Kittypocalypse Review – HTC Vive

Back in June we reviewed Kittypocalypse for the Oculus Rift, and we loved it for its simplistic, addictive, guilty-pleasure approach to tower defense.  The game has just released on the HTC Vive and while we would normally just add a paragraph or two to the existing review, so much has been changed and improved that we decided to post a semi-fresh review with an updated score.

Anyone who knows me knows I am NOT a “cat person”. Part of that is my intense allergies of cats and part is my realization that cats don’t need humans…they tolerate us. So, when you give me a game like Kittypocalypse that lets me mow down thousands of cats with lasers, mines, and machineguns it takes considerable effort to conceal the smile on my face. In all fairness these are not real cats. They are aliens wearing adorable kitten costumes so they can infiltrate and take over the planet. Holy crap…they are REAL cats. I knew it!

Honestly, from the elevated camera angles you will mostly be playing Kittypocalypse from, you won’t know what you are blowing up. They could just as easily be Raving Rabbids, assuming Ubisoft had thought of this game first. Which leads me to my first question; do we really need a tower defense game in VR?

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of the tower defense genre. I find it a bit repetitive and frustrating, but the implementation of VR is actually what kept me coming back to Kittypocalypse long after I would have normally bailed, and it’s not even the 3D visuals – honestly the visuals are pretty bland for the most part with the exception of some texture and design work on the individual turret weapons. What kept me playing was the interface and the effortless control system that made micromanaging numerous turrets a complete joy.

While the game remains the same the way you play it drastically changes when you start up Kittypocalypse in Vive mode.  I was a bit nervous about how this game would play with the twin motion controllers but after about two minutes on the first level I don’t think I could ever go back to a controller again.  The wands are replaced with Kitty-specific controls colored blue and orange to match the game’s primary colors.  All the buttons and pads get virtual colored backlighting, and they even replaced the Vive logo with one that says Meow.

Playing the game is so much easier now with the Vive.  Virtual lasers emit from the controllers allowing you to move with the left wand and point with the right.  Moving around the battlefield is a dream now.  You can use the left touchpad to step around the landscape in any of four direction or, best of all, you simply hold down the left trigger and move your hand around to move the entire 3D modeled terrain around your room-scaled area, so instead of you moving you are moving the world.  If you want a ground-level view just drag the entire world up to your chin or push down toward your waist for a bird’s eye view.

Your real-time HUD info is now displayed as overlays on virtual screens added to the controls, which is so much easier to read than the Oculus where you had to look down at your nose to read the info line.  The left screen shows the wave timer and earned cash while the right screen shows contextual info about whatever you happen to be pointing to.  My only issue with the new interface is that the Build/Upgrade menu wasn’t centered properly in my view and when I turned my head to use my pointer the menu would keep moving too, forcing me to make most of my selections out of the corner of my eye.

Gameplay is fairly simple and totally intuitive while winning is challenging and completing all the optional challenges is next to impossible, but you will certainly want to try because that is how you unlock the bigger and better weapon upgrades. There are several weapons to choose from ranging from gatling guns to laser turrets, mine layers, and this fun weapon that puts an anti-grav bubble around the cats and sends them skyward so your turrets can engage in some aerial target practice. There are over 50 upgrades available for these weapons allowing for increased damage, area of effect, and other bonuses.

All this cat carnage is spread across 15 unique islands that mix up the flavor of the battle as well as certain terrain elements that factor into your strategy. Some weapons have unique line of sight fire, so you have to check their area of effect when placing and choosing upgrades. Some turrets work better when side by side with others. There is an amazing amount of depth and strategy involved that starts off easily enough then ramps up the difficulty by the third island when the cats catch on to your plans.

At first the cats try to overwhelm you with numbers, and then they get sneaky. They’ll come at you wearing various bits of armor like cardboard boxes, metal boxes, and even a brick chimney. This is when you need to start mixing up and upgrading your turrets fast because before you know it the aliens will send in multiple waves of cats, some to distract your turrets while these other fast cats race past your defenses to infiltrate your base.

Your base consists of a recessed circular platform with numerous slots. If cats make it safely into this pit, they will take position against the wall and one of the segments will light up. If enough cats make it into your base and light up the entire ring you will lose the battle. There are also sub-challenges for finishing a level and not losing more than a certain number of slots.

While seemingly simple in design there is a lot of trial and error trying to figure out which weapons work best against which cat, and that is where the shooting gallery comes in handy. Between missions you can head to this indoor facility and pick from all your unlocked weaponry and choose your type of cat to learn all about them in the database then see how to kill them the fastest.

The HTC Vive support for Kittypocalypse just makes a good game even better.  While it is possible to play the game seated like I did with the Rift, standing in the middle of my play area towering over a miniaturized battlefield in my room-scale space made me feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in those Mobile Strike commercials.  The Vive controls made interacting with the world so much more intuitive and integrating the HUD info into the controllers puts that data right where I need it.

If you love turret defense games and/or dislike cats, then there is a lot to like about Kittypocalypse. What seems like a casual installment in the tower defense genre turns out to be a surprisingly engaging and totally addicting strategy game that doesn’t work in spite of VR but rather works better because of VR. As I said in my Oculus review, the only things that could make this game better was if they had some awesome 3D fireworks at the end of each victory…and THEY STILL DO!!!  And they look even better when you’re standing.

Screenshot Gallery