Battletoads review - messy, madcap fun

Battletoads is short. Really short. Too short.

I know it's not expensive - not comparatively, anyway. I know many of us will be able to play for "free" courtesy of Xbox Game Pass. I'll shortly launch into all the reasons why Battletoads amuses and frustrates me in equal measure, but it all comes with that giant, glowing, angry caveat. Yes, it's pretty great, but this sequel - which some have been waiting for for 26 years, don't forget - barely clocks in at five hours long on normal difficulty. Free or not, that's not much of a run-time, is it?

Well, I say five hours, but I wasted exactly 1 hour and 9 minutes of that playtime, wandering around a peculiarly vexing environmental puzzle in the middle of a Metroidvania segment partway through. Oh, yeah, did I not say? There are Ori-esque sequences in Battletoads. And some twin-stick space invaders sections. A little Turbo Tunnel-ling. Hacking minigames. Quicktime events. Rock-paper-scissors. Occasionally, there's even beat-'em-up action, too.

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