A Cute Little Game

Posted by Bogdan Lazar

Crazy Cat USA iPhone App Review.

Meet Crazy Cat USA - one cute little game that makes use of all your natural skills (logic, memory, common sense, attentiveness) as well as all the features built in your iPhone, from the accelerometer, the Retina Display to its simple touchscreen interface.

Many games in one

Crazy Cat USA is actually a collection of mini-games all wrapped into one. There are over 50 levels where you'll have to help Crazy Cat get around the USA, starting with New York. Some of these levels will require you to find differences between two pictures, catch hotdogs flying in the air, pop balloons, play basketball or race a boat on the water.

The first mini-game of Crazy Cat is actually a mini-mini game. You arrive at the airport and you have to answer a question: Which is the cheapest mode of transportation? Your obvious choices are the airplane, a helicopter and a taxi. Neither are correct. You need to pay attention and see the bag-carrier on wheels in front of the airport. That's your cheapest mode of transportation.

You then move on to another game where you need to avoid traffic while riding on that carrier. Touch the cat at the right time to to jump over the cars. Watch out for the gray cat and how many times you see it, as that will be one of the questions that you'll be asked at the end. And this is where memory comes into play, with the game asking you a variety of questions you need to answer in order to complete the level and move on to the museum.

There's no help section before mini-games, and this works to your disadvantage most of the time. Remember, you only have 7 lives to spare, and most of the times I've wasted one of them figuring out what to do.

Graphics, Sound and Movement

In my opinion, this is where the game seems to disappoint. The graphics seem to be done as to appeal to children 2-8. The colors are playful, the artwork is cartoonish and the sound effects seem to want to calm you down. What really got to me though was the slow movement of the characters. Everything in the game seemed to react to my actions in slow-motion: the cat jumping to avoid traffic, the basketball being thrown or the hotdogs floating in the air.

On the upside, the game uses the full range of the iPhone's capabilities. The fact that you don't know which one you're supposed to use and when in each of the mini-games, however, doesn't help Crazy Cat become a favorite of mine.

Screenshots