I like cats. I'm what you would call a "cat guy". Man. Person. Not that I have a problem with dogs, cats are just more my thing. When Nintendogs came out, therefore, I wasn't really interested. Catz, on the other hand, seemed more my style. With it, Ubisoft attempts to give cat enthusiasts the love they've been lacking since the release of Nintendogs. Of course, their "love" is more akin to the love a caring husband gives his wife when she puts hot soup on his pants instead of in his plate during dinner, so perhaps all of us cat people [it's persons, actually - ed.] should have just switched our affection to dogs before things got so out of hand.

   Catz opens with a fairly lengthy setup, significantly more than one would think is necessary for a game that's simply a cat-raising simulator. It seems our hero is a bumbling elementary school student who just can't seem to interact properly with animals. Before your minds can come up with any number of hideous interpretations of that statement, allow me to clarify by saying he is a klutz with animals: he's always stepping on their tales, tripping over them, and what not. One day while he is wandering sadly through the park, bereft of animal companionship, he meets a young girl with a cat. [I think it would have been much more educational for him had he met a hungry runaway crocodile instead, but alas! - ed.] He once again bumbles things, so the girl suggests he get his own kitten to help him break his bad habit. Apparently she is of the same school of thought as those folks who encourage people who are too scared of heights to get up on a ladder and go skydiving. Anyway, the youngster's parents take little convincing, so the next day it's off to the pet shop! Hurray!

Cat-scratch fever

   So once you've got your cat, you've obviously got to take care of it. Taking care of your cat basically boils down to putting food in front of it when its hunger meter gets into the red, and playing with it at every other available moment. Pretty much any action you direct at your cat will result in it gaining points in its various statistics, which level up when you accumulate specific amounts of said points (yes, that's right, you have to level-up your cat). Instead of Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Charisma, though, your cat has Friend, Mood, Punch (I'm guessing this was meant to be something like "spunk", although it would have been much cooler if your feline had an actual ability to kick ass), and Looks. Grooming your cat upgrades its looks, playing with it upgrades punch, and petting it in various ways [this review is sooo not PG-13! - ed.] seems to effect Mood and Friend. To be honest, though, I never really noticed any of these statistics affect gameplay at all.

   Each action you take eats up a specific amount of time. When it gets around midnight, your mother makes you go to bed in the game (and if you are playing this game, probably in the real world too), so after that you don't get to play with your kitten again until the next morning. [What, no night-time petting? Oh shucks! - ed.] Also, since our hero is an elementary school student, he has to go to school until around four or so during the week, so you're cat is on its own for that time too.

   When you do finally scrounge up some time to be with your cat, there are a couple things you can do with it. You can play with it using an assortment of little doodads that can be purchased from the pet shop. You can stroke it, which is normally the best means of building up you cat's statistics. As you utilize the basic petting techniques [this is starting to look more and more like a resume of a fluffer - ed.]. you'll learn new ones, such as the ear scratch and the belly rub. The fact that your young boy didn't already know how to scratch behind an animal's ear or rub its belly begins to shed some light on why he just couldn't interact with pets before. And you can also feed your cat, although this didn't really seem necessary except when the cat was hungry. Along with the normal food available you'll also be able to give your cat treats, but again, this didn't really seem worthwhile unless the cat was hungry.

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The excitement is palpable!

   And, well, that's pretty much it. Apart from this handful of things, there really isn't anything else to do in the game. You can, of course, just leave your cat alone and let it go about its business, but every time I did that it just started breaking things and pissing all over the place, so that ended very quickly. [It was easily the most entertaining piece of the game while it lasted, though - ed.] On a curious side note, the only time the cat ever went to the bathroom was when I left it alone, and since I only did that once or twice, the cat presumably only urinated and defecated once or twice in the span of two in-game weeks. And it never got sick or anything! That's one feature of this game that I wish my real cats could adopt.

   Seriously, though, there really just isn't anything to do in this "game". [I tried sodomizing my cat with the stylus in the DS version, but that didn't seem to do anything either - ed.] You can, of course, go to the store with your daily allowance (a whopping 300 gold coins! The kid's parents must be loaded! No wonder they're always smiling!) and buy new food and toys for your cat, but using them still just results in the same handful of animations. And let me tell you, apart from your cat, practically nothing else in this game is animated. Having played Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Gunstar Superheroes, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, I am very aware of how many highly detailed objects can be flying around on the Gameboy Advance screen at one time with no slowdown or other hiccups, so the fact that this game contains almost no moving objects apart from a little kitten that trots around seems beyond lazy.

   Don't expect the music to salvage anything either. Sure, one or two of its massive four tracks are somewhat catchy, in that old-SNES-music kind of way, but they loop every couple of seconds and quickly approach a level of irritation akin to Christmas music in a department store post-Thanksgiving. The one made up entirely of synthesized cat meows would make hardened criminals weep like little girls. And rightfully so.

I'm sorry little Timmy, but we're going to have to put Fluffy down. Go fire up the wood chipper.

   Of course, there is also the option of linking up with another Catz-loving fellow so your cats can visit each other. And if one cat is this exciting, I can only imagine how great two of them would be! [kids, this is what is known as 'sarcasm' - ed.] Unless the two kittens fight to the death Mortal Kombat-style I kind of doubt anyone over the age of five will put this feature to use.

   In conclusion, if you love animals, do not play this game. If your children love animals, and you love your children, do not get them this game. If someone you know loves video games, but you hate this person, perhaps giving them this game as a gift would be a good way to end your relationship. Everybody else should steer clear. Very, very clear.

       ... Mike Zeller

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