When comparing Onward 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 Onward is ranked 35th. 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 Fluid movement
Unlike a lot of Vive games that rely on teleportation, Onward has fluid locomotion using the gamepad. This makes the gameplay a lot more realistic, especially given it's a multiplayer military sim.
Pro Very realistic military sim
Everything from the sounds, how you reload and fire your weapon to the graphic for the map all come together to create a highly realistic and immersive military simulation. It's like ARMA in VR.
Pro Great communication
The built-in mic on the Vive makes team communication a key component of this game. It's also very realistic as it's just how a military squad would communicate over radio.
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 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.