Bubsy: Paws on Fire!

You know who Bubsy the Bobcat reminds me of? Jason Voorhees. I'm talking about the masked killer in the Friday the 13th franchise that keeps coming back no matter what. Bubsy fractured fairy tales on the Jaguar, ruined 3D platforming on the PlayStation and even starred in a failed TV pilot. And yet every time gamers thought they had seen the last of the bobcat, he returned with an even more annoying personality. Now he's the star Bubsy: Paws on Fire, an uninspired new runner that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Accolade has no idea what to do with this character. It also confirms my greatest fear -- there's no way to stop Bubsy, he's just going to keep coming back until we're all dead.

This is the follow-up to The Woolies Strike Back, the 2017 action game that attempted to breathe new life into the bobcat. While that game largely stayed true to the 2D platforming roots, Paws on Fire takes Bubsy in a new direction. This is a side-scrolling runner made by the developers of the BIT.TRIP series, an unexpected but intriguing combination that probably should have led to a better game.

When Bubsy learns that Oinker P. Hamm is capturing every animal in the universe for his zoo, he decides to stop him by running left to right and jumping on platforms. This leads to an unexpected alliance with the Woolies, the alien species who have been fighting against Bubsy since 1993. Also along for the ride is Virgil Reality, a genius inventor from the TV show and comics. Together they race through one hundred bite-sized stages and take on three tough bosses in order to free the galaxy's animals.

There are four playable characters in Paws on Fire, each with their own stages and unique abilities. Bubsy can pounce forward and float in the air, similar to his moves in The Woolies Strike Back. Virgil can double jump and slide under obstacles. Woolie sits in a saucer and flies around the screen shooting down enemies. All three of these characters will try to pick up the 150 collectibles in the stage and track down the three pieces of the coin. If you complete the stage with all of characters and are able to piece together the three coins, then you'll take control of Arnold and play a bonus stage ripped straight out of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Like a lot of games in the genre, Paws on Fire wants you to use the character's different moves to bounce on enemies and combo your way through the stages while picking up yarn balls. There's usually a fairly obvious path you're supposed to take, and most of the time it comes down to little more than jumping at the right time. You'll quickly find that Bubsy can air pounce on enemies to gain an extra jump and another pounce, which is often the only way to grab the hard to reach coin pieces. There's some technique to the gameplay, even if it has been stripped down to the bare essentials.

Probably the most unique new addition is Woolie, a character that essentially turns this Bubsy game into a 2D shoot 'em up. You're still picking up collectibles and tracking down those coins, but now there are floating enemies and obstacles that rotate around. It allows the developers to get rid of all of the platforming trappings and try something different. The problem is that these Woolie stages are too easy. If you've played even one old school shooter in your life, then you'll get through most of these stages without losing a single life.

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And that's a problem across the board -- Bubsy: Paws on Fire is far too easy. While the platforming stages are a little trickier to navigate, they don't put up much of a fight. The checkpoints are generous and the obstacles are never very challenging. Even compared to the other games in the series, this is one of the easiest Bubsy games you'll ever play. It's also short, with only three different locations to race through. Not that I'm wanting more stages, since there's very little variation to the platforming challenges and obstacles.

As runners go, Paws on Fire is fine. This is a developer with experience in the genre, and it shows. The controls are generally pretty tight and the times I died were almost always my fault. I also like that the level designs aren't cheap and the boss fights seemed fair. In a lot of ways, this feels like a runner made for a much younger age group. Maybe even kids with little to no experience with the genre.

As a gamer with a lot of platforming experience, I have to say that I came away disappointed. It's not just the easy difficulty, but also that everything about this game feels uninspired. Aside from the annoying wise-cracks, there's nothing about this game that is unique to Bubsy. In fact, you could replace every one of these characters and it wouldn't change a thing. This is just a generic runner that just so happens to have Bubsy plastered all over it. And if we're at the point where Accolade is just plugging the bobcat into different genres to see what sticks, then maybe it's time for them to to give Bubsy a break and focus on one of their other franchises. Like Ballz. I think the world is finally ready for a sequel to Ballz.