It’s easy to immediately take to the free-to-play Target Acquired. It’s got awesome futuristic environments, cute anime girls and accessible arcade gameplay fitting developer TouchTen Games’ description “Mega Man meets Temple Run”. But can it stay the course quite like its cat girl heroine?
Yes, we did say “cat girl”. You play Yura, a gun-toting Japanese police cat girl hurtling down cyberpunk-styled, obstacle-strewn paths in a bid to stop the evil mouse girl Cammy taking over the world. The antagonist is fond of her robots, too; frequent boss battles see her appearing in a giant mech, from which she taunts that you’ll never catch her. Except that you do, if in slightly repetitive fashion…
Side-scrolling runners like this tend to suffer from overt repetition – and Target Acquired hasn’t entirely escaped this. Even the options for upgrading armor can feel bewildering and too much of a chore in comparison to the main gameplay. Still, Target Acquired has enough visual charm and casual pick-up-and-play appeal to long satiate many of the otaku types that it is clearly aimed at.