Bub and Bob are back

baddies become fairly aggressive bullies, and you’d better up your bubble-firing skills.

One of my favourite parts of The Baron is Back is Arcade of the Future mode, which unlocks after you’ve completed the main campaign. Starting with 10 lives, you have to climb a 100-storey tower by beating puzzle-oriented stages. As much a game of memory as skill, once you’ve used up your ten lives, it’s back to the ground floor for you. As frustrating as it is addictive, I’m almost ashamed to tell you how accomplished I felt beating my previous high score.

The skill tree from the Switch release remains, allowing you to activate and upgrade Bub and Bob’s skills – something you will definitely need as you progress through the levels.

While the skills are new, the method of unlocking them is not, as you must burst the letter bubbles to spell out EXTEND.

Collect all six letters, and beat the boss, and you can win an upgrade or a new skill such as the ability to dash through a baddy unscathed, or a bomb bubble which kills off all the enemies around it.

There’s also been a new leaderboard added, which means you can showboat your scores to friends. Unlike the original, you can fit your whole name on the board, rather than being stuck with three letters. To this day both I, and my friends, spell my nickname Chez, as Cez – forced to drop the H to get my name on that glowing arcade screen.

This is a burst of nostalgia for older gamers, and a breath of fresh air for new players, who will find the simple looking levels anything but.

All those frustrations are still there – repeatedly bursting a bubble you’re trying to ride to a ledge at the top of the screen, and being backed into a corner by the invincible Baron because you’ve not been paying attention to where you’ve been going. It’s thrilling and annoying in turn.

The Baron is Back has been perfectly timed for release just before Christmas, and is bound to put a smile on the face of gamers of all ages – and let’s face it, we really need that after the year we’ve all had.