Fat City Review
Fat City has been available on various platforms, including Wii U and PlayStation 4 for some time now, but the puzzle title recently made its way to the Xbox One. It was developed by Heavy Iron Studios, a development team that has been around since 1999 but which has primarily been responsible for porting games and handling licensed properties such as Family Guy and Disney. Fat City marks one of the first times they have used a brand new IP to create their own game without any outside influence. It makes sense then to start small with a lower priced such as Fat City, but just how does it hold up?
The set up for the game is that the player controls protagonist Chris Knox who is forced to work for a group of criminals who have threatened to hurt his sister if he doesn’t comply. The gangsters know that Chris is a former special forces soldier who has unique skills that will help them in their pursuit to get rich by committing a series of ever more complex heists. It’s clear that the story isn’t intended to be revolutionary and is merely a framing device for the action to take place. In fact, for the rest of the game the plot takes a back seat and is only explained in a few cliché ridden text boxes.
While it’s fine for a game to have little in the way of story, it must make up for this shortcoming in the gameplay department and Fat City certainly tries to do this. Although the fact you are pulling off heists might make the game sound like more of an action title, it focuses more on the planning than the robberies themselves and is firmly inside the puzzle genre.
The idea behind Fat City is simple. You must plot a way through the streets to the target and avoid any police patrols along the way. It grows in complexity as the campaign progresses while there are also additional objectives in every level that involve collecting a diamond and completing the job in a time limit. The challenge comes not just from being able to choose the correct or quickest route but also in carefully timing when to set off as the police cars move around rather than standing still.
One of the things that it gets right is the way in which it eases you into the game. Earlier levels in each reason introduce new concepts and gameplay mechanics in a clear way before pushing the stakes higher. This creates a challenge but doesn’t frustrate or overwhelm the player with levels that are simply too difficult or bring too many new ideas to the table.
There’s also a bunch of extra items and powerups that can be used throughout gameplay. They range from speed boosts to EMP blasts that stop police cars from working, allowing you to spend some of the money you have earned to beat missions that you are having trouble with. The only problem that this causes is that one of the options items is a map that lays out the optimum route to take. By the time you get to the third region of the map you have more than enough money to just purchase this map for every level, taking away the need to come up with your own plans. At this point, the game can simply be beaten by pressing the start button and hoping that the timing is correct.
In terms of the visual style that Heavy Iron have used, it is clear that they chose to emphasise a clear and function look rather than a hugely detailed one. While this does create a somewhat unappealing set of graphics, the trade-off is worth it as it suits the gameplay perfectly and allows the player to see exactly what they have to do at all times. Similarly, the sounds and music are threadbare but there is no reasonable excuse for this – it’s just poor.
There are plenty of positives in Fat City and it has a number of gameplay ideas that are fairly unique, yet it is still difficult to recommend. The simple visuals and sounds can be unappealing and may well turn many people off, while the game seems to end remarkably quickly without any real replayability appeal. The puzzles themselves strike a good balance between being a challenge to overcome and not needing dozens of attempts to get right too, while attempting to unlock all of the achievements and extras requires extra effort. In the end though, Fat City is fun while it lasts, even though it could have been so much more.