If you’re in the mood to indulge in something completely off the wall crazy, then you’re in for a treat. Meow Meow Happy Fight [99¢] is a new dual stick shooter with an incredibly wacky Japanese style. Before you bemoan the existence of yet another dual stick shooter, this one actually throws some novel ideas into the mix to set itself apart from the pack. Oh, and did I mention you get to play as a cup of noodles? If that’s not a selling point of the game, then I don’t know what is. With multiple stages to play, a slew of diverse characters to unlock, and colorful graphics with a unique style, Meow Meow Happy Fight will bring happiness and destruction to your iPhone.
Happy Cat comes from the future, where everything is just too darn happy. He travels back in time to the present day to encourage the characters in the game to battle each other, and take the future happiness down a notch. While Happy Fight functions like most traditional dual stick shooters (left stick for movement and right stick for firing), rather than fighting off hordes of enemies in a survival marathon you’ll be directly battling the other characters in the game deathmatch style. Each of the 24 levels in the game has you fighting against multiple opponents, and the character who has the most kills when the match time runs out wins.
There’s 15 different characters in the game, including a hamster in a ball, a vending machine, and of course a cup of noodles. Defeating enemies causes them to drop a number of different happy pickups, which are just as odd as the characters themselves and include various food items, toiletries, and designer fashion accessories. It truly is bizarre, but in a good way. Some of these items will replenish a small portion of your health, and others contribute to your total of Happy Points at the end of a match, which act as the currency in the game for purchasing and unlocking additional characters.
The arenas in Happy Fight are all locations around Tokyo, and provide relatively small but adequate quarters to engage in battle. Each new location must be unlocked by coming in first place in the previous one, and they get progressively harder as you go. A number of cool powerups also begin to appear as you make your way through the game, and the arenas have interactive elements like teleports and explosive barrels to add strategic variety. Icons at the edges of the screen point you towards enemies and powerups, and battles are fast and action packed as you search out opponents to destroy or scramble to pick up a health pack as you’re on the edge of death. It really is a lot of fun.
The one negative aspect of Happy Fight that sticks out to me is that you can only play against computer controlled opponents. This game is just screaming for some online play against real live human opponents, but sadly this is not the case. The AI is very good though, and the game is still a lot of fun, but I can only imagine how much better it could be with some sort of online multiplayer component. Still, it will take you a good amount of time to beat all of the games levels, and unlock every character. Plus there is OpenFeint integration for leaderboards and achievements, as well as some detailed stat tracking.
This is the first dual stick shooter in a while that’s been entertaining enough to hold my interest, as the gameplay is fast-paced and the style is the most absurd I’ve seen since MUST.EAT.BIRDS. [99¢/Lite]. Players are loving the game in our forums, and the developers are there answering questions and collecting feedback on ways to improve the game. If you’re looking for something that feels familiar but adds some interesting new twists, check out Meow Meow Happy Fight right meow.
"Another feature called “pass and play” is exclusive to the iPad. It lets users tap on buttons on the right bottom corner of the device to execute a pass instead of tapping on the receiver to make the same action happen. Chris Dreyer, a senior product manager for EA Mobile, said the feature made sense for the iPad, where a user might not want to let go of the device to tap on something in the middle of the screen. It didn’t make sense to offer it on the iPhone, which has a smaller screen and less space for such buttons, he said" -WSJ blog
Yeah, this is part of the control differences I mentioned. It plays the same, they just moved things around a bit.
Wow... That's all I can say. I've always been an "arcade" sports game fan, but this looks to change that!
“pass and play” is exclusive to the iPad.
Ha! You pretty much described my feelings towards football video games. I haven't played a Madden extensively since the first one for SNES circa '92. I'll watch football on TV, but I don't understand it like I do with baseball or hockey. It made choosing plays a total chore in the games. I too would just pick the hail mary or fake field goal, both of which worked way more than they ever do in real life.
I'm actually really excited to play this now, where before I was more meh towards it. And that LOL offense looks incredible, second only to the WTF and ROFL offenses.
Blake: 5
Eli: 4
Thanks. Downloading now.
Wow... Finally somebody from big companies did really good game for iPad..
congrats !!!
Why separate iPad and iPhone versions? Why do I have to pay twice for the same game?
+1
"Also, for anyone who hasn't noticed, Gameloft's NFL 2011 also has a game flow type feature. It's in the playbook as GL Choice."
Yes, but it's in the playbook. GameFlow is totally seamless and completely removes the break in the action created by needing to go to a play selection submenu. Gameloft is on the right track with their "GL Choice" but it still makes the pace of the game feel very slow compared to Madden's GameFlow.
looks good but strange that nowhere on EA's website is it mentioned as being available. So no how to play or anything like that. It does look really good but might wait a week to see how it plays for more folks.
OK I take that back it's just ea.com/ipad. All info there.
This made me want to play mutant league football and hockey again. Those games were awesome!
GOOD GAME ! It's just very Laggy at times running on my iphone 4..
It's not at all laggy on my son's 2nd Gen iPod touch.
Bear men, ok!
The thing I want to know, and can't find information on anywhere, is whether there is a multi-season (or Dynasty) mode in Madden 11. Can anyone shed some light on that before I hand EA $8?
One one regular season at a time. No Dynasty or multi-season.
"In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a sports person by any means. I don't remember the last time I watched anything more than the Super Bowl on TV, and the only sporting events I've attended have been the result of friends with extra tickets."
This is where I stopped reading. How can I trust a review for a sports game, if the reviewer doesn't watch sports?
If you would have kept reading you would have found that this was thoroughly explained.
So can only skaters review skate boarding games? Give me a break sports snob.
When will the NCAA Football version get these upgrades, do you think?
NCAA 12 (IE, never. The next edition will have them)
i can not show EA any love till they fix there old games.. which obv they do not care about.. so yeah i will never buy another EA game.
Good shout Chris... I fancy this game though. But yeah, they really don't care about maintaining an app, which is a shame.
I can speed up gameplay much more, by not playing this at all.
You could totally save all kinds of time posting meaningless posts by not posting at all, too.
Yarn!!
Another ea junk for suckers to flock to!!!
Yarn = YAWN!!!!
It's really frigging slow. How could you not mention this at all in you review?
What do you mean by "slow"? You get bored with it? Or it's laggy? How could you not clarify this in your post?
It's not slow to me, it's fun. And it's not laggy on the 2nd Gen iPod touch I play it on.
They should port Bc2 or Medal of Honor (when it comes out). That would be awesome and i probably will have no life when it happens...
12.99 for madden and 15.99 for chaos rings??? Ipad games are getting too expensive.
haven´t been able to play this game. it keeps on crashing when i launch it.. am i the only one having this problem?
I grew up loving the madden series. I stopped playing video games in 2007 at home and now I have the ipod touch. I decided to download this for old times sake and let me say I would rather play madden 07 any day on playstation than all this random crap you can't control on the touch screen.... lame!!