Catlateral Damage
Developer: Chris Chung/Fire Hose Games
Price: $10
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for Catlateral Damage
Catlateral Damage is the type of game where your enjoyment of it relies heavily on how much you find cat jokes funny and whether you can tolerate a joke concept for hours on end.
In the game you play as a simple cat whose owners have left the house for the day. Your goal here is simple: wreck as much of the place before they get back. You’ll repeat this process over and over again without any sort of change which turns what could have been a decent time killer into a brain killer.
There are two game modes to sink your teeth into here. The objective mode tasks you with smacking down a certain amount of items in the allotted time while completing various inane optional objectives that are just as repetitive as the gameplay itself. Just to give you an example, some of the lame objectives you’ll see are things like catching mice, moon gravity, or disco lights shining everywhere. I frankly don’t even see why this mode even has a timer considering you always have more than enough time to knock down the required amount of objects. The other mode is just a freeplay mode where you’re free to do whatever you want in the randomly generated room you’re placed in; it’s basically just the objective mode without the time limit. And that’s pretty much it for the game. There are some dumb pictures of cats to collect and you can unlock new cats that are all just palette swaps, but besides that there’s not much else to do.
The poor controls don’t really help things either. Your cat feels super floaty which makes some jumps incredibly annoying. Another annoyance with the gameplay is how items need to hit the floor to count towards your objective goal which means if you’re on a shelf and you knock a dozen books off but they land on a bed or chair then that means you have to hop back down and make sure they hit the damn floor. There are some power-ups to collect that will boost your jump height, speed, and swatting powers and you can expect to max these out within half an hour or so. Once you’ve collected enough upgrades (specifically the jump height one) it turns an already piss easy game into a joke.
The most annoying part of this game is that if it had more varied levels it definitely could have stretched out its already limited enjoyment. The museum and super market levels are stupid enough to actually be somewhat entertaining but you can only get to those levels if a specific item spawns in the level you’re currently in. If you don’t find the item, or it just doesn’t spawn, then you’re stuck going through the exact same house layouts back-to-back. The Steam page touts procedurally generated levels as a major feature but it’s really just the same kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, and dining areas connected to each other in different ways. The items in these areas stay the exact same as well so there’s never anything new to experience with each new round. If the game had instead gone for zanier levels, or even just more varied locales like a restaurant, it definitely would have helped the severe repetition issues this game has.
The Final Word
Catlateral Damage is something I feel like I should be spending a dollar, five tops, as a dumb time killer for my phone. For something that just barely has enough content to be a game it’s not only asking for too much, but gets incredibly repetitive within its first few minutes.
– MonsterVine Rating: 1.5 out of 5 – Terrible
