Game Review: Heist Kitty: Multiplayer Cat Simulator Game

By JT

Players: 1
Platforms: PC

Heist Kitty: Multiplayer Cat Simulator Game is something of a GTA clone. It attempts a lot of pun humor, GTA-like sandbox gameplay, and something resembling a story. There were few redeeming qualities from this game, and it nearly put me to sleep more than once. It's a game that feels like it wants to make you laugh by only writing out the laziest of punny jokes in nearly every piece of written dialogue. There's probably some potential here, but it’s muddled in lazy game design and painful quests that are hard to care about. Little about this game feels like a decent GTA clone in the slightest, even combat feels like a chore. When you’re not dangling keys in front of little kids with this game, there are other GTA clones more compelling than this one. What do I mean? Stick around to find out! This is Heist Kitty: Multiplayer Cat Simulator Game.

Heist Kitty first begins is inside a home with little direction, and even less dialogue. Twitchty the cat is waiting for you across the room to send you on your first quest! That quest is to feed a human. Yes, in this world humans are basically treated as pets by their cat compatriots. Guess who their general enemy is? Well, you will be fighting them soon enough! The premise is there, but it’s just not fully realized. The shorter list of positives are cat customization and the different weapons you’re able to utilize. Multiplayer is essentially the exact same as the Single Player experience except it'll likely help you with complete quests more quickly. Multiplayer makes the game better but probably for the wrong reasons. It’s just the means in which to get the game out of the way. While it’s also a lot more fun with friends, so is playing with a ball of string. It might not be for you, but get a bunch of kids together for a game of catch and it’s automatically a fun time.

Heist Kitty is bland and simple, even when looking at the game's vast world. Looking at all the buildings and the giant loop of a highway system, which isn’t even fun to drive on, had me asking whether it could be a viable living and breathing city or not. A lot of time must've been spent to see the project through, but the potential isn't fully realized. What you see in the world is what you get, apart from random questlines. Sometimes buildings will get in the way and you may have to go exploring to find some special items or beat a boss, but once the quests are finished there is little to no reason to go back inside those buildings. There is also a very small selection of buildings you get to explore, but most are just set up for HP and Mana regeneration.

The one highlight of the game should have been the cars, but every single one of them had such poor mechanics. There are no words to describe the level of pain that’s been dealt between me and those cars. GTA clone Heist Kitty is not, especially since there is no ability to run over pedestrians or get in any street fights with the Purrlice (Yes, they’re called that!), and smacking yourself into any car, be it on the road or parked, is exactly like hitting a brick wall. Except when hitting a brick wall your car is supposed to stop. Car collision is so weak that every time you smack into another car, or some other stationary object, either your car comes to a complete stop or it wildly flips completely out of control without any sense of rhyme or reason. The car you’re in can easily become airborne and you need to wait until it finally settles, even if that means it becomes stuck between some poles or lands in a tree. The second car I'd taken actually helped me experience this firsthand. I was sent on a tutorial mission around the city, like another version of the N64 Superman game, and didn't understand how the game's de-spawn mechanic worked. Everything resets after entering and exiting a building, and I wound up having go all the way back to the freeway to pick up that one vehicle needed for the tutorial. I mistakenly left it in a small crevice somewhere along the highway, only because I wanted to see what happened when I attempted to leap to my death. Hint: Nothing happened! The only thing I found out was that you take damage from swimming.

After the tutorial mission there’s the option to either join the Purrlice or the Meowfia. They’re both very different in approach, but the Meowfia has a much better feel and gives you a small amount of fun on some of your quests. The Purrlice had the dreaded RC copter level, which is far worse to control than the RC copter from GTA: Vice City. This mission took too much time out of my day trying to finish that bit of questing, and after choosing another cat for me to finally get to join the Meowfia, I regretted ever joining the Purrlice. Heist Kitty's open world give the illusion that there is much more to the game than just the main questlines. In all honesty, that’s not the case. Questing is all there is to keep you occupied, and to maintain your sanity. At least there are little things here and there to do within the world that keep the game's premise unique, such as your cat laying down after being idle for a few minutes. There are numerous other games with cats in them though, and this one doesn't explore the concept very well. There are also just as many other GTA-style games, some of which give you the thrill of a kill, but in Heist Kitty there is no thrill, only sadness. Weapons are a means of killing, but they all feel like they're weaker than they should be. Even killing an enemy, such as a rat or human, is often not all that fun or exciting. Most of the time you can climb on the back of an enemy and either lead them to their death, or avoid them altogether by leaping out of the danger zone. That’s the other thing, the ability to control where a human walks by jumping on their backs. This would be a nice addition but you’re not in control of their attacks, leading to their deaths against other humans 99% of the time. Also, the same animation used for controlling a human is also used for climbing, since you can climb almost anything. Speaking of climbing, the same button used for hanging onto a building is also used for climbing into a car, and control choices like this lead to frustration sometimes. Not every car can be stolen either, and you're only really allowed to take cars without a roof, or ones that are needed for missions.

Despite what some may think this far into the review, the music is pretty good. It’s nothing too extraordinary compared to other indie games of similar type, but that makes the music feel that it's better than you'd think it would be. It’s in a constant loop, but at least the music doesn’t drag to the point where you would want to rip off your own ears. It all adds to the atmosphere of what’s presented at the time, such as when you're in a club, or in a boss fight. Cars are very generic in terms of sound and quality, and so are the people who make up the world around you. Death animation and sound are serviceable, but once you die your character just kind of disappears or drops to the floor. Once I figured out that cats can’t swim I completely stayed away from the water, which makes sense in a typical cat game, but not one that’s trying to be budget cat GTA. The weapons you’re able to use all sound very quiet, far more quiet than they should be, so that was another disappoint to add to a game filled with disappointment.

There is not a lot of structure in Heist Kitty, be it in the open world or even if you're inside a building. Everything feels very generic and bland, and even I'm getting tired of having to keep pointing it out. All characters have the same look and feel, and most are spoofed from classic and current pop culture, like Rowdy Dangerfur (Rodney Dangerfield), or Ocifurr Barbrady (South Park). Dialogue isn’t clever in the slightest, and most can be skipped without missing much of anything. There are some bugs and glitches, such as falling through the floor into the water and being unable to escape, with death being the obvious end result. Charting a path between pedestrians and cars can become very off, with pedestrians attempting to jump over any car along their path. If you make too many people mad they eventually can swarm and trap you. Normal pedestrian humans don’t do any damage, but they can make it to where you either can’t move from where you are, or push you through an object and glitch you into place. While there are some extra things to do, including some arcade games, nothing looked interesting enough for me to really check out. They were mostly just basic timewasters, like the main game itself.

Heist Kitty: Multiplayer Cat Simulator Game looks and feels like an early PS2 or PS1 game, which gives the game a dated aesthetic. It may also convey that it’s multiplayer-focused based on the title but that’s hardly the truth. It has multiplayer in it as an add-on but it’s not the main focus. The focus is pretty much only existence, as that's the only thing the game does well. Single player is just as compelling as multiplayer, which means the bare minimum in terms of gameplay. The story mainly consists of simple fetch quests and killing the occasional random enemy. The world feels very empty, and that's because it is. On more than one occasion, including while writing this review, I fell asleep while playing the game. Not even halfway through I got very bored just running from Point A to Point B, then to Point C, only to go back to Point A to turn in the mission that was given to me that started that loop. There is little reason for anyone to play such a dull game. If you want to know what it’s like to be a cat, play Stray. If you want to play a GTA-style sandbox game, there are so many others out there; including GTA itself. This game was not much fun to play, and became less so as time dragged on. There were some random spikes of fun in-between the monotony, but nothing that really keeps you engaged or focused. Perhaps with a larger budget, and more time, this game could be up there on my top 10 GTA clones, but at the time of writing this review that future looks very far away. The foundation of a fun game is there, but nothing is fully realized. At the cost of $15, I would only recommend checking this game out when on a very deep sale or if there's a big content update. Otherwise don’t waste your hard-earned money or your time.

For More Information on Heist Kitty:
https://excalibur-games.com/pages/heist-kitty

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Story: D-
Gameplay: D
Graphics: D
Sound: C
Value: D-

Overall: D

Pros:
+ You’re a cat.
+ Lots of customization options.
+ Has multiplayer.
+ Music isn’t bad.

Cons:
- An empty open world.
- Story and characters are bland and forgettable.
- Numerous glitches.
- Boring and tedious.
- PS2 style graphics and presentation give too much of a dated feeling.
- Weapons aren’t fun to use.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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