Smash Cat Heroes

Game Info

For the second day in a row we bring you a Nintendo eShop title centered on cats doing people things. Yesterday it was skateboarding, now its samurai warfare! Smash Cat Heroes is a hack and slash game from Japanese developer Tom Create where the player fights off wave after wave of enemy cats culminating in a boss battle to end the stage.

The story involves rival clans of cats battling across Japan in search of a legendary cat food. Each character (you begin with three) has their own storyline told to you before each stage. Yoshitsune is the Ryu archetype of the game, solely looking for strong opponents, Yoritomo, his brother, seeks out his lost Super Cat Food that grants “all the power in the world,” and Kiyomori is the head of the rival clan and is looking to take the cat food for himself.

Even though the stories of the characters are different, the stages themselves are uniform for all characters. Your chosen warrior stands in the middle of an arena that encompasses both screens. This can get dicey at times, as the space in between your screens is a playable area, and more times than I care to admit I was sneak-attacked by a hidden enemy. Sadly, there is little to no travel during the actual gameplay. You simply stay in the area until you defeat all the enemies.

At first glance, the mechanics of the game are very shallow and boring. Of the three starting characters, two of them use swords and have very short range attacks. I should say attack, as there is one simple attack animation. At the end of a combo (if you can call it that) you perform the same attack with a slight power boost that knocks the enemies away. The third character used bombs at a slightly safer distance, and was easily the most fun to play. Instead of repeating his normal attack for bonus damage, he lobs a bomb across the screen like a bowling ball.

There is a touch of spice to the combat, however. You can do the power attack at any time by holding the attack button (Y) down briefly. Hold it longer and you can expend some of your energy gauge to do a Link style spinning attack. Fill your energy up enough and you can press the A button to perform a Super Attack that is unique to its character or with the X button, activate a power boost that gives you a dramatic speed and attack increase until your energy runs out. There is also a weaker version of the spin attack that you can do, but the 360 d-pad input for it is so picky that it is impossible to rely on. There is a dash mechanic (B button) but like everything else, it expends your energy gauge. By the time you’ve escaped your precarious position, you’re about out of energy and need to recharge (L + R buttons), and by time you’ve recharged, you’re surrounded again!

The combat, although somewhat shallow and definitely repetitive, is actually pretty passable. The real problem with the game lies in the lazy graphics and animations. The title graphic is pretty generic, and splash image of all the characters is equally bad. Then the bottom screen instructs you to “Purress the A Button!” to start. Ugh. I was given some high hopes after that, however, as the character select images look fantastic and stylized and the music is pretty nice. That quickly gets washed away as you begin the actual game. The stage background is a single, flat, static image that reminds me of something I would have played on my T-Mobile Sidekick years ago. The enemy design is bland and full of color swaps. The bosses are more of the same, only with slightly bigger heads and the enemy animations are bouncing at you, bouncing in place, or bouncing while a sword/spear/arrow animation plays in front of them as an attack. The battle music loud and obnoxious and since most of the sound effects consist of the kitten enemies mewing, I typically play with the sound off. This game makes absolutely zero use of 3D or touch screen capabilities, which was a bit sad. Touch functionality really could have brought some much needed life into this game.

The Recommendation

Smash Cat Heroes is not even close to the top of the heap in its genre. Honestly, its best feature is that it only takes a few seconds to get into the actual game play, making it a decent time-filler when you only have a few minutes to spare. If you’re specifically looking for some quick, mindless action against numerous waves of enemies – or maybe you need a game for young children with a short attention span who want to use your 3DS for a moment – this isn’t the worst you could come up with. Though, the $3.99 price tag might send you to the App Store or Android Market to fill that niche for a much cheaper price on a different device.