Gato Roboto (Xbox One)
While the exploration focused platformers that make up the Metroidvania genre are often defined by their large interconnected maps full of secrets and excursions to old locations with power-ups you picked up along your adventure, games like Spooky Ghosts Dot Com and now Gato Roboto have begun paring that experience down to provide the same experience but only in a few hours. Gato Roboto is certainly the heartier and more traditional of the two despite a 100% run being possible in less than 4 hours, but it definitely does a better job of concentrating the genre’s appeal while still having an identity separate from its inspirations.
Gato Roboto kicks off when a dashing space adventurer named Gary heads to the source of a strange distress signal. However, before he can land on the planet, his cat Kiki jumps up on the control panel and leads to a terrible crash landing. The ship is mostly intact, but Gary is pinned in the cockpit unable to move. Since Kiki was the only other living thing aboard the vessel, the little cat is sent out to explore the planet and the strange facility that sent out the signal in the first place. Gary, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to hold the crash against Kiki at all and tries to be supportive and helpful by giving tips over a communicator, but Kiki really is just a cat, only able to mew in response and Gary unsure if the cat even understands what he’s saying. Kiki does get to be the hero though because the player is the one controlling the feline, and the player is able to interpret the things she finds along her adventure even though she seems to be rather ambivalent. You begin to learn more about the facility, the history of the scientists who work there, and even meet up with a talking rat who serves as many of the game’s bosses when it climbs into a mech for a fight. The story is just present enough to give you a mystery to follow with a decent pay off to the build up, there being a bit of emotional weight to the plot even though the game never gives up on its tone of silly simplicity.
Kiki isn’t just left to run around the planet unprotected though. The save points scattered across the underground lab don’t just save your progress, they provide your cat with a powerful mech she can ride around and fight in. The robotic suit is your main way of interacting with the world, the machine having a small life bar and a rather weak rapid fire weapon for repelling the alien fauna and robotic sentries in the facility. However, you can find upgrades for your suit at key points in the game, a missile quickly becoming a vital part of your arsenal as it deals heavy damage and is likely going to be your main way of damaging bosses or tougher foes. You technically have unlimited missile ammo, but using too many in too rapid a fashion will make the weapon overheat and you’ll need to wait before you fire again, proper missile use about getting the most out of your shots without overtaxing your systems. Upgrades to your health and missile cooldown serve as pretty common rewards for going the extra mile to find secrets or use new abilities in old locations, and the hidden cartridges serve a special purpose. Not only does every cartridge provide a new color filter so you can change the monochromatic game to feature different hues, but they can be traded in for some of the strongest abilities in the game to reward you for going off the beaten path and exploring the interconnected map.
Other abilities like a double jump and the ability to use missiles for a height boost continue to augment how you can explore the game world, and while there are some elevators that lead to different sections of the map being clearly delineated rather than one open map, it feels like Gato Roboto deliberately does so in homage to Metroid. Its mech suit evokes Samus Aran’s power armor as well, but while it doesn’t hide its influences, Gato Roboto still does a good job designing a world with plenty of platforming challenges, tough enemies, and surprisingly difficult moments. Your health in the suit is actually rather low to start and even with the expansions, later foes can tear through you if you’re not careful. Most enemies move in set ways or react to you when you’re near enough so they’re not ruthless, but there are definitely rooms that test your ability to stay mobile. Boss battles often have moves that require smart dodging to survive as well, so being a short game doesn’t mean Gato Roboto is an easy one.
Perhaps the standout feature of Gato Roboto has nothing to do with the mech really. While you will use the robot armor for much of the platforming and combat, sometimes there’s no way onward unless Kiki pops out and explores on foot with just her natural feline abilities. Kiki can slip into small nooks and climb up walls, but the unarmored cat is easily killed the moment she makes contact with anything even a little dangerous. Despite the danger in these situations, the moments where being outside the mech suit is required are designed well to be dangerous without being overbearing. Kiki can usually slip through the danger well enough without the player needing to fret too much about their vulnerability, and these cat-only segments are a good break from the regular action. Kiki needs to do things like sneak around vents and wait out monster patrols, swim through the water as mines threaten to detonate if she gets too close, and alternate between walls as she climbs up long shafts occupied by little creatures. Sometimes you might even find a different kind of machine for Kiki to pop into for a bit like a submersible that fights foes off with torpedoes or turrets that fire a powerful shot in a straight line. The turrets a bit underwhelming and are pretty much best kept for the platforming puzzles that often crop up when Kiki is out of her main mech, but both extra machine types get devoted boss battles surprisingly and they do a good job of adapting their abilities to the fight format.
Since 100% completion is mostly about looking at your map and finding the rooms you haven’t accessed yet when you have the necessary ability to reach them, it’s not too hard to go for a full completion run. The rewards are all tied to your own abilities, and since the final area is almost a gauntlet of dangerous foes and hazards in new combinations, having extra health or firepower are worth picking up just for their practical use. There are achievements to shoot for and some require figuring out how to use your abilities to break away from the linearity of the journey, although if you’re aiming for completing the game in a short amount of time for these bragging right rewards, it should be noted the game times you in an odd way. Whenever you’re in your suit you can see the total time you’ve spent playing, but this counts time spent paused or even on the Xbox home menu if you haven’t quit the game. It’s best to save and quit if you think you’ll have the game paused for any length of time, although thankfully the timer only plays into the superfluous achievements rather than anything gameplay related. If you do decide to take it slow despite that visible timer, you’ll still get to enjoy the tight controls and challenging gameplay without worrying that you’re missing out on something by taking your time.
THE VERDICT: Short and cute but not lacking in challenge, Gato Robot condenses Metroidvania action and navigation into a tighter package that still hits on the genre’s appeal. There are optional upgrades to find along the adventure, some that need your new abilities from later on to uncover, and Kiki’s mech suit continues to become more capable as it gains new power-ups, achieving a sense of power despite the bosses and platforming rooms still being able to put up a strong fight. Spending time outside the mech as the cat breaks up the action with a more careful type of play and there’s just enough story that the adventure feels like more than just a joke about a cat piloting a powerful combat mech. It doesn’t have the depth or ambition of the games that clearly inspired it like the Metroid games, but it does do a good job crafting an exploration focused platformer in miniature.
And so, I give Gato Roboto for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. Gato Roboto isn’t really coming up with novel new ideas for how to make a Metroidvania, but it retools and tinkers with the ideas featured in them to make something that still has a sense of identity separate from its inspirations. This will always be in your mind the game about a cat donning a mech suit as her owner tries to guide her through a hostile alien world, and while you can draw similarities between the suit and Samus’s armor or the cat’s gameplay sections and when Samus curls up into her morph ball, there’s a reason those are enjoyable in the Metroid franchise. Gato Roboto tweaks the concepts it borrows, comes up with some good platforming segments and tough enemies to get in your way, and sprinkles some goodies around its small map all so you can get a similar experience to your favorite Metroidvanias but in a smaller package. It doesn’t draw so heavily from its inspirations that it loses its sense of self either, Gato Roboto remembering to be cute and silly on top of making tough boss battles and mixing up how you’re progressing through a level from time to time. Some more out of the box thinking might help Gato Roboto stand out more or break it further away from its roots, but it does a fine job tapping into the joys of finding hidden upgrades and increasing your power while still keeping its scope rather small.
Gato Roboto sits rather nicely beside Spooky Ghosts Dot Com as two Metroidvanias that provide a concentrated package of quick fun wrapped in cute aesthetics. Gato Roboto goes for a black and white world where a cat can pilot robotic armor, and that extra touch of personality and absurdity helps it avoid feeling like its just aping the games that inspired it. Streamlining the experience seems to have come with it lacking any truly innovative or gripping concepts to rope you in, but if you like a platformer with some tough combat and a map to explore, then Gato Roboto is happy to give you a night’s worth of play if all you want is a different yet somewhat familiar way to experience what makes the genre enjoyable.