By Alec Meer on December 4th, 2009 at 2:24 pm.
Scientist, soldier, security guard and now silent cat: these are the tales of Half-Life the first. The mod known as Cat-Life was announced some time back, with its concept hitting twin notes of absurdity and “that makes a lot of sense, somehow.” It’s Half-Life with a cat. I’m pretty sure you weren’t able to work that out for yourself from the name, so I thought I’d better explain it for you. It’s the first-person-shooting videogame Half-Life, but starring a domestic feline instead of an improbably athletic physics dork. Do you understand? With a cat. Oh, you still don’t get it, do you? Well, a demo of the mod’s just sprung up. Perhaps that’ll explain all.
While the idea evokes an immediate chuckle, the game itself plays it largely straight. I’d have thought the rampantly silly concept needs to be acknowledged as such, rather than pitching moggy adventures as gritty survival horror. But then, perhaps that’s all the joke it needs.
It’s certainly pulled off a cat’s perspective, the low-slung crawl and the natural night vision, but a cat pushing buttons and swiping at Headcrabs doesn’t quite ring true. Giving up upon encountering and out of reach ledge and letting out a sustained, desultory yowl or just curling up for a nap in an air vent would feel more authentic. Though a game of sleeping and screaming wouldn’t be for everyone, I’ll admit.
Essentially, it’s still a bit too Freemanesque, at least as far as this limited and very early demo goes – the key difference being the beast’s limited offensive powers. Headcrabs: fine. Everything else: runrunrun! This means the challenges are primarily environmental, figuring out ledges and jumps to progress. Which makes it slightly sad that it’s using HL1 rather than HL2, as Source’s smashy-surfaces and balance trickery would have suited feline frolics that much more. Still, I’m keen to see where this goes, and what new’n'odd challenges it heaps upon poor kitty.
Here’s a year old video that gives a good sense of how the demo moves and plays:
04/12/2009 at 14:32 Mr.Bigglesworth says:
Some “people” have too much free time.
04/12/2009 at 14:45 Comment system, what comment system? says:
“people”? Are you suggesting this mod is made by actual cats?
04/12/2009 at 16:25 Antsy says:
Touché!
05/12/2009 at 02:08 12kill4 says:
Maybe Meer cats… I don’t think house cats are good at typing… (cue keyboard cat references…)
04/12/2009 at 14:34 Rich says:
So basically it’s a mod where you play the entire game crouched and wave around large grey sausages to fend off headcrabs. Also, I know HL1 is positively ancient, but those maps look really dull. Maybe this would have been interesting ten* years ago.
*TEN, FORHEAVEN’SSAKE!
04/12/2009 at 14:36 Duck says:
HELL YEAH, AWESOME MOD
04/12/2009 at 14:40 David Drahos says:
Does this cat meet it’s demise in a teleporter in City 17?
04/12/2009 at 14:47 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
meow, meow!
04/12/2009 at 15:00 ghor says:
It looks so clunky in the HL1 engine. I’d like to see a mod for Assassin’s Creed where you play as a cat who assassinates dogs.
Instead of beggars hitting you in the streets there would be people crouching down to pet you, saying “awwww what a cute kitty”.
04/12/2009 at 15:11 Davee says:
THAT would be something that’d make me play it. Iv’e always wondered what happened to “that cat”.
04/12/2009 at 15:13 Davee says:
Crap, reply system malfunction. That was aimed at David Drahos.
04/12/2009 at 15:14 dpCapital says:
OMG OMG OMG OMG! THIS IS TEH AWESUM!!!11111
04/12/2009 at 15:22 Mike_in_Ohio says:
That is too funny. The one thing they missed though was an accurate portrayal of yakking up a furball….
… there should be cat barf with fur balls laying around…
04/12/2009 at 15:25 Tye The Czar says:
There had better be LOLCAT jokes in there.
04/12/2009 at 15:57 Gotem says:
what’s next?
half-life with a Crow?
a crow bar, get it? GET IT?
04/12/2009 at 15:57 Calabi says:
If I was only able to take one game onto a desert island with me then this wouldnt be it. If I was able to take two, then this still wouldnt be it. If I wasnt on a desert island but mildly bored, then I might play this.
04/12/2009 at 16:14 Crusoe says:
Why?
04/12/2009 at 16:16 ChampionHyena says:
Cat-Life: Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat.
Though I suppose a cat can’t exactly pick up a headcrab by the neck and shake it around ’til it dies.
04/12/2009 at 16:22 mpk says:
There should be some sort of slow-mo mode to allow for your cat reflexes. Pussy time, possibly.
And if there isn’t a meow/hiss/growl button I’ll be sorely disappointed. Also: the make-yourself-big button to scare away predators and small children.
04/12/2009 at 16:27 ChampionHyena says:
Press R to Fatten Tail
04/12/2009 at 16:23 Dave says:
If it was done in HL2, there’d be the added dimension of cat vs. D0G.
04/12/2009 at 16:29 Ozzie says:
I heard you have to die 7 times before it’s Game Over?
04/12/2009 at 16:32 Craig L says:
That should be 9 surely?
04/12/2009 at 21:07 sinister agent says:
In theory yes, but you see, cats can’t count.
04/12/2009 at 16:46 westyfield says:
18 Half-Lives?
04/12/2009 at 16:49 Andy says:
From the screenshot I thought it was gonna be a mod where you play HL as a headcrab….that would be cool.
04/12/2009 at 16:53 Stense says:
I wonder if there is catnip on Xen.
04/12/2009 at 17:00 Lewis says:
This has been in development forever, right? I’m not thinking of something else…
04/12/2009 at 17:08 bildo says:
idk…a cat vs headcrab…headcrab should be so much more powerful…they should have made it so you have to run from everything. This would make more sense if it were in the vein of Pokemon Snap or something…..
04/12/2009 at 17:14 Vitamin Powered says:
It would be a bit odd if the soldiers tried to kill you as well.
Special Ops Sergeant: “I heard gunfire and two or three grenades going off! What the hell happened?!?!”
Special Ops #1 “….”
Special Ops #2 “Er, well, you see, James say a cat…”
04/12/2009 at 18:27 Vitamin Powered says:
Saw. James saw a cat.
And does this remind anybody else of those areas from Duke Nukem 3D where you’d be hit by a shrink ray, and had to quickly run around a section of the map as a 20cm high Duke?
04/12/2009 at 17:37 Doctor Doc says:
That’s… that’s retarded.
04/12/2009 at 18:37 Jake R. says:
I’m not at all interested in this but I am suddenly gripped with a strong desire to see a game like Mirror’s Edge from the perspective of a small athletic quadruped.
04/12/2009 at 21:52 Chalkster says:
OH MY GOD YES.
I would totally play that.
Stray cat simulator.
04/12/2009 at 19:06 GammaRay says:
+1
04/12/2009 at 19:06 Wisq says:
What a proper cat game needs:
* Stalking mode (crouch?): Stealth, limited speed. Perhaps minigame it so that you need to stop whenever they look in your direction (but with a little fuzziness / feedback to help).
* Pouncing: Headcrab-style targeted jump.
* For small targets, like headcrabs: Grabbing them and shaking them around until they’re dead.
* For large targets, like soldiers: Latching on (preferably to the back) and biting while their teammates are either afraid to fire or have a good chance of hitting them instead of you.
* Heck, it would be nice if the smarter enemies didn’t even see you as a target unless you attacked. In fact, since the soldiers attack aliens, you could run to them as sanctuary. (Though I suppose soldiers might learn to be a bit wary if you continually run at them with a horde of aliens on your tail, so to speak.)
* Napping: Health regeneration (limited?), retains full awareness.
* Hearing simulation: Perhaps in the same way that games show you what direction you’re taking damage from, it could show you in what direction you’re hearing enemies. Or do it Dystopia style, with noise icons that you can see through walls.
So far, all I’ve seen is a lowered viewpoint + melee slash attack. Cute, but could pretty much be Dog-Life or ‘Coon-Life for all its distinctiveness.
04/12/2009 at 19:08 Wisq says:
I should add: Doing a game as a cat is also a perfect opportunity to make normal-sized traversable vents. You know, rather than the Hollywood-style “I could make money renting out this space”-sized vents.
04/12/2009 at 19:08 GammaRay says:
Damn the reply function! Is there some rhyme or reason I’m missing? Somebody please enlighten me.
04/12/2009 at 19:14 Wisq says:
It’s always worked perfectly well for me. Click “reply”, wait for the page to load, you’ll be at the bottom, type in your comment, hit “opinion, away!”. And you can verify you’re in reply mode because the text above the box will say “click here to cancel reply”.
The only reason I could see people perhaps having issue with this would be if their JavaScript or cookies were disabled.
04/12/2009 at 19:19 Wisq says:
Testing with JS disabled, cookies enabled.
04/12/2009 at 19:20 Wisq says:
Testing with cookies disabled, JS enabled.
04/12/2009 at 19:26 Wisq says:
Well, that’s odd. I wonder if caching is the issue, because even when I re-enabled JS and cookies, I couldn’t get the “click here to cancel reply” link on reply until I logged back in on the forums.
06/12/2009 at 11:29 Lars Westergren says:
Personally I suspect there is a concurrency bug, that is why it shows up intermittently. Basically if two people submit at almost the same time the bug triggers.
Maybe if they answer to the same post at the same time? If two replies get the same child id, the last one that the system tries to save gets rejected because of a database constraint, and then it gets saved as a child of the main topic instead?
At least, that is where I would start looking if *I* was the programmer maintaining the system. (Today is wild guessing day!)
:)
04/12/2009 at 19:22 Wisq says:
Testing with both disabled.
04/12/2009 at 20:45 Ed says:
Since when do cats strafe? Although I do wonder what a headcrab/cat zombie would look like.
I must admit, a game where you play as a cat is a great idea.
Gameplay ideas:
– Rubbing up and down your owner’s legs for food and health bonuses
– Pooping in neighbour’s flower beds
– Dragging dead birds in and hiding them in hard to reach places
– Looking down on those below from a high place, preferably a hole in the ceiling
Include these ideas in Rock Paper ShotgUnity pls.
05/12/2009 at 01:29 Andrew Wills says:
My cat can circle-strafe. I just gotta teach her to bunny hop. Rocket jumping could be tricky.
04/12/2009 at 21:18 CreamyGoodness says:
It was the first Alien movie, I believe, when Ripley places Jones the Cat in a carrier then hears the beast and leaves the cat.
If I recall correctly, the Alien rounds the corner, encountering the carrier. Jones the Cat arches its back and hisses, and the Alien pauses, then leaves…
I’ve always pictured the Alien’s thoughts at that moment, thusly…
“Ohh… morsel…”
*Hiss”
“WTF?”
*More Hissing”
“I’m, like, 20 times the size of that creature… and it’s threatening me… Me! Wait-a-minute…”
*Ponder*
*Alien imagination – cat turns into a 20-headed hydra that devours souls and urinates quick-time-events*
“Check please, I’m outta here…”
Jones goes back to washing himself, a job well-done…
04/12/2009 at 21:32 Vague-rant says:
Shrodinger’s cat; Half live, half dead?
05/12/2009 at 03:21 EaterOfCheese says:
@ vague rant
It took way, way too long for someone to make a Schroedinger’s crack.
*cough*
If you drop a coin down Schroedinger’s crack, what happens to the coin?
*runs away*
04/12/2009 at 23:30 Scundoo says:
More like: The game will either Suck, or Not Suck, the instant you play it.
Whilst not playing the game, all you know is that it is somewhere in between Sucking and Not Sucking.
04/12/2009 at 23:30 Scundoo says:
More like: The game will either Suck, or Not Suck, the instant you play it.
Whilst not playing the game, all you know is that it is somewhere between Sucking and Not Sucking.
04/12/2009 at 23:38 Chalee says:
I’ve always known half-life was a game for pussies.
04/12/2009 at 23:58 Lewis says:
Ed: Since when did people strafe?
05/12/2009 at 00:19 Weylund says:
You’ve never spent several awkward years being coached in organized basketball, I see. Or wrestling, for that matter. Both of which teach you to move sideways efficiently.
But you’re right. If you have to be *trained* to do it, it seems unlikely Random Guy X would be doing it upon finding a machine gun and being attacked by zombies.
05/12/2009 at 00:41 EBass says:
WHY!
05/12/2009 at 01:04 Caiman says:
The cat doesn’t even slink under those cubicle partitions. Fail!
05/12/2009 at 01:25 kwyjibo says:
If the cat had the first person style implementation of Mirror’s Edge, then I’d get it.
It doesn’t.
05/12/2009 at 02:18 LionsPhil says:
So, a mod created by people who have never owned cats, then.
05/12/2009 at 13:06 spliter says:
Hm… I think it has potential but a few things are a must if it’s about a cat like eating headcrabs/cockroaches for health, leaping (like in the AvP2 game the alien could but smaller lengths), curling up to jump higher, and of course my favorite using your claws to climb furniture.
Also the cats seems a bit tall here…it’s more like a leopard or something.
05/12/2009 at 16:20 Seraphim2150 says:
and then you shank those annoying beggars
05/12/2009 at 17:38 Cpt. Sqweky says:
My questions is does the storyline run parallel to Half-Life? If so, then that could be a potentially brilliant idea. If not, then, well, it’s still an interesting idea, but I’d like to know if the story is at all engaging before trying it out.
06/12/2009 at 10:04 Matzerath says:
Man, it’s gonna take forever for Cat Life 2 to come out.
08/12/2009 at 20:17 Grape Flavor says:
I’m holding out for the inevitable remake, Cat-Life: Source…
11/08/2010 at 09:01 party gowns says:
I have always admired your point of view mate.