An age-old battle continues as the mice and cats are still at odds. Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails is an “on-rails” platformer where you as the “buddy” are jumping around from rail to rail shooting mice and saving cats. Under the tutelage of Scram Kitty you will learn the proverbial ropes and move from level to level with one ultimate goal in mind: saving cats with space helmets on.
The mechanics behind operating your rail riding vehicle are fairly simple. You move along with the rail, jump and shoot. Moving and jumping are pretty straight forward; however there is another jump. If you jump and hold the button down while in the air, “buddy” will spin around, become engulfed in flames and be able to damage or defeat enemies on contact in addition to jumping to much greater heights. Learning this technique is of the utmost importance since mice need to be destroyed and rails, power-ups and coins can be at varying distances. This game also does not have checkpoints so play well, or start over.
Very little progress can be made in Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails if you are not saving cats. Unlocking new levels requires a certain number of cats. The cats can be obtained in a number of ways: defeating a Mouse Commander usually results in a cat, a cat often hangs around the exit, collecting 100 coins reveals a one but there’s one more method. There is typically a cat hiding in plain sight and upon making contact it begins to spin and bounce around forcing you to chase after it until it ends up near the exit. Those are my least favorite cats.
Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails is a fun and challenging game. Third party Wii U digital-only exclusives are few and far between so that should give people even more incentive to scratch this cat’s back.
Recommendation*: Worth a buy
Full Disclosure: This game was provided to GameEnthus by the publisher.
Genre: “on-rails” action platformer
Developer: Dakko Dakko
Platforms: Wii U
Price: $9.99
http://www.dakkodakko.com/scramkitty/kitty/index.html
http://GameEnthus.com
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gameenthus-podcast-video-games/id286435007?mt=2
Scale:*
Worth a buy – paying full price for fans of the series or genre makes sense – often includes a caveat
Worth a buy on sale – not quite full price worthy but close, – often includes a caveat
Rent – rent before buying
No – borrow it if you must play it
Please no – Don’t waste any time and/or money on it