Svend Viggo | April 2, 2003

Developer: MK Games / Game State: Old Demo

A game starring Big the Cat. You never thought this was going to happen, did you? At the very least of pointers, what the heck can you do with such a game? Make the slightly dense purple cat go fishing all afternoon? No, that would not make for an enjoyable afternoon, and was the bane of the entire Sonic Adventure of Dreamcast.

But, up comes MK Games, who challenge us with a new principle. Who’s to say that the fishing rod can’t be used for anything other than fishing? This is where the ingenuity and innovation for Big Adventure comes in. In the form of the fat cat himself, you’re sent around various levels to find Froggy, who goes off on an adventure of his own to have some fun. The graphics are very nice – a tad basic perhaps, but the aura of Big kind of portrays a simple atmosphere anyway.

As it stands, there are two functions – jump and the fishing rod. The jump can’t get Big very far alone, and it’s the fishing rod that really comes into its own in this game. Big shoots off the lure like a boomerang, casting back to him any items or enemies that happen to be in its line of shot. Enemies get destroyed, whereas rings are collected. Simple, yet so ingenious. You can also get trick points for linking your lure to more than one item or enemy in one shot.

Not only that but Big can get up high ledges using the rod and can swing past chasms using hooks at the top of the screen. There’s an amusing “Like Big / Hate Big Mode” also incorporated into the game – depending on what you selected, Big’s death animation will be more or less humane.

As we can gather from this one level demo, this game is on the right tracks to being a winner. As there was options for a possible 2 Player mode, we can only hope MK Games don’t bodge that up – we haven’t any specific details on how this will work (Big and Froggy perhaps), but a cack multi-player could ruin an original title. All we can say is that MK keeps up the pace, and makes the later levels a little more taxing and complex.

Playtest Results

Should developers need any guidance on what’s going well for them and what needs to be changed to make it better, then they can check this out to get a good idea. Since we play these Fan Games non-stop, we can give you an honest look into what’s cool and what needs sorting out.

WE LIKE
+ Original Gameplay Spin on Big the Cat
+ Humour Guaranteed
+ Tight Gameplay Mechanics

WORTH CONSIDERING
- 2 Player Mode? Is it necessary?
- Keep up the debugging – some glitches were still present.
- More complex levels.