Reason videogames are great #5,071: sometimes you just want to be someone/thing else.
Escapism is okay. From the moment we are born, we are locked into our initial character roll. You can change yourself. You can change your situation. You can even change things nowadays that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors (what do you mean you can immigrate to the literal other side of the planet?). But you are always going to be you, and only you. So you can no more truly see through the eyes of another than grow a sword-arm (medical science just isn’t there yet). However, fiction can help! Going back to the first storytellers, a good story can do its best to put you in the shoes of another. Whether you are imagining yourself as another member of your tribe, or some completely fantastical entity that has to worry about problems you would never consider, you can “be” someone else through the transformative power of fiction. And if your imagination is terrible, we as a species have gotten better at capturing your attention. Books! Comics! Music! Movies! Television! And, of course, videogames.
Here on this gaming blog, it is the opinion of Gogglebob.com that we do not need to opine the distinct ways videogames are different from any other medium. Choose your own adventure all you want, you can only truly make choices in a narrative while playing a videogame. And, while noted movie critics and other gatekeepers have declared this to be a reason videogames cannot be art, one may argue that this is the reason that videogames are the truest art available. You are in control, and control demands empathy. Yes, you could be a Grand Theft Auto protagonist and see how much of your new world you can destroy before an unenviable trip to the hospital, but most people play games by game rules.
Actually… wait. Let’s talk about another animal game before we get to our main event…
Goat Simulator has been acknowledged on this site via a tortilla chip. To pay that franchise a few more words, the most recent Goat Sim release, Goat Simulator 3, is basically a mayhem emulator. Yes, you “are” a goat, and mischief is lightly encouraged from the outset with a parody introductory sequence, but the experience quickly ramps up to unreasonable levels. This is a sandbox where you are encouraged to knock over all the preconstructed sandcastles, and your goat is less a quadrupedal mammal and more of a bleating wrecking ball. By the time you put down the controller, your “goat” may have literally become a rhino with a jet pack and laser vision. And I do not think anyone needs to be reminded of the old metaphor of “more dangerous than a laser barfing rhinoceros in a China shop.”
This is a longwinded way of stating that Goat Simulator 3 is a game where you are distinctly asked to not inhabit your goat’s world. Empathy is the enemy, and if you care about your goat running over pedestrians with your stolen goat-mobile, you are going to have less fun. Nobody technically “dies” in Goat Simulator 3, but a whole heck of a lot of people receive some extremely annoying injuries while “you” are capering about. And that’s the fun! You are living in a world with zero consequences for your actions, and the “worst” thing that can happen is simply that you must pause while explosions rock your world. You can literally drop an atomic bomb on a neighborhood while goat simulating, and that nuke’s major impact on the area is a color filter. The planet doesn’t mind! You are invincible! Go nuts!
The titular kitty of Little Kitty, Big City is similarly invincible, but this is a very different world.
Yes, Kitty is invincible: the game starts with Kitty falling multiple stories out of an apartment building, and, like all cats, they land on their feet. You can reproduce that fall again and again later in the game, and no harm will ever come to your main kitty. Similarly, no cars are moving around this city, and the all-threatening dogs are literally all bark and no bite. The worst that can happen to Kitty is being demoralizingly carried away from an area by a perturbed human. And, like all cats, you can be a goatian invincible wrecking ball. Potted plants are meant to be knocked off shelves, wet concrete should forever contain pawprints, and you can steer Kitty to straight up knock over humans so you can heist their bagels, sandwiches, and cell phones. Play in the trash! Disrupt dryers! Cause irreparable damage to a neighborhood arcade! The Big City is yours!
Except… it’s really, really not.
The goat of Goat Simulator can do absolutely anything and break the laws of man, God, and physics alike. Kitty does not have the same freedom. Yes, they can knock jam jars around at a local store, but they cannot cross the tiniest of puddles. Human obstacles, like carelessly placed planters, can permanently block paths and hinder progress. And, while you can technically prance across rooftops and climb buildings, you are literally the smallest kitty in the city, so do not expect to utilize a jump that would humble Mario. You’re just a smol bean! And it is a great big world where crows are continually taking advantage of your shiny collecting skills! How will you ever survive this journey?
And it was right around the seventh time that I was concerned that Kitty wouldn’t make it home that I realized I was empathizing with a digital feline.
Little Kitty, Big City is an amazing game for putting you in the mind of this wee kitty. What we have here is a short game that could be completed in an afternoon. But it is also a game where every ounce of the city and the kitty is brimming with personality and an attention to detail that borders on obsessive. As someone who has been around cats all his life, I can confirm that every time Kitty runs, bats a paw, or squeaks, they look and act like an actual cat. Every moment of Little Kitty, Big City reinforces that you are a kitty with no great superpowers or abilities: just a cat. And that city! Your playground may be small compared to some videogame arenas (let me tell you about my times flying around Metropolis), but you quickly grasp its ins and outs as you zoomy about the place. There is the waterfront, where a cat can beg from a fisherman. There is the construction site, where a helmeted man will shoo you away. There is the playground, where you can ride the slide. This is a reasonable area for a kitty to roam, and… is this what happens when the neighborhood cats get out? Are they stuck in a world where they are just desperate to get home, but they have to perform fetch quests for ducks to survive? Is this the deal for that cat that keeps hanging out on my deck that is absolutely not my cat!?
Seriously, this isn’t my cat. But he is on my front porch, like, every day
Games are art. Games that allow you to experience the life of another being, let alone the life of something outside your own species, are an art all their own. While other mediums can attempt to put you in the mind of their protagonists, videogames do it so naturally, the audience does not even notice. You are the kitty in this big city, and you will have empathy for the lil’ void by the time you are done.
And, hey, you might even have fun, too.
FGC #665 Little Kitty, Big City
- System: Available for Nintendo Switch, Windows, and Xbox X|S|1. I am sure there are some plans for a Playstation version in there. Right?
- Number of players: Just one kitty. There are other cats around, but you cannot play as/with them.
- What’s in a name? Despite the rhyming scheme in the title, I keep calling this one “Little Cat, Big City”. I do not know what is wrong with me.
Solve for Xitty: If you want to say there is a genre to Little Kitty, Big City, we are bordering on “adventure game puzzles” here. The duckling section is where it is most overt, but practically every living creature has an associated riddle that would be right at home in King’s Quest or Monkey Island. A key difference, though? Being friendly with a large potato-dog was already on everyone’s agenda, so these challenges are exceptionally organic.- That one meme: Kitty is afraid of cucumbers, and will jump in shock at seeing them. Remember when that was a thing? And can you imagine trying to explain this to someone a few more years down the line?
- Say something mean: I really like the personality of each of the animal denizens. That said, this is a game that can be completed in four hours, and every critter goes out of their way to establish their personality in an overly long series of speech bubbles. So there is a lot of “cutesy” dialogue frontloaded into the first quarter of the adventure. It is exhausting! I understand why this happened, but it got so bad, I nearly quit before it really began. I just could not take one more ironically misanthropic furry buddy…
- Back to the Good Stuff: Please utilize the nuzzle button responsibly.
- Favorite Animal Friend: Tanuki has broken all of time and space to help you on your adventure. Or she was bored. Whatever! I was expecting another “greedy crow” type character when the raccoon-dog started begging me for feathers, but “bumbling inventor” is a much better archetype. Keep up the good work, Tanuki.
- Did you know? If possible, the stain glass-esque artworks for the Petworks Portals should be seen in higher definition. I would argue this game doesn’t even need a fast travel system (it’s not that big of a city!), but those icons make it worth it.
- Would I play again: Why not? This one is a quickie, and I can totally foresee replaying this just for the opportunity to show it off to another animal lover. And, hey, maybe I just like being a cat sometimes…
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Classic II: Dominique’s Curse! That might be too much of a mouthful for a little kitty, but we’ll give it a try. Please look forward to it!
