Ah, mice: those lovely little rodents that humanity loves to experiment with. Unfortunately, when the Council of Great Scientists starts researching and tinkering with mice on its space station, they take it a step too far. Like Pinky and the Brain, the mice are transformed into a super-intelligent, power hungry menace with mechanical upgrades, and just like the Brain, they want to take over the world. The first part of their goal is to remove their immediate threat: cats. When your pet, Scram Kitty, is kidnapped along with all the other cats, you grab your anti-grav spin board and head to the space station to save all the imprisoned felines.
Platforms: Wii U
Publisher: Dakko Dakko
Developer: Dakko Dakko
Genre: Hyperkinetic Shooter… on a Different Kind of Rail
Release Date: May 15, 2014
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Despite the title, this is not an on-rails shooter. The hoverboard your character rides is stuck to the rails of the station, but he can jump from rail to rail, as well as circling around them in a grapple jump. While it sounds simple, there is a steep learning curve in mastering the rail mechanics and jump systems. However, once you have figured out the rules, you will be leaping over lasers and spikes, collecting coins while decimating the rodent menace with your weaponry. The circular health bar also indicates how powerful or high your jump will be, with some specific areas requiring you to have a full tank. Luckily there are always mice to kill in exchange for some juice. Players are armed with a dual blaster, but can locate upgrades, such as a freeze flamethrower and arc gun, which are often needed to defeat stronger enemies and hit switches that are unreachable with the standard straight-shooting blaster.
The space station is broken up into 29 stages to complete, each with a number of cats to be rescued. Players must save a certain number of cats in order to progress to the next area, but should you be plagued by the endless failure to rescue one cat, you can move to a different branch of the map and come back to it with a cooler head. As well as the Adventure Mode, the game offers an insanely challenging Challenge Mode, where the difficulty rating truly betrays the cute, childlike graphics. Players must dash across levels chosen at random, and try to rescue as many cats as they can before the timer runs out. The timer is extended by one second for every coin you collect, but you will need to make pixel-perfect jumps to even come close to a decent time.
There are four types of cats to be rescued. The first will automatically be floating at the airlock that marks the level’s exit, while the other three must be earned. Players must collect all the coins available in that level for one of the cats to appear, while another can only be found by defeating a specific type of foe, a maniacal mega-mouse whizzing around in a techno-tank. The last, and by far the most frustrating, is a grey cat that, when tagged, will fly off to another part of the level. Players have a very short time limit to race across the level and tag them again, which will then cause them to move to a third, and then fourth location. This is the cat that you will want to kill rather than cuddle.
Besides the swear-inducing frustration levels, Scram Kitty is a delight to play. Not only is it fun and fast-paced, it is also eye-poppingly gorgeous. And it is one of the few Wii U games that I prefer to play on the GamePad screen over the TV. Scram Kitty will occasionally pop up on the TV to offer tips, forcing you to use the GamePad, but it feels more natural to use the smaller screen. Players need only glance at the TV to see if they are hitting a far-off enemy, as the TV view tends to zoom back and give a wider field of vision. From the unique humour we have come to expect from Welsh outfit Dakko Dakko, to its lack of standard game tropes, such as tutorials, achievements, and cutscenes, Scram Kitty and His Buddy On Rails brings a fresh form of gaming to the Wii U. Yes, it is insanely frustrating, but it is also downright addictive, and those who invest their time practising and perfecting their control of it will have it repaid handsomely. The Adventure Mode is worth the price alone, while the Challenge Mode will see tortured souls returning time and time again.
Review Disclosure: A retail copy of Scram Kitty and His Buddy On Rails was purchased by Warp Zoned for the purposes of this review.
