Battletoads E3 2019 Preview

June 15, 2019 at 6:57pm
By Jason Stettner

Tucked away in a small corner of the Xbox Showcase event was the return of the Battletoads! My only prior experience with these odd characters was within Rare Replay, so I’ve been looking forward to seeing how they set to evolve them. It was odd that they hid the two stations so much, I suppose it was nice that I stumbled upon it.

Whatever the case, this is a very unique title. It carries a straight up modern cartoon style and it just works. At the event we were able to play in a local group of three, the final release is set to have online coop as well. In the short demo we brawled and then biked with the latter portion taking forever. It featured a mini tutorial to teach the basic smashing and you go from there.

The screen can get quite busy and it’s actually wild. The crew of toads get smashing, and their body parts are greatly exaggerated for hilarity. The animations are quality and the interactions with the enemies were excellent. You get some depth in there with the connected hits. They get thrown around and it feels like a classic 2D brawler. After taking on a few screens of regular enemies you get to battle a boss.

Once that’s wrapped up it makes an E3 joke about the level usually going on longer, but it being cut for time. Once that’s done you play a ridiculously long bike scene. The checkpoints aren’t great, the bikes go on and on. We got to 75% of the way and after a few deaths there I had to call it quits. The showcase is limited and that went on way too long. The bikes were a good challenge however. You drive into the screen and dodge objects, or hop over holes. It’s neat, but hopefully shorter in the full release.

Moving past that, there’s actually a lot of potential here. The combative segments were fun and I love the art direction they went for. There seems to be some quality with the animations, and just how varied the squad is. I’m very interested in seeing how the final version comes together. That’s all for Battletoads, at least for now. Check out our E3 2019 hub for additional coverage from the event.

Read our Void Bastards Review
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