When comparing Cosmic Trip vs Catlateral Damage, the Slant community recommends Catlateral Damage for most people. In the question“What are the best HTC Vive games?” Catlateral Damage is ranked 26th while Cosmic Trip is ranked 33rd. The most important reason people chose Catlateral Damage is:
The gameplay is centered around being in a cats shoes, knocking objects off of shelves and other areas. This can be quite fun to basically role play as a cat at its worst.
Specs
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Pros
Pro High level of polish
The look of the game as well as the gameplay has a great level of polish reminiscent of a AAA release. While this is in early access and not finished as well as made by a small indie team, the level of detail to the game and its gameplay far exceeds most release offerings for the Vive.
Pro Immersive base defense gameplay
The implementation of virtual reality in a base defense game is done quite well. It is all in first person, where you mine different nodes on an alien planet in order to build machines and structures, which will then allow you to automate the process (much like an RTS). From there you can attack enemies on your own with an equipped frisbee, all while you send out troops to attack incoming forces as well. What makes this work so well is the design of the game, being that you actually take part in all of these tasks, it makes the user feel more connected to what is happening.
Pro Great use of haptic feedback
The haptics used in the game allow for pretty accurate sensations when manipulating objects in VR. Being a new technology, many games are having issue with the accuracy and "feel" of their haptics, luckily the team developing Cosmic Trip have nailed down how to create a game that feels right, out of the box.
Pro Fun to pretend to be a cat
The gameplay is centered around being in a cats shoes, knocking objects off of shelves and other areas. This can be quite fun to basically role play as a cat at its worst.
Pro Good for letting out your anger
You knocking everything you want to the ground by making the motions in real life. It's a great way to let out your anger.
Pro Longevity through procedural generation
Each level is procedurally generated, while each level will maintain its overall theme there will be minor changes to the setup that allows for an experience that will be slightly different upon each playthrough. This allows for the games levels to stay fresh due to never being exactly the same.
Pro Choice of gameplay modes
There is a free play mode called Litterbox Mode, where there is no time limit, you just choose which level to play, to then free roam and do as you like, much like a sandbox experience. Then there is the objective mode, where you are given a time limit in order to knock off a certain amount of objects within. There will also be optional objectives given, which can make for a more intense experience when trying to complete them all at once.
Having these two modes allows for a good balance of hectic gameplay as well as free form having fun by messing around gameplay.
Cons
Con No completion point (lack of content)
You either die at the hands of AI attackers on your base, or you succeed long enough that the hardware being used cannot keep up with the amount of bots created in the game, causing too much lag. There is no end to the gameplay, it will continue to the point you lose or the game just lags out. Mainly this is all due to the fact that this is an early access game that is unfinished. There are not many options to change up the gameplay, making for something lacking in content, which may get tiring after repeated plays.
Con Currently too easy
The gameplay itself does not offer as much challenge as it should, while this may change in the future, since it is still in development, currently it may be too easy for many players.
Con VR controls are not precise
When using the same amount of force to swing your arm holding the controller in order to knock off objects in the game, there can be a variety of outcomes. This is due to incorrect balancing of controls, as the same amount of force in a swing should result in the same amount of force being used in game, problem being that it does not, sometimes objects will go flying, other times they will barely move.
Con No difference in cats other than looks
It would have been interesting to see each cat have their own special ability, sadly there is no difference between them other than looks.
Con Gameplay gets stale fast
While from the outset it can be fun knocking objects over, after a while this does get stale as there is little lasting appeal to the mechanics themselves.