Japan has seen its fair share of crazed destruction through a never ending slew of anime porn and giant robots, but just when you thought lolcats couldn’t get any crazier than tackling Godzilla in the nether regions, Happy Cat appoints a legion of ramen noodles and rice balls to tear down Tokyo alongside zombie children and teen pop-star superheroes. If an invisible issue of glamour girl chasing you down the street with a barrage of homing missiles isn’t enough to get the blood pumping, fist boxing an overly ripe squid while dodging phaser lasers from a secondhand R2-D2 might do the trick. Or everything will just blow up in smoke, as usual.
The world is just a bit too happy. Happy Cat, sullen with the idea of pink rainbows and cheery children, decides to travel back in time to undo the good of the world. Taking the streets of Tokyo in a touchscreen frag fest, you’re tasked with competing in a series of hamster wheel vs. vending machine vs. punk rock badass deathmatches in the hopes of collecting enough Happy Points to survive into the next round. Thus exists Meow Meow Happy Fight HD.
I still don’t know what the hell the aim of the game is. But I do know that between the speed powerup and my closest enemy, an explosive barrel is just waiting to be shot at. Drifting and dodging between the colorful assortment of cannon fire, I position my enemy in the kill zone. Pow! Right in the kisser. The canister bursts into a giant fireball, earning me some well deserved Happy Points from my fallen enemy.
Happy Points (erm, Pickups) are random collectibles dropped when you or your opponents are defeated in battle. Tofu, overalls, and watermelon slices are just a few of the many yummables you can earn, though the effect is the same. Not only do these tokens replenish health, they give you the opportunity to spend hard earned points on new characters that’ll help you progress through rather short campaigns.
The game itself doesn’t take long to complete between Arcade mode (deathmatch) and Happy mode (must collect target amount of Happy Points first), though replay value exists in collecting enough points to unlock all of the characters and pimping out your own custom avatar (which is basically the ability to use any previously unlocked character with custom stats). It only took me an hour and thirty minutes to best my AI controlled opponents, and another forty minutes to complete Happy Mode with a character maxed out in firepower, speed, and armour.
Meow Meow Happy Fight HD has some ridiculous graphics that are as smooth as butter. Gameplay flows well provided your virtual joysticks don’t move on you as you reposition your thumbs. To aid in combating your fiercest foes, there is an auto-aim option that helps quite a bit (but come on - man up and manual override those aim controls). Honestly, these are probably some of the best joystick controls for the iPad.
It’s certainly one of the more frantic titles I’ve played on the iPad lately, if only for the enjoyment of blasting possessed lanterns and flesh eating zombies into oblivion. Maybe I did get frustrated when the brainless cat ball took my quad damage Happy Pickup then proceeded to mow me over with a flurry of bullets…or it could have been that time when the I respawned into an opponent’s freeze blast and was procedurally shattered. Equally unforgiving are the bomb-tards constantly whittling away your life in combat. Certainly you’re not given a moment to breathe.
The polish on this game is pretty fantastic, though with such a short campaign, one might overlook the plentiful abundance of achievements that can be found at the main menu (I have none thus far). Multiplayer would be an excellent addition, thanks in part to its competitive nature and immersive in-game draw.
Big Pixel Studios produces titles that sport equally fun and original artwork that’s bright and engaging. Writers occasionally look to these mindless yet explosive titles to unwind from a day’s work, and we know you could certainly step away from those spreadsheets once in a while. We’re gonna give away three promocodes so you too can take rampage through Tokyo’s arcades and kill an afternoon’s worth of productivity.
The Giveaway Rules
We have 3 promo codes of Meow Meow Happy Fight HD to give away.
To enter the giveaway, hit the Twitter button at the top of this page before 11.59 PM PDT (October 19th). We will search Twitter.com for tweets and retweets and randomly pick up the winners.
Make sure to follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter so we can send you a direct message with the promocode of the app you won.
If you want to increase your odds of winning, you can also leave a comment to this post. Tell us why you’d like to win a copy of the app, and that’s it. Only one entry per method is allowed.
Winners will be announced on Tuesday (October 19th).
Good luck!
