Cute Shoot! Review

The whole hand-drawn graphics gimmick has been done a thousand times before on iOS, yet something about Morten Andersen’s App Store debut, Cute Shoot! (out now, $0.99 Free), still managed to pique this doodle-weary reviewer’s interest. Yeah, you guessed it, it was the game’s utterly crazy plot which revolves around a badass kitty armed with a machine gun mowing down hordes of monsters and trying to rescue his girlfriend who’s been cat-napped!

But while a wonderfully wacky premise, eye-catching monochromatic visuals and an appealing sci-fi aesthetic can’t help but impress, unfortunately, the slapdash shoot ’em up gameplay on offer here doesn’t fare half as well and soon gets tiresome.

The game’s 12 side-scrolling stages all play out pretty much identically with you moseying along from left to right gunning down everything that moves whilst dodging bullets and projectiles. To make matters worse, the already formulaic gameplay is further hindered by technical irritations such as the sluggish movement speed of your character and an intermittently unresponsive virtual d-pad. Me-Ouch!

A handful of inventive boss battles and unlockable timed challenges serve to break up the monotony of crawling at a snail’s pace through samey levels, but ultimately aren’t enough to save this misfiring doodle game from the waste bin. While it’s got the potential to improve with updates, as is, Cute Shoot! comes off feeling like a rough draft of a better, more polished game.

iFanzine Verdict: Cat-astrophic controls and by the numbers gameplay sap the fun out of this quirky side-scrolling shoot ’em up. A shame really because Morten Andersen‘s striking hand-drawn visuals and bonkers characters are pretty gosh-darn cute and deserve a better showcase.