That's one more off the backlog. BACKGROUND:
Here's another game I picked up from the 12 Days of Christmas giveaway of No Gravity Games. PLOT: Didn't seem like this one had a story. I feel like a world where cats fused with combat vehicles race around would have benefitted from a silly, cartoony plot. PRESENTATION: Everything's bright and cartoony as the premise. The 2D art of the cat characters is cute, and the actual game features vibrant colors, lively albeit derivative locales, simple effects, and goofy facial expressions from the cats. I can't really say the visuals look 100% polished, but the style does a lot to compensate. The brightness can also be quite a detriment, as it's often difficult to make out where item boxes are in some of the daylight courses. Aspects of the UI are great, like the little meter that indicates how close you are to top speed, and a cute little avatar of your character emoting as you race. My only complaint here is the indicator for what power-up you have, because the icon is pretty tiny, and the actual iconography doesn't communicate what exactly you have clearly. The music complements the cheery visuals with some upbeat tracks. Something about the overall sound just captures the inherent silliness of cartoon cats in war machines running around wildly. GAMEPLAY: Supersonic Tank Cats is a Mario Kart-style racing game where you pick one of various cat characters, control them like cars in races, and pick up item boxes that let you use power-ups. It's a time-tested formula, and admittedly, this game does very little to mix things up. If you've played a game of this kind before, you already know how to play. Perhaps the main thing that stands out to me about this game is how significant character choice is. Each cat has their own driving stats (top speed, acceleration, handling), which is nothing out of the ordinary, but the most notable thing to me is how everyone has a different set of power-ups they can pick up. This is a contrast to Mario Kart, where everybody pulls from the same item pool. Now, the items themselves aren't anything new (they're just variations of things we've seen before, like Koopa shells and banana peels), but I found the idea that each cat has different item focuses interesting. Whether or not such a concept lends itself well to game balance, however, is a different story. Apart from that, I can't say that there's anything wildly unique about any other aspects of the game. The controls are pretty standard, the track layouts don't go buckwild with gimmicks (they also felt like they stretched on a little too long), and you have your usual game modes (grand prix, quick race, time attack, a Balloon Battle-style mode, and local multiplayer). There's more than a few unlockable tracks and characters as well, which is nice. The one unique mode here is Missions, which are a set of specific challenges set in the various tracks. These range from knocking down trash bins strewn about the track and other gimmicky objectives of the sort. I thought this mode was a neat idea that slightly mixes things up from the usual racing, and I would have loved more of it. There's also the Kitty Playground, which simply has you play with or pet the cat characters. It serves no purpose, but it's cute, I suppose. VERDICT: As much as I find the whole cats in weapons of mass destruction humorous and I enjoyed some of the neat ideas in the gameplay, Supersonic Tank Cats didn't hold my interest as long as I would have liked. The game has a lot of charm and plays mostly fine, but the novelty of it wore off for me after a while. It might be because ultimately, the game doesn't really reinvent the wheel in terms of the racing genre, but apart from that and a few issues, I did enjoy most aspects of the game. That said, I think I'm content with what I've played for now. I'm certainly interested to see if this game is expanded upon in updates or with a sequel, because I really want this ridiculous idea of a game to succeed. I think this is a serviceable racing game that anyone can get into and enjoy, but I would be more comfortable recommending proven series like Mario Kart if you want your racing fix. Those franchise games have had time to polish the formula and can offer a lot of what's in this game with a much smoother experience. But again, I don't really see anything wrong about picking this one up if you are as amused as I am about racing cats around. This game is also available on Steam: Supersonic Tank Cats on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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