Crazy Catman | a Review
originally published on 22/10/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the strangely feline G.E.M.Simov, a russian plant that’s here to tell you about Crazy Catman, a russian project that aims at turning all western men into catboys.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
The way this game works is relatively simple. The Player has access to the Arrow Keys for movement, the P key to pause the game and Z, X and C to do business with the Player Character (PC)’s weapons. Z would be to shoot with the currently selected, which is the weakest and starting weapon, X would be to go back in the selection and Z would be to go forward in the selection.
So, this game is a side-scroller (but you can go backwards). You (The Player) go left and right with the Left and Right arrow keys, and you can jump with the Up arrow key (as well as the Spacebar). With the Down arrow key, you get to drop from ledges, or, rather, to go down in the levels, as they have many floors.
So, then, maybe the game isn’t a side-scroller, but a Metroidvania. You have a set amount of health, you have access to different weapons (not at the start of the game), you have a limited amount of ammo that you ought to replenish whenever you get the chance to, you’ve also got some collectibles in need of collecting (bananas, for some reason). Those collectibles tend to indicate that you SHOULD go back through the levels to find them all, seeing as they are there, and there’s a counter counting down all the collectibles…
However, it isn’t the case, because this game lacks consistency. See, on the very first level, there is a roof upon which the Player can climb. There is no indication that this roof is in any way different from other roofs, so the Player then goes back to the first roof they’ve encountered and tries to climb it, only to find out that it behaves differently - as in, it can not be stood upon - to the climbable roof. That’s not good.
This weirdness doesn’t stop there. There are enemies (as one would expect) and then there are also red exploding barrels. Strangely enough, some enemies can shoot (I know, right?) but then their projectiles blow up the exploding barrels… Even if the enemies that are shooting are right next to them. That’s… That’s weird placement, at the very least, and a massive oversight.
On the topic of enemies, they’re relatively varied. There’re green-coats, who have 3 health (due to the fact they take 3 shots to kill with the pistol) and do damage by touching you, there’re swat dudes, who have 6 health (guess why) and fire 3 shots with their rifle, which means they can get you at a distance… And here’s the problem.
They tend to start firing as soon as you’re within a certain range of them, but that range seems to never be the same. In some cases, the PC can stand in such a spot that they can see the swat dude, they can fire bullets at and kill the swat dude, but the swat dude will not shoot at the Player. In other cases, a similar positional situation does not yield the same results. That’s… That’s messed up.
In addition to that, what is messed up is that bullets disappear if you can no longer see them, that is if they are no longer on screen, meaning that you need to constantly have sight of the enemies you want to kill, which most often means you need to be within their range of activation, or their range of aggression, to be able to do damage to them, which means you need to deal with the shots fired.
Now, if this game controlled smoothly, this would not be an issue, but there’s a lot of jank to Crazy Catman. Main source of jank - camera placement. The PC is not situated in the center of the screen, but rather in one corner - slightly - so that the part of the level being faced by the PC is more visible. If we were to say that the screen was split into 9 squares (and the screen was a square), rather than the PC being in the middle square - where it should ideally be - the PC is situated in between the middle and the southwestern square, if it were facing to the left, or between the middle and the southeastern square, if it were facing to the right.
That means more is visible in the directions Up and Left, if you’re looking left, but a lot less is visible Down and Right. That’s a bit problematic, because when you’re dropping from a ledge, you don’t get to see the goon you’re falling on top of. When you’re walking down a flight of stairs, you barely get to see the goon you’re walking into.
The jank in relation to the controls comes from the fact that whenever the Player turns, the camera moves as well, taking away a lot of what might have caused the player to Turn, making things feel… Wrong. What contributes to that is the slowness of the PC, the sluggishness of the jumps and the underwhelming rate of fire. It does not feel really good to play this game.
Then, there’s the fact that you’ve got 3 hits and you’re dead. The means of restoring one’s health in Crazy Catman are very limited, so you’ve got to play very safe and very well, otherwise you take the L and replay the entire level. That’s not very fun.
Let’s get back to collectibles. So, how do you finish a level? By collecting all the bananas in that level. They, fortunately, tend to be 5, but it’s a very weird means of going about level completion. There’s ammo, which restores ALL of the Player’s ammo, on all of their guns. That’s neat. Weirdly enough, there are power-ups that barely do anything - one of them makes you move slightly faster… Either way, those are underwhelming too.
Lastly, the Player accumulates coins and stars from killing enemies. At the end of each level (or the start of each next level) they’re taken to a store screen where they can buy new guns with the coins they’ve accumulated. The new guns are okay-ish, though some are just fire-rate improvements over the pistol, which is not that fun.
Overall, the game gets that. It’s not that fun, but it’s not… It’s not BAD bad, but it’s really not fun. As a result of that, I did not want to finish it, at all. That’s a very bad sign. 1/3
Presentation
Crazy Catman does not look all that good, but it doesn’t look bad. It has this mediocre appearance that isn’t horrible, but one can see that it wasn’t all that masterfully crafted. As mentioned previously, there’s no indication which roof is walkable and which one isn’t, there’s no good indication of what power-ups do - one speeds you up, even though it looks like cough syrup, another makes you… Well, it makes you something, but what, exactly, does it make you? Who knows.
There’s barely any indication that an enemy has spotted you - an example would be the swat goons, they do an animation where they shift slightly as if to prepare to shoot, but then it doesn’t matter if they haven’t done this animation, they can start shooting immediately, so it’s not indicative of what they’ll do.
Sound effects are just there, leaning more towards bad than good, and the musical score that’s come in is monstrously repetitive rock that’s pretty uninspired. Considering these misgivings and the unfortunate issues that plague its presentation… 1/3
Story
You (The Player) are the Crazy Catman. You’re swooning over a catlady, when a big ol’ flying slime shows up and takes her away. You take out your gun (illegally owned, due to the fact that the police/the army arrives on the scene and tries to stop you) and go after the slime.
You then go through a massive number of levels, killing largely the same goons, and finally get to the end where you kill the big boss and get the cat lady back. It’s there, it’s nothing special, it kinda does its job, but it still doesn’t really work. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No. I almost felt bad about this game, but then I looked through its community page and it appears as though it had some… Issues, such as collecting your personal data… Maybe even looking for credit card information! So don’t… Don’t play this. Fortunately, it’s no longer on the Steam Store, so that’s a boon. 0/1
Conclusion
3/10. This is garbage. I’m almost certain this was made as a means of getting at furry money, or as a means of fooling unwise parents into buying it for their kids, only to then scrub their computers clean of any information that could be obtained. Don’t play this game - even if you can’t do so through Steam anymore. It’s a BAD idea to do this, so just don’t. If you do want a game that’s kinda like this, play Commando (the flash game).
The Wall of Shame greets this one. It’s vile and horrible.