Cat Quest III (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £15.99)
Verdict: Feline good
Yo ho ho and a bottle of… milk?! Yes, milk is right. Because the pirates in the third Cat Quest game are — as the title suggests — of a feline persuasion. After earlier quests in fantasy kingdoms, our whiskered buddies are now setting sail on the high seas to discover the fabled North Star treasure ahead of a bunch of nefarious rodents.
Like the previous Cat Quests, the gameplay in this one is simplicity itself. Almost too simple. Your cat goes from island to island, solving straightforward puzzles and defeating ’roided-out rats by cutlass, flintlock and cannon.
As you progress, you gain better and better equipment, readying you for tougher challenges. There’s nothing revolutionary here.
Like the previous Cat Quests, the gameplay in this one is simplicity itself. Almost too simple. Your cat goes from island to island, solving straightforward puzzles and defeating ’roided-out rats by cutlass, flintlock and cannon
What is here, though, is a whole load of polish. The cartoon-Caribbean world of Cat Quest III looks and feels tremendous. The gameplay is so smooth that you just want to keep on questin’ on.
Oh, and there’s plenty of charm too. There’s barely a cat- or pirate-related pun that the game doesn’t mine. Fur real. And that childish exuberance stretches to its characters and missions; you can’t help but smile at a dog asking you to exchange letters between two lovelorn starfish.
What makes it even better is the ease with which you can switch between one-player and two-player adventuring. I played alongside my three-year-old — one of his first proper gaming experiences — and now he can’t stop talking about pirate cats and baddie mice.
I’m sure that, when he goes asleep, he dreams, too, of one day finding the North Star treasure.
Cygni: All Guns Blazing (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £24.99)
Verdict: Blast off!
Hoo boy, this isn’t your grandfather’s game of Space Invaders. Certainly, it shares some of the constituent parts: a top-down view of a spaceship taking on wave after wave of alien invader. But where the retro-classic was simple in look and design, Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a riot of colour and complexity. Explosions! Speed! Literally thousands of belligerent ETs!
It’s also amazingly cinematic, and not just because there are beautifully animated interstitial sequences telling the story of the main character, a fleet pilot called Ava, as she battles determinedly against seemingly insurmountable odds.
All Guns Blazing is a riot of colour and complexity. Explosions! Speed! Literally thousands of belligerent ETs!
Cygni’s beautiful cosmic warzones are enough by themselves to pull you back in, but battling through to the end of them is even more satisfying. It’s one ship against thousands. ET, go home
The levels themselves are full of detail and invention, with soldiers advancing across the ground beneath you, and terrifying, megalithic monsters rising to block your way.
If this makes Cygni sound like a game of style over substance… well, yes and no. It certainly is extremely stylish, but its gameplay is also enjoyably tactical. While whizzing around the screen, you’ll be making a dozen micro-decisions a second — about whether to power up your weapons or your shields; about whether to shoot at the ground or into the sky; and so on.
And you’ll need to make those decisions correctly. While Cygni is easy enough to get into — with a limited set of moves, all neatly explained in a Space Invaders-referencing tutorial section — it does get pretty difficult when the laser blasts start flying. These are levels that you’ll have to try, try and try again.
Thankfully, though, you’ll want to. Cygni’s beautiful cosmic warzones are enough by themselves to pull you back in, but battling through to the end of them is even more satisfying. It’s one ship against thousands. ET, go home.
