Review: Cat’s Request (Nintendo Switch)

Here’s the pitch. “What if Blade Runner, but kitties?”

I know what you’re thinking. “About freaking time!”

Cat’s Request is a point-and-click adventure set in a near-future world. The city streets are cast in darkness and lit by neon, where a lone wanderer (Ash) is in a rush to save his faithful assistant (Root).

Root is a computer program, and desperately needs a body. The problem is that Ash is dead broke, and everyone who could help him is, rather unhelpfully, stuck behind a series of locks and puzzles that require a very specific set of objects to be applied.

Yes, it’s one of those > USE GOLDFISH ON JANITOR’S HAT games, where you’re meant to run around to varied locations, picking up objects and interacting with weirdos to find out what they need so that they’ll open the door to other locations. It’s a nonlinear game where the exploration and trial-and-error application of objects is the point.

The world of Cat’s Request is intriguing, and I’m not joking when I say that it’s the Neo-noir of William Gibson mixed with I Can Haz Cheeseburger. Everything is tinged with an Asian flavor, and the glowing lights project a world that advanced to the point of holograms to advertise restaurants, then gave up.

The problem is that everything that moves is animated like a mobile game, with only one or two expressions. Walk or run, and it’s just a matter of two character frames moving at different speeds. Call for a flying taxi, and it’s a still image of the vehicle landing, then your character fades out. This is hardly a knock against Cat’s Request in particular, since it seems like most games have adopted this style, I’m just not a fan of it.

You’ll spend a lot of time retracing your steps in Cat’s Request (as you do with a lot of point and click games), trying to figure out which objects work with what characters. Another twist is that you’re able to switch control to Root, who can interact with computers (sometimes) to allow you to hack into systems to look for anomalies.

The design of Cat’s Request, both its look and levels, is fun enough to keep you off-balance. The noir mood is occasionally spoiled by ridiculous quests to make money by cleaning up a bar, recording music, and looking for recipes (aren’t I supposed to be a gritty detective?), as well as off-the-wall elements like traveling through space to harvest satellites.

In the end though, it’s kind of hard to care about what’s happening. Finding weird ways to use objects is always a good time in point-and-click adventures, but the objectives all felt more like a grocery list than the most important mission in these characters’ lives.

And keep a walkthrough open; it’ll be handy for pointing out objects in the background with which you didn’t know you can interact.