Pros:
- Amusing cutscenes made to look like modern cartoons
- Frenetic beat-em-up gameplay that's as fun now as it was in 1994
- Good variety of gameplay styles, most of which work
- Kickass metal soundtrack
Cons:
- Non-brawling elements overstay their welcome
- No online co-op
- Only five hours long at best
After a 26-year absence, Rare's IP Battletoads is back. When it first came around in the 90s, it made no effort to hide it's inspiration - namely, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their goofy attitudes. Take that, throw in a more cartoonish sensibility, and you've got Battletoads, a unique and engaging (if often brutally difficult) genre-mashup game for the NES. The series would go on to spawn more games, culminating in (what I consider) their magnum opus, Battletoads Arcade, in 1994. Unfortunately, the series would fade into obscurity after that, with the only exposure to the modern era being the original and Arcade's inclusion on the Rare replay collection.
Now, after twenty-six years, developer Dlala has teamed up with Rare to deliver a modern-day revival of sorts. And the game itself acknowledges how long it's been: After the first level, which shows off the toads and their beat-em-up skills, the toads learn that they've been in a simulation for twenty-six years in which they're famous. Once they enter the real world, they resume menial jobs like sending e-mails and massaging patrons. On a whim, they decide to try their hand at becoming famous again by hunting for their old nemesis, the Dark Queen, only to wind up teaming up with her to take on two new foes, the Topians. It's an amusing story told via animated cutscenes modeled after cartoons from the 2010s (think Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Loud House, among other Nick shows).
A large part of Battletoads' appeal is its self-awareness: the series knows it hasn't been relevant in over two decades, and that the three main characters are nobodies who most modern gamers probably never even heard of. The self-awareness can wear thin quickly, so it helps that the characters are endearing enough to keep players invested: Rash is the goofy glory hound, Zitz is the confident leader, and Pimple is very much the gentle giant, big with his fists but also more sensitive and amicable than his...brothers? (even they're not sure). They've also got ample support from their ex-nemesis, Dark Queen, leading to some amusing banter between former enemies. Even the new antagonists, Hollywood producer stereotypes Uto and Pia, are a hoot. Granted, not every joke hits its mark, and there are a fair number of lowbrow jokes that are more eye-rolling than funny (like an early one revolving around Rash soiling a diaper - yes, you read that right), but there are enough solid jokes thrown in to make the experience worthwhile, delivered by solid voice actors with a good sense of comedic timing. What's more, the background music, styled in the vein of 80s rock and metal, is awesome. If they made a netflix series with these characters (which I suspect is at least on the table), you can count me in.
The beat-em-up gameplay is mostly the same as Arcade: There's your typical light and heavy attack, plus a combo system that lets you create new attacks by chaining together light and heavy. The three characters are distinct enough to encourage players to try each one out, with Pimple being the slow-but-powerful one, Zitz being the fast one, and Rash being the most balanced. It's not the most nuanced fighting system around, but it's kept fun thanks to the appropriately zany animations and the tactical challenge they carry. Said tactical challenge comes from the variety of enemies, some of which are built for close-quarters, while others launch beams or projectiles from far away. Trying to determine which enemies to go for first while frantically avoiding attacks from the other baddies crowding the screen provides a welcome challenge. Like the original, this can also lead to a sometimes brutal difficulty. Fortunately, unlike the original, the game does away with the system of lives and even adds a temporary invincibility option at lower difficulty levels, so it's never near as punishing as it was back then.
The other gameplay element that makes a return early on is the infamous hoverbike levels. They're similar to the original, where you speed down a tunnel while avoiding hazards, with the difference being they've been switched to a behind-the-back perspective, which is more conducive to dodging hazards as you approach them. Like the original, the trial-and-error nature of these levels can lead to frustration, but the 2020 Battletoads is at least much more generous with its checkpoints - and, as mentioned, does away with lives - which helps to mitigate the difficulty significantly.
Of course, it wouldn't be Battletoads if you couldn't bring a buddy along for the ride. Battletoads supports up to three players on the couch, though strangely, the game doesn't offer online co-op. Sure, it's definitely the kind of game that plays best when you're playing with friends in the same room, but with so many co-op games now offering the option to find people online to play with, not having that option here does seem like a pretty big oversight - especially with the current pandemic making it difficult to invite friends over to play with. Still, Battletoads is plenty rewarding for those who want to play alone, and if you can get someone to play with you on the couch, it's all the more insane (especially during the aforementioned hoverbike levels, which look really hectic when more than one character is crowding the screen). Hell, with all the minigames thrown in, it can even provide a party experience in the vein of Mario Party - one of several gameplay types that become more prominent the further you get in the game.
For much of its first half, the game is essentially a brawler interspersed with the occasional mini-game. The second half, however, switches gears, and essentially becomes a smattering of gameplay styles interspersed with occasional brawling. To the game's credit, the varied gameplay styles mostly accomplish their task of mixing things up so that players don't get bored doing the same thing for too long. Most of the new gameplay styles are fairly amusing and entertaining, like the toads taking some time out to play 'toad-sham-bo,' or a hilarious Weekend at Bernie's inspired sequence where the toads outrun a storm cloud on the back of an unconscious diplomat.
Unfortunately, the non-brawling levels have the nasty tendency to overstay their welcome, dragging on to the point where you just want to get back to slapping bad guys. An entire act out of the four is essentially a series of long, increasingly-difficult shoot-em-up levels reminiscent of Galaga interspersed with some frankly average puzzle platforming sequences that form unfavorable comparisons to other 2D platformers like Rayman Legends. And whoever conceived the overlong and frustrating Toad-lympics minigames should be fired (or, at least, seriously reprimanded). The game's mid-section is full of these minigames, which again aren't bad but distract from what are easily the highlights of the game, the brawling levels. Eventually, the game does return to the beat-em-up style only for it to reach the end shortly after, just when I was starting to get into a groove.
And that leads into Battletoads' biggest problem: at only four-and-a-half hours, Battletoads is almost criminally short. On some level, I could understand why Dlala kept things short. A longer runtime would require them to either lengthen stages to the point of boredom, or come up with an inordinate amount of gameplay types to keep things fresh. Even so, I wanted to spend more time with these characters and the world they inhabit. The three difficulty levels and collectibles scattered throughout each stage at least provide some incentive to replay, but not too much.
After 26 years, Battletoads' return marks a somewhat bittersweet reunion for those who grew up with the original and a good entry point for younger gamers looking for a unique and funny game to play on the Xbox. 2020 tries its damndest to keep up the excitement by continually throwing new things at the player, but the result is an uneven affair that smothers its best elements with its kitchen sink approach. On balance, though, Battletoads is a blast. There aren't many funnier or more unique games out there for Xbox, but above all, more often than not, Battletoads is just plain fun. It's short length makes it a little hard to recommend at full purchase, even at its low 20 dollar asking price, and it's a shame gamers can't take the fight online, but it's certainly worth playing through on Game Pass. Let's hope we don't need to wait another twenty years to see these toadally awesome characters again.
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 8
Sound: 8
Value: 6
Overall: 7/10