as a painful reminder of why some franchises should stay buried. The inclusion of utterly useless collectibles is a testament to the game's commitment to pure mediocrity. The hope for the Woolies to strike Bubsy down seems like a desperate plea for an end to this onslaught of dogshit games. Bubsy's "humorous" involvement in the tragic event, 9/11, is not only tasteless but adds another layer of absurdity to this already disastrous experience. This game is a mockery of the platformer genre and deserves a generous 2 out of 10 for its unintentional comedic value.

Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is the textbook example of a soulless video game. A game with absolutely nothing special to write home about. The music is average, the graphics are mediocre, Bubsy is every bit as difficult to control as before, his voice is more annoying than ever (though you can turn it off, so that's good I guess), and there's so little content here that it really makes you wonder what was the development process behind this thing. Should we not even bother to put in the effort because we're already counting on Youtube reviews, ridicule and memes as our primary source of exposition? Should we make a game so boring and effortless that it makes the previous Bubsy games look like masterpieces in comparison? I can just imagine the developers laughing at all the cries of "Who asked for this?" all over the internet.

I hate memes.

When the announcement trailer for this game was released, many people couldn't believe that any company would resurrect Bubsy with him becoming the poster child for poorly designed games over the last 20 years. Yet this negative attention was the very thing that made UFO Interactive Games consider that Bubsy could possibly now be a somewhat financially viable property. Watching the original teaser trailer got me really pumped up for the fact that he was actually brought back after 20 years and I just had to buy this game.

And the game is pretty good. It address pretty much all of the issues that people had with the original Bubsy platformers. Bubsy takes up a much smaller portion of the screen, so there are no obstacles popping out of nowhere to kill you. The shirts offer you an extra hit point the first time you collect one and an extra life after that (unless you take a hit, in which case the shirts will become extra hit shirts again). Most importantly, there is now an option to toggle how often Bubsy talks. Naturally I put it on the highest setting. I can't get enough of Bubsy's whacky but repetitive quips.

Unfortunately there are a few major issues with this game. The biggest is that it is way too easy compared to the classic Bubsy games. There are some moderately difficult parts, such as the last two bosses (which are extremely well done and fun to fight), but even this is negated by the fact that if you lose your nine lives, you can just continue where you left off with no penalty. The levels look polished and well done, but are kind of generic and not as memorable compared to the levels in Bubsy I and II. The same is true with the game's music.

If you simply want to play through this, you can race through it without collecting anything within an hour or so, but this game is most enjoyable when you try to complete the optional tasks the game lists. These tasks include collecting all of the t-shirts, all of the keys to the Woolie vaults, and beating a level without dying. If you want to get even more out of the game, you can try to increase your score by collecting all of the yarn balls as quickly as possible to earn a high place up on the online leaderboard.

Overall it is a pretty fun game with some pretty cool boss battles. I think it is currently free (as of this writing) to PS Now subscribers, so definitely give it a try and have an open mind.

As an avid defender of Bubsy, this game is so overly hated people really didn't see that it's actually kinda just a decent game. Like I'm not here to parade the fact I 100% or like the fact I absolutely love Bubsy's design and character. That is between me and my therapist. But what I will say is that Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is an entirely unoffensive platformer that requires you to get used to the second jump/ glide system it has. While I think the mechanics are overall fine, a lot of people seem to have trouble with the jumping system in this game, and while it does require a little work, by no means is it a broken game. Quite honestly, Bubsy is a very functional platformer with a good difficulty curve, a fine story, and friendly checkpoint system. I don't think this game will turn heads, but it really isn't worth the hate. At worst it's boring, at best it's enjoyable. You won't get anything more or less out of it unless you really like Bubsy, which I do.