Catz 5 review

Remember when Tamagotchi swept the nation, teaching the youth of the day how to care for pixelated bundles of joy trapped inside key rings?

Soon afterwards, the PC established itself as the natural home for virtual pets, with cats, dogs, goldfish and aliens romping around our screens and leaving small deposits in our spreadsheets. Pokemon changed all that. Now our virtual playmates fight to the brink of death for our entertainment. So is there still a place for cute fluff balls on your hard disk?

The makers of Catz, now in its fifth incarnation, certainly reckon so. In fact, Catz 5 demands 600MB of disk space, along with a fairly speedy PC. So we were intrigued to see how these little pets have evolved since our first encounter some five years ago.

The answer is not a lot. You get the same crude, animated blobs prancing around similarly basic backdrops. There are a few new breeds to choose from, but they all look pretty manky, and appear no more intelligent.

Catz 5 offers some nice touches - basic games, the abiliy to create your own play scenes, and for your Catz to produce litters of up to four kittens. There's nothing especially revolutionary, though.

But everything I thought about Catz 5 changed when I adopted my very own Persian kitten, named him (Mr Froobles), and pledged to love and care for him every day. He may be a useless scruff ball, but the time we spend together is special for both of us. So rather than looking for the virtual hot pokers, shaving equipment and bangers I'd previously desired, I adopted him some female company. It's early days, but they seem to be getting on very well indeed.

Catz 5 is pretty basic by today's gaming standards, but it's still just as easy to become embroiled in its inhabitants' lives. But if you intend to use your PC for work, buy it at your peril.