Battletoads Review (Xbox One, PC)

What initially was started as a rival series to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, eventually became an infamous 2D beat em up, known for its challenging gameplay. With five releases up to date, the new sixth Battletoads on Xbox One and PC, reboots the series for the first time in beautiful 4K.

But just how does couch co-op beat em up, stand in the modern age of online gaming, let's find out. Battletoads' story doesn't have much depth to it with it literally starting off with the bad guys just stating how great it is to be a bad guy. Ultimately it boils down to the early 90s Saturday cartoon stories of bad guys are bad and therefore they must be stopped.

The interesting twist is that the Battletoads aren't as famous as they think they are anymore. Time has passed since their last game and likewise, that time has passed in their universe. While it's not the most impressive writing, it fits here with the new animated aesthetic that rivals the art styles of modern cartoons.

This very much feels like a cartoon I'd watch on 4Kids when I was a child and the cheesy jokes about toads practicing kissing on their hands and the fact that Zit's name is zit, all feel tailored to it. Along with co-op gameplay, I can see someone in the younger demographic losing it at some of the jokes, even getting some cheap laughs out of someone older like myself.

In classic Rare fashion, Battletoads is a comical game at heart, and its entwined in the game's DNA adding on to its charm. Spread across four acts that can be beaten in the course of a few hours in a single day, Battletoads revitalizes the beat em up genre.

Each of these acts has a solid mix of classic 2d beat em up levels but like the original game, also a mix of mini-games and bike riding levels that completely flip the gameplay formula on you. Like the original, there's still a challenge here though not so much set by the limitations of the console it's on.

For example, the side-scrolling bike levels are now represented in 3D, they still require twitch controls and fast response but they're not hard because of the way they're presented anymore. The game is still challenging but on a more fair playing field.

The most enthralling and major change I experienced with this iteration of the series, is just how fast and combo heavy it feels. It's fantastic. Originally when the game was revealed at E3, it sure did look like Battletoads but it also seemed a bit slow.

Playing this review build, it felt immensely improved from its reveal and that's in part to being able to chain attacks so fluidly between the toads. Each toad has its own unique move set that like a Smash Brothers character, similar inputs execute similar types of moves but they are fundamentally different between characters.

Suddenly there's a great incentive to not just play as your favorite looking toad, but Pimple is now a heavy character while Zit and Rash are faster lighter characters. Playing in co-op, you can set up combos and juggle enemies between each other or just tag in a different toad to finish a combo.

In retrospect, it feels as if Devil May Cry and Battletoads fused into whatever Battletoads 2020 is and it's awesome. Again, part of that charm is multiplayer. In an era of video games where people used to play on a couch together sitting around a CRT, the era now is playing online with friends on your own computer or console.

Battletoads tries to mesh the two together, supporting both three-player local co-op and online co-op with remote play enabled for PC. It's not the same as being in the same room and playing, but the effort is appreciated especially in a time where it's hard to have these social gatherings in the first place.

Originating as a rival to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it feels poetic that the new art style for this reboot, feels like something you'd see from its rival tv show. The animation work here is stellar, with fluid movement across the board and transitions that are more akin to something you'd see in a tv show, not in a 2d video game.

The attention to detail here is immaculate with the layering going on in the foreground and background. The cyberpunk-themed introduction level is beautifully constructed with light casting through the shadows in the background. Vehicles move across the blurred out futuristic highway and fumes come out of the sewers I'm running on.

All together these interactive elements help paint a world that's lived in, one evolving over time and active beyond our actions in this level. Perhaps my favorite part of its visuals is the cross between the classic gameplay and modern visual style.

Back on the NES, it was hard to execute the bike levels because of its 2d point of view, in this title that gets upgraded to a 3d point of view though still keeping the 2d assets. It looks marvelous in practice and continues the challenges of the first game.

Playing this on my PC review running a GTX 1070 and an i7 4790k, I had absolutely no issues running this title. Across the board, I was able to maintain a 1080p 60fps performance at the highest settings. I did run into an issue during my first launch where some characters flickered in and out of place but some driver updates completely fixed that for me.

Judging off some of the gameplay fellow reviewers on Xbox One showed me, performance seemed stable on the base Xbox One with Xbox One X maintaining that 4k performance. Regardless of your platform, you should be able to maintain a stable performance despite the resolution differences.

For as convoluted as some of the moves and writing is in this game, I think developer DLALA Studios did a great job mixing all the audio together. Voice acting is solid with even some of the voice actors for the toads having played some of the Ninja Turtles in other projects, it oddly felt like the toads had come full circle in the perspective.

Among the various morphing attacks the toads can do, for example, Rash pulling out a classic Battletoads arcade machine, I love the fact that you can hear the games' theme as if it were being played in the current game. The attention to sound effect for all the wacky moves like the cluck of the chicken you can use to beat people up or the crunch of a shark biting into an enemy.

I just really appreciated the lengths the audio team went to for this game. That's yet to touch on the rock guitar-heavy soundtrack that plays perfectly with the beat 'em up gameplay. Whether I was zooming past obstacles on my bike, showing enemies who's boss in the cyberpunk city, or just taking a stroll down the half-destroyed pier, I was always vibing with the music.

Battletoads 2020 feels both new and familiar for better and for worse. The beat 'em up genre is a classic era of video games and this Battletoads doesn't do a lot to evolve passed that gameplay relic. In that sense, it can feel a bit dated outside of its beautiful new presentation.

With that said, DLALA deserves credits for creating a modern game that is still able to tackle these gameplay elements that feel like a thing of the past. Three player couch co-op on the same tv, online remote play on PC, letting just about anyone jump in and way more fun to execute combos that help this beat em up, have the strategy of a fighting game.