Popeye (2021)

Popeye

"PoPeYe, CaTcH!"

Protagonist(s):	Popeye
Genre(s):	Action-adventure Platform
Platform(s):	Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4
Release Date:	Nintendo Switch November 4, 2021 PlayStation 4 December 1, 2021
Engine:	Unity
Developer(s):	Sabec
Publisher(s):	Sabec
Country:	United Kingdom
Series:	Popeye
Predecessor:	Popeye: Rush for Spinach

Popeye is an action-adventure platform video game developed and published by Sabec, based on the 1982 arcade game and the cartoon shorts of the same name. It is the first Popeye game to be released since Popeye: Rush for Spinach in 2005. The game is a 3D remake of the arcade game of the same name and follows Popeye as he tries to rescue Olive Oyl from Bluto (renamed to Brutus) by collecting hearts and letters.

Why Popeye Cannot Catch

The graphics look absolutely horrendous. They look like something out of Roblox, or worse, a game that looks like it was made for a fifth-generation console. The textures look like generic plastic toys and there is an overuse of brown and sand color.
The character animations are taken from a website called Mixamo instead of making their own animations.
There is no voice acting at all. The only thing that can be counted as voice acting is Olive Oyl's line "Popeye, catch!", which sounds very annoying as it sounds nothing like her original voice. It also sounds quite like as if the voice actress was whiny about voicing in the game while trying to imitate the original actress's voice.
While the idea of a 3D remake of a Nintendo game sounds good on paper, this game fails at that as it's because of the fact that in the original game, Olive Oyl throws hearts everywhere so Popeye can catch them here. Because it's a 3D remake, Olive Oyl now throws the hearts literally everywhere, even if it's out of bounds.
- Also it does not feel like a remake of the original. The stages are different from one another and some elements and characters are absent like Wimpy and Swee'Pea.
The Sea Hag was renamed as The Witch for some reason (partly justified as "hag" is a modern slur for an elderly woman).
The soundtrack sounds very annoying as the only music (which sounds very out of place in a Popeye game and is better suited for an educational game) in the game repeats a lot, much like Ghostbusters for the NES. Thankfully, the game has Popeye's iconic theme, despite being only played when he is eating the spinach.
The game's artwork is very lazy as it just features stock images of the characters with a blue background that has doodles of the characters. Not helping matters is that the artwork appears everywhere, even on the menu and loading screens. Heck, it's even the game's official artwork that was used in its thumbnail when you find the game in the Nintendo eShop.
Bland stages: The stages look lackluster and do not feel like they came from a Popeye cartoon. Many of the stages look empty and abandoned and those that take place on the ground still uses the sand terrain.
- Speaking of which, many of the stages are nothing but complete asset flips since the stages are stolen from the Polygon Pirate Pack, which is in the Unity Asset Store.
  - Additionally, Popeye's design was stolen from a fan's 3D model of the character.
The gameplay here literally repeats itself only it takes place in different stages. All you have to do is collect objects that are thrown by Olive. It may be a 3D adaptation of the 80s arcade game but that is no excuse for a game to be lacking in gameplay, not to mention how much charm this game lacks compared to the 80s arcade game.
Brutus is such a joke in the game. Popeye can easily avoid him due to Brutus moving slowly.
Annoying sound effects such as a squawking vulture, Brutus hitting Popeye, and when Popeye punches something.
Despite its retail value being $12.99, it feels and plays like a rip-off.
Every time you hit the home button on the Switch and go back to the actual game, it will automatically kill Popeye for some reason.
The game is extremely glitchy and broken with several bugs happening very randomly such as animation lock in, heavy clipping through walls, getting stuck on walls, models striking a T-Pose for no reason and many more other bad glitches that they nearly cause the entire game to become nearly unplayable or in some cases with a few other minor glitches, a complete joke with it's difficulty curve with the models of Brutus and the Vulture not being in the hub world. This causes one of the game's levels to be completed in absolutely no time at all, making the game feel like it was only in development for three or four days and that's it.
Popeye cannot have extra lives unlike the original arcade game. In the arcade game, Popeye does get extra lives in the form of scores, which was absent here. The game also doesn't give you an option to pick how many lives you start or points giving you extra lives.
The developer, Sabec, did not handle criticism of the game very well. When John Riggs, a gaming YouTuber, called it "the worst Switch game ever made", Sabec attempted to take legal action against John or else his video would be taken down. This caused the video's thumbnail to be changed.
The framerate is downright abysmal, with it dipping from being at 30FPS to simply more lower than the average framerate, especially when your in the water controlling Popeye when he's swimming in it.

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Popeye (2021)

Why Popeye Cannot Catch

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