Obviously a really bad version of the game, I can absolutely see why this had such a miserable reputation during its time. Particularly the hitboxes being so unforgiving to the point ghosts can kill you when you're practically in another lane is rough. (Combined with the hitboxes on the pellets being bad in the exact opposite way, borderline phasing through you) The screeching sound FX, the flickering visuals...Some would consider this an assault on the senses, perhaps most but I'm a virtual boy stan.

Still, 40 years removed from the context of what made this so offensive during its not so glorious days...This is just a goofy lil' oddity that I get a kick out of. I've played so many versions of Pac-Man why do they all have to be good? There's merit to a version of a game being different to the other 20 releases of the same game. (Seriously, type in Pac-Man into the search bar lol) Taking bad design elements as they are and just accepting they're part of the mechanics can be fun. Obviously there's nothing to really praise here and it's not gonna keep anyone entertained very long when they could play more accessible, better made versions of the same game. But this is so different than anything they'd allow to be preserved in the modern era, that I kind of wish they'd let it chill in a modern compilation someday.

If I rated this on how good of a port it is, I'd definitely have to lean significantly lower. But as a game it's just Pac-Man. Not anywhere near as good but it's fundamentally still playable, at least to a casual degree. At least it lets you change the speed of the ghosts and Pac-Man, helps find a balance that you're happy with.

I think the popularity of this game says more about the GAPING hole in the multiplayer space after Esports took over than anything. Some non-competitive multiplayer gaming? What a novel concept we've barely seen explored in the last decade despite it once being a legitimately big part of the early internet days. We're all trained by social media to fight each other, and we're all meant to be stomping each other and fighting our teammates for not stomping good enough in online games.

Something a bit more uniting than that feels great right now, and the the cheesy over the top American propaganda set dressing sets the mood superbly. The gameplay has enough texture to it to remain fun for a surprising length despite how repetitive the game ultimately is. Specifically I'm a fan of how the aiming feels, where you're not simply hovering a reticle over enemy and clicking, your character is physically moving the gun around separate to the reticle. Kind of hard to explain but you feel it right away, and I think it feels really good and grounds the experience in a way that feels unique and polished. Helping that feeling is the disposable nature of you and your teammates. The player character feels very fragile, especially because of friendly fire being a major mechanic to worry about. It's another wrinkle that keeps the game feeling fun and engaging. Along with some other really cool ideas, like how every airstrike or support drop you call in has its own button combination you have to type in real time (Including respawn capsules to bring some more soldiers in after you accidentally blew some up). Or the real time-map showing how the battle against the communist alien scum is going. Every element combines in a really coherent way that makes the whole package feel really well thought out.

In the end I think if I really grinded this game out for another hundred hours and followed it extremely closely every step of the way for the next year, I'd come out a little less enthused. But what I was presented was still loads of fun. So many online games trap you in fomo loops and BEG for you to engage with it nonstop for as long as possible. And what's worse is it feels like if a game DOESN'T successfully eat up an entire year of our lives it's seen as a failure, a flash in the pan. I wouldn't be surprised to see player counts drop as there's not really a great amount of progression, what's there is mostly REALLY slow and most of the unlockable cosmetics are pretty unimpressive. In the current online gaming climate that's seen as the ultimate failure, to not milk the playerbase dry for an indefinite amount of time...But I truly hope this game can survive that and remain a game people can hop on and enjoy every once and a while for years to come. It's perfectly normal and healthy for a game to come out that DOESN'T demand you put 300 hours a year, climbing the ranks and hating yourself the entire time.

I could very easily come at this game from a more pessimistic angle, and say it's painfully repetitive and it's kinda hard to care about recapturing the same empty wastelands ad nauseum. I do think they really gotta add some more enemy factions and mission types to keep people engaged. But at the same time I'm not really a "content" guy. The core of the game is fun, adding in more stuff to repeat until you get bored doesn't really make the game better it just means you might be able to play it longer before getting tired of it, assuming you don't already drop the game before any major updates come out. Which is a harsh-sounding way to say it's okay for a game's hype to ease off after the honeymoon period. I worry people might turn on this game as just a fad. Similar to how people did after they got 300 hours of enjoyment out of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Idk why I'm being weirdly defensive and trying to get ahead of the hate for a game who's flaws I could easily dig into myself. I just think the online game space is a little unhealthy for all parties involved these days and I'm struggling to articulate that in a non-rambly way at 1 in the morning. Maybe I'm just bitter because half of what I get into these days are dead on arrival online games who's biggest reason for being hate on is that they're perceived as dead for not reaching top of the charts. Also social media can't help but mock every flavor of the month game for a dropping playerbase no matter the context, as though people getting 50+ hours of enjoyment and moving on with their lives is somehow something to be ashamed of.

Anyway cool game, I hope this along with stuff like Lethal Company signal a shift in online gaming to be a little less miserable and more like the good old days back when Club Penguin existed. Will updates make this game consistently fun to follow? Maybe, maybe not, either way this slaps.

I've been on a bit of a negative streak with my reviews. Time to lighten the mood with a wholesome pallet cleanser. I thought the writing was enjoyable, and exploring around was a lot of fun. What makes this game work for me I think is how a majority of it is truly just exploring for the sake of experiencing more of the game. You can rush through and finish the main mission and roll credits extremely quickly if you want. But the game's about roaming around being a lil' kitty in a big city. Perfect gamepass game to brighten my gaming mood. Love that despite initial impressions making me assume this would be a goose game mixed with stray type thing, it was able to stand out on its own ultimately not sharing much beyond surface level observations with those two. Cat-likes haven't become oversaturated yet thank goodness.

It's a tad buggy, and normally I wouldn't even bring something like that up because I genuinely do not care. Bugs don't bring a game down imo. Gamers gotta stop pretending they're professional game critics 'cuz they saw a Glitchy animation and pointed it out on youtube with an arms-crossed sighing PNG looking at the footage. But uh, I do bring it up this time because the game glitched so hard that taking a picture in the camera mode warped me to the ending cutscene and put the game in a bugged state where the cat was spinning rapidly during the credits. So that should probably be fixed lool. It happened consistently when taking a screenshot while running around a human's feet. After I'd already seen the ending, doing this again would just fade to white. While it was white screened, 20 seconds later I got an achievement for knocking someone over by landing on their head. Wild stuff lol. Otherwise small thing to note is the collision can be a tad wonky, but I'll gladly take that over every jump being hard scripted uncharted style.

But yeah loved all the little hats you could find, characters and their quests were charming enough to hunt down and complete. Fun list of achievements to figure out. A couple of 'em were a bit too grindy, most were fine but asking to recycle 100 cans is a tad overkill. I think the industry could use some more games like this. Small but packed with love. Absolute breath of fresh air after a lot of these obscenely long games I've been trudging through lately.

It also let me live out the fantasy of living in a walkable city. I live in an automobile infested nightmare where even on any given quiet street you'll see, no exaggeration, 50+ cars lined up and down the entire road on both sides, with any notable destination being 10+ miles in any direction... So that's a plus on a personal note. Big Car doesn't want you to realize cities can be small enough for little kitties to explore. Similar to how Big Game doesn't want you to realize we could be getting smaller games with "worse" graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and we'd all be happier for it.