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- Ionized Games
- Ionized Games
- Ionized Games
- Ionized Games
CAT Interstellar
Released On: Aug 28, 2015
Metascore
Critic reviews are not available yet
7.2
All Platforms
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Critic Reviews
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User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 6 User Ratings
7.2
33% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
50% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
17% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 6 User Ratings
7.2
33% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
50% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
17% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
While it is far from a perfect game, it is, in my opinion, hard to deny the beauty and amazing concept this game provides. In many ways it seems to be the exact definition of an indie game. Made by likely as few as one person; "CAT Interstellar" exceeds at showing the player that often times, less is more. Taking myself roughly only 2 hours to complete (could have been way shorter but I explored everything), it left me satisfied, and with more questions than when I started. Mostly questions of, "Will the developer have a follow-up? What if this were a larger scale game made by a big name studio? How would we, as a species, approach a feat as large as colonizing Mars?" Nothing which takes away from what this game is.
As stated above, a very small production team of possibly as few as one person designing the game, accomplished quite an impressive feat. Graphics and textures were smooth and believable. Sound design was simple: It's hard to know what Mars sound like, but having some atmosphere it's not impossible to make a guess that it has plenty of wind and sand drifting across plains of open land. Despite there being few voice actors for the NPCs, the VO was actually rather good. I have no complaints. Aside from the graphics, what really impressed me was the music of the game. It was mysterious, yet fulfilling and completely fit the letter for setting the mood for the landscape of Mars.
All in all, I absolutely recommend playing this game. Bought for a mere $4 on Steam, it's not going to put a hole in your wallet like all AAA games do. It's definitely worth the money and (more importantly) your time.
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PC
It's not a full game. It's a demo.
Finished it within an hour. The story abruptly just stops, like you have to buy the full game to get the rest of it.
Except, there is no full game.
I had fun playing though but just keep in mind that you're actually paying for something that's normally a free demo for a complete game.
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PC
Cat Interstellar drew me in by mentioning it was based off of a short story from Robert A Heinlein whose writing I enjoy. The developer was also a delight to deal with on the Steam forums trying to help out whenever they could with issues which is always good to see. I really wanted to like this game and in some ways I did but overall it had too many negatives to recommend it.
The gameplay itself is simple but enjoyable. You play as a Dog class android whose job it is to go down to Mars and investigate missing androids who got lost in some caves as well as optionally help out with other tasks to reveal more backstory. The gameplay is mainly completing tasks like navigating the evnvironment and turning on consoles. The intro to the game brings you to a hub area where you can choose which mission to play. You can play them in order or not. The game is not a long game. I finished the 5 missions in 52 minutes. The story is the real strength as well as a sore spot. I really liked where it was going and the potential of it but I feel it was not explored enough as well as the ending was really abrupt. It leaves many questions that our imaginations aren’t given enough details to really fill in.
I had many crashes when the game was trying to launch over the last several months. It worked fine when I first bought it but then started crashing a while later. I tried several different Linux distros with different kernels and Mesa drivers. Luckily the game started launching again recently so I decided to play through it while I could. The game never crashed once it launched. I quickly realized I couldn’t have my 3 monitors plugged in for this game. If I did when the game launched I couldn’t click on any of the menu buttons and several keys didn’t work properly for the key mappings. For example “W” to move forward would spin me around. After unplugging my 3rd monitor and having just my main monitor and secondary plugged in the problem stopped. The game is locked to 60 FPS. There is an option for Vsync but it still only went to 60 FPS and I couldn’t get it to go to 144 hz like my monitor supports. The game is fluid though as it’s not a fast paced game. It ran at a constant 60 FPS for me aside from a couple moments in the caves where during a cave in it dropped to 48 FPS for a few seconds. Alt-Tab doesn’t work. There are no manual save options but with the short length of the missions and game it’s not really an issue. There are two settings for AA and two other graphics settings to adjust. The game uses the Unreal Engine 4.10 and takes up 6.31GB of disk space.
I think if the story was fleshed out more I would be able to give the game a higher score and recommend it. As it is the crashes, abrupt ending and general lack of polish keep me from doing so. The gameplay is decent, the story is interesting so there are good points to it’s favor and there are enjoyable parts to it. I paid $5.49 CAD for Cat Interstellar and I feel it’s a fair price for it. Had I not had the issues with it that I did than I would have said the $10 range would have been alright as well. This is not a bad game but one that couldn’t realize it’s potential.
My Score: 6.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.0.4 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro 18.0.4 | Mate 1.22.1 | Kernel 5.1.1-2-MANJARO
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Summary Cat Interstellar is a short story-driven science fiction game about humanity’s attempt to terraform Mars. Play as a DOG V4 drone, a newly activated maintenance bot who is assisting in the terraforming effort.
Platforms:
- PC
- PlayStation 4
Initial Release Date: Aug 28, 2015
Developer:
- Ionized Games
Publisher: Ionized Games
Genres:
