Bubsy 4D Reviews
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.
Bubsy 4D may be short, but it’s also one of the tightest controlling and most satisfying platformers out there.
What should a Bubsy game be in 2026? I thought the answer to that question was obvious to everyone: It shouldn’t. But here I am reviewing Bubsy 4D, the new take on the sarcastic cat from Atari and developer Fabraz. And I’m glad that I am because this is the best Bubsy ever. Now, that’s not saying a lot.
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.
To see Bubsy finally overcome its infamous legacy and deliver a fun, albeit flawed, experience has me hopeful that Atari will build on what's a solid foundation in place and give a possible Bubsy sequel the polish and investment that could truly (I can't believe I'm saying this), make it great.
Even so, after the 3D platforming genre has had recent exponents like Sonic x Shadow Generations or Donkey Kong Bananza , this Bubsy 4D is left, once again, like a kitten with very few claws.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Despite its short length and the general unwieldiness of some of Bubsy’s new traversal abilities, Bubsy 4D excels in being the first truly solid entry in the franchise - and it has an incredible time poking fun of itself while doing so.
Although the bar is comically low, this game absolutely clears it. Bubsy 4D is easily the best game in the franchise.
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.
Bubsy 4D has the makings of a modern classic, helmed by a team that has a clear ambition and design philosophy. It's issues are more fundamental, and in the fabric of Bubsy himself. I can take self-deprecation, but there comes a point where it stops being funny and becomes borderline pathetic. A mismatched level approach to level design means that both feel weak in spots, and I think you could have done more to bring those together. This is the best Bubsy game, but I can't say it isn't without fault.
Is it the fate of platforming mascots that their signature moves tell the arc of their decline? Sonic: too fast, burnt out. Spyro: early sparks, longi...
Bubsy 4D is a short and sweet platformer that miraculously breathes life into one of gaming's most forgettable heroes.
If you had told me that one day Bubsy would be part of the 3D platformer renaissance I, and many others, would've laughed you out of the room. But here we are. It's Bubsy's world once more and we are just living in it.
Bubsy 4D is a good platform game with interesting mechanics. However, the levels are too simple and it's a rather short game, with a very low overall challenge. What will make you return to the levels are the collectibles and the challenging Time Trials.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Bubsy 4D is a loosey-goosey 3D platformer with plenty of silliness on display and it offers oodles of entertaining challenges that make its messy gameplay really shine. I'd even go so far to say that it's the cat's pajamas. 🧶
Bubsy 4D finally solves the broken base of the series. Whether that foundation is strong enough to support future games remains to be seen, but for the first time in decades, Bubsy feels like a character with real potential rather than a relic of the past. Bubsy may have a few unfixable problems, but is delightful to handle, something thought impossible once. And that feels like a small miracle in itself for this brand.
I can confidently say that Bubsy 4D is Bubsy's first competent game. It's not spectacular, and you certainly shouldn't expect much more than 15 short, fun levels with great movement, but the game isn't as awful as Bubsy 3D or as bad as… well, the rest of the series.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
“Bubsy 4D” certainly seems like a project thrown together in a hurry, in which the ambition to create a game that actually works has been sacrificed in favor of a marketing strategy centered on a character who has long since lost his charm. It’s hard—really hard—to find anything truly positive about this game.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Still, depth alone doesn’t completely save the experience, which clocks out after a good five or six hours of story-driven gameplay. Why? Because ultimately, Bubsy 4D remains trapped between reinvention and nostalgia. It wants to modernize Bubsy while simultaneously preserving everything people remember about him, including many of the frustrating parts. The game constantly brushes against greatness without ever fully committing to it. You can see glimpses of an incredible platformer buried underneath the noise, but those glimpses never fully stabilize into something consistently excellent. And maybe that’s the most fitting outcome possible for Bubsy. Because, against all odds, Bubsy 4D actually succeeds in making Bubsy relevant again. Not purely as a meme, but as a legitimately entertaining, occasionally brilliant platformer revival with genuine mechanical ambition behind it. That alone feels borderline impossible. Unfortunately, even breathing new life into the franchise couldn’t fully save Bubsy from the same issues that have haunted him for decades. The uneven pacing, the frustrating design decisions, the technical roughness, and the overreliance on repetitive collect-a-thon structure keep dragging the experience back down whenever it threatens to truly evolve. Bubsy 4D is fascinating. It’s weird, it’s ambitious, and it’s messy. Sometimes it’s even genuinely great. But in the end, it still feels like Bubsy, and maybe that’s exactly the problem.
"A Fun but Limited Action Experience" Bubsy 4D succeeds in delivering a solid mechanical foundation based on fast and fluid movement, making the experience enjoyable in terms of control and direct interaction. However, the game fails to balance this excellence with rich level design or sufficient interactive variety, making it feel limited compared to the best 3D platformers. The result is a fun and polished game in its core aspects, but it lacks the depth to ensure sustained enjoyment.
Review in Arabic | Read full review