Just Short of Purrfect: A Cats and the Other Lives Review

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

Have you ever wanted to play a game that places you into the role of a cat? Well, then Cats and the Other Lives is the game for you! Releasing on consoles following a PC release last year, Cats and the Other Lives is something of a point and click style adventure game that adds in other genre elements as well. Following in the wake of Stray, you play as a house cat for a rather mysterious, but apparently wealthy, family in a series of puzzles and adventures that lean heavily towards horror. So it's a scary cat game? Well, I guess it's time for us to cut the intro short and dive into this one to see if it's worth picking up, or ignoring it in favor of the many other cat simulator-style games out there. Then again being a cat is always somewhat fun...

Cats and the Other Lives is a linear adventure game that is separated into three chapters and puts you into the furry shoes of Aspen, the pet of one Bernard Mason. Bernard Mason was the patriarch of the Mason family who was quite the character, but who also has recently passed away. This brings about a family reunion of sorts as the Mason family come together for his wake and funeral and seek to get all his affairs in order. These affairs include the possible selling of the Mason Mansion, looking into other properties he might own, and possibly solving mysteries from Bernard's past as well. While they sort through Bernard's life and realize that he wasn't exactly who they always thought of him as, they also realize that their dislike for one another is often just as strong. There's a lot of family drama to sort out, along with the many legal issues, but Aspen doesn't really care about this and mostly moves from room to room experiencing these dramatic scenes from the sidelines. While Aspen might not care too much about what is going on, the others certainly do. We have Bernard's wife who seems to be suffering from dementia, but also talks about secrets of Bernard's that she's kept to herself all this time. There's his children Shannon, Thomas, Liam, and Dawn, with the latter being something of the black sheep of the family, and the others simply not being very good people in general. And then there's the long-serving maid, the shady lawyer, and a handyman who seems to never actually finish the job that he's for, all hanging around too for good measure. While this isn't a murder mystery in the purest sense, you do get the vibe that there's something dark beneath the surface of each of the characters, and Aspen is just the one to bring all to light.

It begins...

Will he though?

Gameplay comes in the form of doing random cat things. No really, you run, jump on furniture, interact with characters and objects, chase birds and mice, and sometimes even knock over fragile items onto the floor. It just so happens that doing these random cat things also progresses the game. Also, since no one cares about what they say in front of a cat, you'll spend most of your time eavesdropping on conversations and following characters from one room to the next and repeat the process. These dialogue segments come in two forms, random dialogue that can easily be missed if you're not near it when it's happening, and those that take on a cutscene style where Aspen sits and waits for them to be done. Considering how complex the story is, and that so much of the dialogue either occurs only once or sometimes scrolls atomically even in cutscenes, I found myself wishing that so much of it wasn't so easily missable. I'll talk about why replaying sections isn't exactly ideal later, but this made it so that it took me far longer than I initially thought it would to actually get into the swing of things and start to understand what was going on and what I was expected to find out. I guess that this could've been an intentional storytelling element due to you playing a cat, but it still made me wish that information was delivered different if only for the sake of making sense of an already complicated narrative.

A mystery looms...

Thomas Mason you say?

Probably owing to its PC roots, there are also lots of control issues that I never really reconciled during my time with the game. You use the left stick to move Aspen, the right stick to choose between interactable objects nearby, and the L and R buttons to cycle through different actions if they're available. You then use the A button to perform actions, and hopefully you've navigated the first parts to interact with the correct object in the correct way. This can be pretty clunky in general, but it can wreck certain puzzles if you're busy fumbling with them instead of making the next move quickly when timed options become a thing. Most of the time you'll not have to worry about fighting with the controls, but when you eventually do it'll become such an issue that you'll probably consider quitting like I did. Some actions also move the game along atomically, occasionally taking you with it and closing off certain sections of the game forever, this means that completionists can possibly miss memories that seem to have no in-game effect beyond collecting. A big bonus to the game is the hint system you can turn on in the options menu. If you're having trouble figuring out where to go next, or are clicking on everything possible in a single room, you can turn this on to get hints of what to do next. Sometimes these are equally esoteric, and I swear some are timed totally incorrectly to what's going on, but they're a welcome addition that kept me from getting absolutely stuck a couple times.

There are some wild scenes here.

Can it run Doom though?

The large cast of characters is where Cats and the Other Lives really shines, as they're all varied individuals that you'll grow to equally love and hate over the course of the game. The narrative largely focuses on Bernard Mason, but since he's dead you'll only really encounter him as ghostly flashbacks. These flashbacks also feature younger versions of the current cast, and they're things that only Aspen is ever able to see. The other Masons seem to occasionally notice that there might be more than meets the eye, and even that Aspen might be privy to everything that's going on, but they usually ignore those intuitions and go about their way. While the other Mason members are very important too, the Mason Mansion is definitely a character in and of itself, and a very dangerous one at that. Even though most of the room progression comes by way of the human characters, the way doors close behind you, randomly are left open, and how you're sometimes trapped helplessly outside, all seem like the house is trying to get rid of Aspen once and for all. This is also an extremely dark game for its graphic style and might surprise players who might've missed the M rating. There's gore, murder, assault, and even an implied sex scene throughout. Nothing beyond what you'd find in an R-rated horror movie, but it shocked me nonetheless.

What I found most amusing about the game in general is how little Aspen seems to care about what's going on around him. Sure he'll jump and run when he's in danger, and he'll uncover several of the secrets that Bernard would rather remain hidden, but nothing is done for the sake of helping the Mason family. Most puzzles start with Aspen simply chasing something until he accidentally reveals a big secret, and him being present for key conversations and arguments come about because he was simply wandering around as any pet in such a large house would. Even when long cutscenes are occurring Aspen is usually ignoring them and cleaning himself as life and death matters are being discussed. The entire game is Aspen just being a cat, and things happen around him. While a lot of people might say that making a game about a cat should include things like them chasing mice, looking for their next meal, and so on, I think that this general indifference should be considered a key element too. It's hard to put into words, but the way that Aspen seems to genuinely not care about the secrets of the Mason family that he's privy to seems to be the most cat-like thing the game has to offer.

Oh yeah, Aspen has a sort of "kitty sense".

Will is a demon.

Not everything is perfect though as there are several things that keep Cats and the Other Lives from being a great game. First of all there are several action sequences, mainly in the form of chases that are quite annoying and sometimes end in a fail state. There aren't many of these, but they'll be your worst enemy once they show up. I'm not sure why the game would include random speed-based gameplay in a game that otherwise is rather chill and consists of sitting around listening to conversations, but prepare for some parts that will test your patience. What makes these sections worse is the fact that there is no proper save system to speak of, just a series of invisible checkpoints. I actually assumed the game autosaved after every room until I had to stop playing for a minute and turned to game off only to come back to it and realize that I had to go through several unskippable scenes again. You'd think they'd at least fix this checkpoint thing when it comes to the action segments, but you'll find yourself having to replay stretches if you fail them. This makes getting a second chance at these hard sections a chore to even get to, let alone complete. These two things together are enough to drive off players, but there are just as many small annoyances to be had here. There are several time-sensitive puzzles that can require you to leave and re-enter rooms to see them, you're often railroaded into areas and then have to stumble around to find your next objective, some puzzles are near impossible to figure out on your own, and good luck getting memories you may have missed with the save system being how it is. There's not enough for me to say that these things make the game particularly bad, but there was real potential for this to be a near perfect game and I found it frustrating that it fell short in ways that could've easily been avoided.

Did I mention there's a cult?

There's a lot of Egyptian mythology here.

It's a bit hard to talk about graphics here as they aren't exactly the most detailed, but they're still very well-done. Everything from characters to backgrounds are done in a pixelated style, but have a great deal of detail that one doesn't often associate with these sorts of visuals. The fact that none of the main character models actually have faces is a bit odd though, and something that kept me from remembering the rather large cast easily. Also, some of the readable graphics are a bit hard to make out, but the game does usually show these to you in plain text as well. My biggest problem though is that text boxes are pretty small in some settings, such as playing in Handheld Mode on the Nintendo Switch. I played the game exclusively like this and had an extremely hard time reading most of the text, especially when it came in the form of active text boxes that opened and closed on their own. It's not all complaints though, as one area where the graphics really shine is in their animations. All the characters, and Aspen himself, move very smoothly and it's impressive how different actions transition cleanly into other each other. The ghostly characters especially look great in terms of the way they float in on the wind, and disappear as quickly. Like most of the game, there are just a few things that keep things from being near perfect, but there's more positives than negatives here.

I'm usually one who prefers my video game soundtracks to be very... listenable and melody-centric, Cats and the Other Lives takes a far more atmospheric, almost film score approach. Music sounds like it was ripped out of a 90s ghost-filled horror movie, and even comes complete with jump scares that are far more effective than Five Nights at Freddy's fare. I actually didn't realize that this was going to be a horror-themed game until the music cues started to give it away. Some tracks can get a little annoying in difficult sections that you have to constantly repeat, but thankfully these sections aren't too numerous. It goes without saying that even with the sometimes annoying tracks included, everything fits in well when it's there, but there are some moments in the game that go by nearly silent. This is definitely done for mood and atmosphere reasons, but I couldn't help but feel the soundtrack could've filled in some of the holes in sound design. Those "holes" I just mentioned are the sheer lack of many sound effects. I'm actually not sure if I had the sound settings too low (though I never changed the default) but there were several actions that I felt should've had sounds but didn't. I don't want to make it sound like the game has no sound effects at all, just that their implementation felt almost incomplete at times. Also, there is no true voice acting in the game, but I did appreciate the vocal quips and mumbles that served to replace it. There were times where these small bits added more emotion than I think a fully acted scene would've. Sound is a general mixed bag, but I was mostly pleased with it.

Aspen couldn't care less.

This room is weird.

Cats and the Other Lives is a fairly short game, and can be fully completed in about 5-7 hours. Some of the game's harder sequences tend to pad that length out a bit, and they also make it that I don't think I'll ever want to play through the game again. Also, the save system makes it that you're probably better off beating the game in one long playthrough as opposed to multiple sessions. With that said, there isn't really a lot of reason to go through it again. You may want to experience earlier parts of the game with more context, but then you'll have to replay the entire game again, including those frustrating parts. Besides the difficult sections though, the lack of any real in-game save system makes this far less appealing than you would think. Cats and the Other Lives has a really great story, and a cast of characters that I want to learn more about, but there are far too many aspects of the game that make me want to leave the experience in the past and never really think about revisiting it. With that said, the game has a rather low $19.99 price tag, so I still think it's worth that for at least playing through it once. As long as you don't expect this to be a game you'll come back to time and time again, you'll probably get more than enough for its price of admission.

Lorraine is creepy.

Don't mind us ghosts!

I don't think I can give Cats and the Other Lives a blanket recommendation. If you're a fan of adventure games, especially those that have horror elements, then you're probably going to want to check this out as it's quite a unique take on the genre and mostly well-executed. If you've ever wanted to play a game that puts you into the role of a cat, or enjoy the various cat-centered games that have come out in recent years, then you're also probably going to have a good time with this one. Everyone else though? Well, it probably is a matter of whether you can look beyond the annoyances, and the lack of replayability, to dive into a great horror/mystery narrative. For me, I'd say it's worth the experience, but it may not be worth experience the negatives as well. Give it a chance though and you may be surprised. It might even turn you into a cat person if you weren't before!

Check Out Cats and the Other Lives on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cats-and-the-other-lives-switch/

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Story: A+
Gameplay: C
Graphics: B-
Music/Sound: B-
Value: B-

Overall: B-

Pros:
+ A rather shocking and dark horror/mystery game that isn't afraid to own its Mature rating.
+ Awesome pixelated graphics that have smooth animations and environments.
+ Music and sound design are both well-done for the most part and fit the game's atmosphere.
+ Playing as a cat is implemented in every aspect of the game.
+ Has some truly spooky moments and jump scares that don't feel cheap.

Cons:
- While the graphics are well-done, things like text size, and the fact that characters don't have faces, are hard to ignore.
- There are some incredibly touch action sections that are sure to annoy most players.
- Many puzzles are hard to solve without hints, and several are time-based with little indication that you missed a small window of opportunity.
- There is no in-game save system and the checkpoint system leaves a lot to be desired.
- The game can be fully completed in about 5-7 hours, and there is little reason to revisit the game.

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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#CatOL