Action games live and die on their controls. You need that visceral thrill running from your fingers to your brain when you slice, slash and smack your foes into little chunks. And unfortunately, that’s where Cat Killer (download from the …
Action games live and die on their controls. You need that visceral thrill running from your fingers to your brain when you slice, slash and smack your foes into little chunks. And unfortunately, that’s where Cat Killer (download from the App Store and Play Store) falls down.
Your attacks are controlled with swipes and scribbles on the screen, and while it’s certainly an interesting mechanic, in practice it never quite manages to make you feel like the avenging rabbit sword-master that it wants you to.
The game sees you legging it around tight levels, slaughtering evil cats, freeing trapped rabbits and generally getting up to mischief. There’s an isometric perspective that keeps all of the hacking and slashing pretty well framed.
Alongside the swiping attacks you can tap to move, double tap to dash and long press on the screen to fire your hand cannon. Everything works well in isolation, but when combined with the slashing you can feel the game getting out of hand.
While the controls are supposed to simplify things, they actually make everything much more complex. On-screen buttons might not be the best way to play a brawler, but at least they give you some semblance of control – and that’s sorely missing here.
And that’s a shame, because Cat Killer feels like a game you could grow to love. Its little bouts of violence are nicely spaced for mobile play and there’s enough going on to make you want to jump back in for more.
But then you’ll butt up against the controls again, and you won’t really know what’s happening, and that just isn’t good enough. There are some great examples of novel hack-and-slash control systems on mobile, but sadly Cat Killer just isn’t one of them.
