In Fat City you take on the roll of Chris Knox and his team of highly-skilled hustlers, and your main objective is to rob a total of 60 high-value targets, that range from banks to jewellery stores, that are spread around a stylised version of the famous New York City. These heists are ordered to Knox by some shady crime syndicate and to ensure that he fulfils them this syndicate has kidnapped Knox’s sister.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You have to draw a path from your start position on the level to the objective of the heist and from there to the safe house hideout. Seems quite simple but put some patrol cop cars, barriers and reenforcement cars after you rob the objectives and you will have a hard time reaching the end of the level without being caught.
Besides this main objective, each level has 2 extra objectives…catch a diamond, called Danger Diamond, and a specific time to beat. By fulfilling each objective you will be granted money and diamonds that unlock new areas.
To help you in the various heists, you can recruit 3 extra characters. Your crew, each with a unique set of abilities, includes a Hacker, a Driver and a Demolition expert. The Hacker and the Demolition guys have 3 abilities while the Driver only have 2, but one functions in two ways. The first one is used to directly help you like disabling the alarms (Hacker), destroy walls that my be blocking your path (Demolition), and get you to the safe-house faster with a nitrous boost kinda of thing (Driver).
The second one helps you when you are being chased like disable the pin barriers for a short period of time (Hacker), blow up a sewer entrance and block the cops (Demolition), and throw spikes on the road to stop the cops (Driver).
The third ability is directly used by each crew member for them to disable the patrolling cop cars like and EMP blast (Hacker) and smoke grenade (Demolition). The driver doesn’t have a specific third ability but the nitrous boost ability can be used to ram and disable the patrol cars in their way.
Chris Knox, your character, also has 3 abilities of his own. One that helps to cut in half the time you need to rob your target, another that allows you to slow down or go faster when you come across any cop and the third one that allows you to pass by the cops without being busted.
The crew members and their abilities can be hired and purchased in every level, as well as the abilities of your own character, Chris Knox. Although each level can be completed without them, you can use them to get the job done easily. There are some levels were you already start with a specific crew member and some abilities. In either case you always get a hint about what abilities you can use to help you out.
The key element of the game is that after you draw the path that you want to follow you will need to perfectly time your movements to avoid being busted. And you do that by studying the patrol patterns of the cop cars. If you perfectly time your start, and the crew abilities, you will be able to reach the end of the level with being caught. If you fail, or get tired of being busted all the time you can use the different abilities to help you out…although they will cut off the fun and changeling part of the game.
The visual presentation, as mentioned above, is pretty basic. It favors flashy graphics for functionality and ease of use. The interface has a clean look and is helpful when planning routes. The main character is represented by a circle and locations are just transparent. The music is somewhat generic electronic music. The sound could’ve done with more work. Some players might be put off by the almost $20 launch price, but Fat City is a well-designed and simple title that will appeal to fans of arcade games. The visuals are really simple, and the story often feels tacked-on (I bet a lot of people will say this), but it’s still a lot of fun and you should consider it. It’s like playing Pac-Man but Pac-Man is a thief.
João is a games journalist, Senior Editor at XDA Developers. They contributed 156 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: previously reported for Neowin before joining XDA Developers in 2021, where he leads coverage of Windows, Microsoft, and hardware.