Battletoads (2020) Review - A toadally good time.

By Sam Coles:

We seem to be in the era of retro revivals with the past couple of years since classic games from the 90’s are making a comeback, such as Spyro, Crash, Resident Evil and of course Battletoads. It has been 26 years since their last game which was released on the Super Nintendo; the series is mostly notorious for its insanely and somewhat unfair first outing on the NES. Now it has made a return on the Xbox One simply named Battletoads, a naming convention that is teetering on testing my patience, but I digress. Is the return of the bipedal amphibians a great return? In short yes.

The narrative in Battletoads is surprisingly funny and self-aware, it takes place 26 years after their last game and they find out that they are not that popular anymore. People no longer know the Battletoads so it is their question to become popular again by any means, it sounds rather stupid and ridiculous but the execution works. The writing is on point and made me laugh out loud a few times throughout my play through, don’t get me wrong there were a few dud lines which had my eyes rolling like dust bin lids in a washing machine but it is mostly good.

Gameplay is a typical 2D brawler sprinkled with some vehicle sections and light puzzle solving, but the meat of the game is combat and it feels great. When the game was first shown off it looked slow and clunky, but now it feels zippy and responsive with great feedback as you deck enemies when your hand as it turns into an anvil. You can punch, kick and head-butt foes typical stuff in this genre, but you can transform in objects that make no sense but it is entertaining to watch. You have moments where you turn into a shark because science, to you playing a Battletoads arcade cabinet in the middle of the fight which does damage. It is completely ridiculous in a good way, as the game’s combat is over the top but it never gets incoherent or messy as the main characters standout on screen.

You can either play the game solo or with two other friends, but unfortunately at the time of writing the co-op is local play only and you can’t play online which is baffling to say the least. The game is perfectly viable solo as you use the other toads if one dies, where each have their strengths and weaknesses. You have one fast, one slow and one in between both, which ironically correlates with their size. When one of the toads dies they get put on a timer where they will respawn which sounds like it would make the game easy, but far from it as this game can get rather challenging in places not unfair like the original but challenging enough where I died a lot.

The presentation was a contentious point with the community, there are some that loved the new look and others who thought it looked like a Saturday morning cartoon and didn’t fit the series. I think the game looks great yeah it takes the aesthetic of a cartoon, but so did the original to a certain extent as it was a parody of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The colours are vibrant and really pop out of the screen, the expressions are over exaggerated and the animation in the general is smooth and looks fantastic. I don’t understand how someone can say this art style looks bad, it looks amazing and is a nice palette cleanser from playing serious games.

Overall Battletoads was a fun a time, hard to believe it has been 26 years since their last game and this return was great. It has funny writing, beautiful visuals and gameplay that it is fast and snappy. It’s a great time and I recommend it, so grab now or if you have Game Pass you can download it now!