Battletoads
TOADALLY RADICAL
INFORMATION
» FORMAT REVIEWED XBOX ONE
» ALSO ON: PC
» RELEASED: OUT NOW
» PRICE: £14.99
» PUBLISHER: XBOX GAME STUDIOS
» DEVELOPER: DLALA STUDIOS/RARE » PLAYERS: 1-3
If you’re like us, you probably look back fondly at bizarre, absurd cartoons of the Nineties – the kind that would frequently sneak adult-level humour into family-friendly time slots, and frequently went beyond parody into self-parody. The good news is that this spirit lives on with the return of the quintessentially Nineties Battletoads. As we meet Pimple, Rash and Zitz in this game, we learn that they’ve all been living an externally induced delusion for the past 26 years. Nobody knows who they are any more, and all they want to do is become famous again.
The Saturday morning aesthetic can be seen everywhere in Battletoads. Just as every extreme, edgy character needed rock music in the Nineties, our handful of would-be heroes have it here.
Cartoon cutscenes contain some genuinely funny writing and some appealingly chunky character design, and that look continues into the game itself. The characters are great to watch as they stretch and morph, transforming into trains, circular saws, jackhammers and more. The enemies have received just as much love too, and it’s great to see them looking absolutely crazy as they electrify the ground or charge across the stage.
Normally, the look of the game isn’t the first thing we’d concentrate on, of course, but it’s really that cartoon theme that ties everything together. From one-off minigames to recurring themes such as standard platforming, twin-stick shooter stages and even a 3D obstacle course that brings to mind the terrifying Turbo Tunnel of old, Battletoads is a game that never sticks to a single genre for too long. The game is constantly throwing new situations at you and
they’re usually delightful, with each offering enough fresh material to sustain its screen time. Only a couple drag on too long, but we would like to have seen slightly better pacing – platform and shoot-’em-up stages are all pretty clumped together.
About a third of the stages are beat-’em-up levels, and these are the most mechanically rich as well as being the most common.
The toads can mix up standard combos, launchers and power hits for some truly epic combos, as well as immobilising enemies with bubblegum or dragging them into combat range with their tongues.
It’s also possible to dodge and change planes, and there are plenty of mini-puzzles in these stages to ensure your brain doesn’t rot away from simply smashing buttons all day.
You can play solo, in which case you’ll be allowed to tag between toads during battles and essentially use your companions as extra lives during many sequences. However, Battletoads supports up to three players and the game is designed to take full advantage of that, dividing duties between players during some sequences to ensure that everyone stays engaged, while encouraging teamwork during beat-’em-up stages by allowing players to revive one another. You’ll probably need to do that often, too, though thankfully the game is less tough than its infamous NES ancestor. We found that the standard Toad difficulty offered a decent challenge for veteran gamers, but Tadpole and Battletoad difficulties are there for those who prefer a different pace. Tadpole allows you to activate invincibility during sections where you’re struggling, while Battletoad adds obstacles, toughens up enemies and removes checkpoints for a stiff challenge.
But while the developers have done a great job of ensuring that the difficulty levels are distinct from one another, the overall challenge feels like it varies quite a bit within each difficulty level. This is really an unavoidable consequence of offering so many different gaming styles in a single game – you’re inevitably going to run into a genre that you’re less brilliant at than the rest, and this will make the stage feel like a difficulty spike. The game clocked our first run on Toad difficulty at just over four hours, which is perfectly reasonable, but there’s not a wealth of post-game content to explore. While you do have a total of 78 collectables to go back for and different difficulty levels to challenge, that’s pretty much it.
You’ll probably want to go back to have some multiplayer fun, but therein lies the other notable flaw that Battletoads has – there’s no option to play online, which is a bizarre omission given how much thought has gone into co-op play. Don’t get us wrong, we love that couch co-op has been prioritised as we believe that’s how these games are best played, but it’s a shame that those who don’t have that option will lose out on such a key part of the experience.
Battletoads definitely came as a truly pleasant surprise to us. It’s not often that a game can present us with a massage minigame that is truly unexpected, genuinely funny and completely contextually justified, and those are the kinds of surprises that the game will throw at you for as long as it lasts. It’s not easy to take on a wide variety of genres and have them all feel well-constructed, but that’s what has been achieved here. Let’s hope we don’t wait 26 years for the next game!
In a nutshell
Genuinely funny and packed with variety, Battletoads is a very cartoon throwback that should amuse you greatly during its short runtime. If you have a local co-op team available, it’ll be even better.
>> Score 83%