You already know this is bad, as this game is super infamous, but my god is this just as terrible everyone makes it out to be. This isn't even a funny kind of garbage. It's complete agonizing putridness. Quite easily the worst game I've ever played. Nothing in it feels well made or even remotely finished!
The controls are the main highlight of this game's infamy, and for good reason. They're stiff as all hell and makes the basic movement you have to constantly do an uncomfortable chore. Plus none of the levels in this game feel like they were made with these controls in mind and all just feel like nonsensical messes of platforms scattered around for the sake of having some sort of level design. It also doesn't help when the game wants you to do things with precision, which you just can't easily get with controls like these. It's a struggle to handle with enemies because of this, as the most reliable way of killing them is by jumping on them. The only other method of attack aside from certain power-ups, the atom projectile move, quickly becomes very situational as the game progresses with more complex level layouts and more annoying enemies. Some enemies will just be an extreme pain no matter what you do, like the snake and the bird enemies, both of which have a very active presence in the last third of the game.
Speaking of more complex levels, they just get worse the further you get. Most people never see past the first few since they get so fed up with this trash that they drop it very early on. But I decided to go the extra mile and fully complete this for some goddamn reason, and my god do they just keep getting worse and worse after each one! Especially the last third of the game, it gets fucking BAD. Right after the first boss the game decides it's a good idea to introduce water levels, and they're so goddamn slow. Luckily there's only three of them so you don't have to deal with much, but the last six stages will make you wish you had the water levels back. The last third of the game is full of overly long, confusing bullshit that constantly wants alot of precision, which you just can't get with these controls. With the earlier levels, screwing up the platforming will often make you backtrack an uncomfortable distance back to where you started to make you do the platforming over again, but these last few stages really enjoy instantly killing you with tons of water everywhere instead, and like I said, you just can't get precision with controls like these! (Plus I would like to bring up walking off any sort of edge above water locks you into an instant death animation, and it happened to me so many times in the last few levels due to the controls so that's an extreme annoyance made all for a tiny sliver of comedic effect.) Stages 16 and 17 are extreme offenders of this, and they're the two stages that pissed me off the most. They want you to jump off of moving vehicles onto other vehicles of small platforms so many times, and almost always punish screwing it up with death. Hopefully you have a good surplus of lives, as the final third of the game will drain through them ludicrously fast. I never found out what happened if you got a game over since I kept restocking on lives in the first level (it's very useful to grind there for lives if you didn't use cheats to start the game with a bunch), but I'll assume it'll make you do the stage you were on all over again. I don't wanna imagine if getting a game over made you do the whole game all over again.
And don't even get me started on the rockets. There's two in every level except for the two bosses, and you need to get them all to get the 'good' ending. They can range from lying out in the open, to overly cryptic bullshit that you'd need a guide to find out how to get. But either way they boil down to having to deal with Bubsy 3D more than anyone normally should. It's especially agonizing looking for them in the water stages, since their format makes them giant mazes for exploration, making you slog around looking for wherever they are or where hints on how to get them could be.
Two times through the game you'll get a boss stage instead of a normal stage, and these bosses aren't anything special. The first one is rather annoying with how you have to maneuver your glide onto a flying opponent (and confusing if you didn't know the area where he shot at also functions as a fan for some reason), and the second one is pretty easy but also rather confusing if you don't know that you have to make him slip on the bananas into the barrier and not just jump on him. You won't have to collect any rockets in either of these, as I don't know how they could shoehorn rockets into these situations. You do have to collect rockets on the final stage, since it doubles as both a normal stage and a boss stage. There's even two bosses there as well. The first one isn't very hard, just use the trees to jump on him, I'm not sure if I got lucky with the projectiles he drops but they weren't hard to dodge. The game's final boss however is terrible! They relentlessly shoot at you if you're anywhere near them, so you have to jump around towards the switch to activate the atoms you need to shoot, and jump around towards the atoms too. You're invincible whenever you're shooting an atom, but not whenever the atom shooting animation ends, and the Woolie Queens really like getting convenient shots at you right when that animation ends, so you just have to hope one of their shots don't conveniently hit you right when that animation ends. Luckily if you die after defeating one of them you won't have to deal with both of them all over again.
And after all of that, suffering through all of these increasingly bullshit and terribly designed levels, extremely frustrating enemies, confusing rocket part exploration, potentially annoying bosses, and one terrible final boss all while having to deal with these god awful controls, you're rewarded with a shitty ending no matter how well you did. Spoiler warning for here, by the way, but this is Bubsy 3D, so I highly doubt you care. If you don't get all of the rocket parts, Bubsy gets stranded somewhere out in space. If you do get all of the rocket parts, Bubsy gets warped through time all the way back to the prehistoric ages. In both endings the Woolies get rid of Bubsy and go forth with invading Earth. You just get shat on regardless of how much effort you put in. You don't even get a credits sequence or anything, just a massive middle finger of an ending. Oh well, I don't even care that much, I just feel relief to not have to play this any longer. Just getting to say that I 100% completed this is enough of a reward for me.
Whatever you do, stay away from this game. Most people would abandon this within the first few stages, and I wouldn't fault them for it. You don't even get a congratulations for making it all the way, just a slap in the face for finishers and completionists alike, but you're actively getting shat on if you're even playing this game, so don't waste your time and sanity on this. I went the extra mile and all I got was proof that this is absolute garbage.
The controls are the main highlight of this game's infamy, and for good reason. They're stiff as all hell and makes the basic movement you have to constantly do an uncomfortable chore. Plus none of the levels in this game feel like they were made with these controls in mind and all just feel like nonsensical messes of platforms scattered around for the sake of having some sort of level design. It also doesn't help when the game wants you to do things with precision, which you just can't easily get with controls like these. It's a struggle to handle with enemies because of this, as the most reliable way of killing them is by jumping on them. The only other method of attack aside from certain power-ups, the atom projectile move, quickly becomes very situational as the game progresses with more complex level layouts and more annoying enemies. Some enemies will just be an extreme pain no matter what you do, like the snake and the bird enemies, both of which have a very active presence in the last third of the game.
Speaking of more complex levels, they just get worse the further you get. Most people never see past the first few since they get so fed up with this trash that they drop it very early on. But I decided to go the extra mile and fully complete this for some goddamn reason, and my god do they just keep getting worse and worse after each one! Especially the last third of the game, it gets fucking BAD. Right after the first boss the game decides it's a good idea to introduce water levels, and they're so goddamn slow. Luckily there's only three of them so you don't have to deal with much, but the last six stages will make you wish you had the water levels back. The last third of the game is full of overly long, confusing bullshit that constantly wants alot of precision, which you just can't get with these controls. With the earlier levels, screwing up the platforming will often make you backtrack an uncomfortable distance back to where you started to make you do the platforming over again, but these last few stages really enjoy instantly killing you with tons of water everywhere instead, and like I said, you just can't get precision with controls like these! (Plus I would like to bring up walking off any sort of edge above water locks you into an instant death animation, and it happened to me so many times in the last few levels due to the controls so that's an extreme annoyance made all for a tiny sliver of comedic effect.) Stages 16 and 17 are extreme offenders of this, and they're the two stages that pissed me off the most. They want you to jump off of moving vehicles onto other vehicles of small platforms so many times, and almost always punish screwing it up with death. Hopefully you have a good surplus of lives, as the final third of the game will drain through them ludicrously fast. I never found out what happened if you got a game over since I kept restocking on lives in the first level (it's very useful to grind there for lives if you didn't use cheats to start the game with a bunch), but I'll assume it'll make you do the stage you were on all over again. I don't wanna imagine if getting a game over made you do the whole game all over again.
And don't even get me started on the rockets. There's two in every level except for the two bosses, and you need to get them all to get the 'good' ending. They can range from lying out in the open, to overly cryptic bullshit that you'd need a guide to find out how to get. But either way they boil down to having to deal with Bubsy 3D more than anyone normally should. It's especially agonizing looking for them in the water stages, since their format makes them giant mazes for exploration, making you slog around looking for wherever they are or where hints on how to get them could be.
Two times through the game you'll get a boss stage instead of a normal stage, and these bosses aren't anything special. The first one is rather annoying with how you have to maneuver your glide onto a flying opponent (and confusing if you didn't know the area where he shot at also functions as a fan for some reason), and the second one is pretty easy but also rather confusing if you don't know that you have to make him slip on the bananas into the barrier and not just jump on him. You won't have to collect any rockets in either of these, as I don't know how they could shoehorn rockets into these situations. You do have to collect rockets on the final stage, since it doubles as both a normal stage and a boss stage. There's even two bosses there as well. The first one isn't very hard, just use the trees to jump on him, I'm not sure if I got lucky with the projectiles he drops but they weren't hard to dodge. The game's final boss however is terrible! They relentlessly shoot at you if you're anywhere near them, so you have to jump around towards the switch to activate the atoms you need to shoot, and jump around towards the atoms too. You're invincible whenever you're shooting an atom, but not whenever the atom shooting animation ends, and the Woolie Queens really like getting convenient shots at you right when that animation ends, so you just have to hope one of their shots don't conveniently hit you right when that animation ends. Luckily if you die after defeating one of them you won't have to deal with both of them all over again.
And after all of that, suffering through all of these increasingly bullshit and terribly designed levels, extremely frustrating enemies, confusing rocket part exploration, potentially annoying bosses, and one terrible final boss all while having to deal with these god awful controls, you're rewarded with a shitty ending no matter how well you did. Spoiler warning for here, by the way, but this is Bubsy 3D, so I highly doubt you care. If you don't get all of the rocket parts, Bubsy gets stranded somewhere out in space. If you do get all of the rocket parts, Bubsy gets warped through time all the way back to the prehistoric ages. In both endings the Woolies get rid of Bubsy and go forth with invading Earth. You just get shat on regardless of how much effort you put in. You don't even get a credits sequence or anything, just a massive middle finger of an ending. Oh well, I don't even care that much, I just feel relief to not have to play this any longer. Just getting to say that I 100% completed this is enough of a reward for me.
Whatever you do, stay away from this game. Most people would abandon this within the first few stages, and I wouldn't fault them for it. You don't even get a congratulations for making it all the way, just a slap in the face for finishers and completionists alike, but you're actively getting shat on if you're even playing this game, so don't waste your time and sanity on this. I went the extra mile and all I got was proof that this is absolute garbage.