Talking Tom Cat 2

Talking Tom Cat 2 is a revamp of the original children's app from Outfit7. The app is designed to entertain and amuse your child by interacting with the child and responding to being 'tickled', 'poked' and otherwise played with. The best feature of Talking Tom Cat though is his ability to repeat everything that is said to him in a funny voice.

The original game was fairly basic, with just the anthropomorphic cat as far as characters go, limited activities and few extras. The first instalment had poor Talking Tom living in an alley, whereas in the second incarnation of the game he has managed to find himself an apartment in which to live. The game also introduces a neighbour, Ben the Talking Dog, who just loves to annoy Talking Tom!

Talking Tom Cat 2 boasts a mini-game in which the player can earn virtual coins on an endless run: Tom climbs stairs for a set amount of time and the player earns coins and extra time as the game progresses, so that the game can last a long time for skilled players. As well as the original method of talking to Tom and having his repeat your words, there are other ways to interact with the cat. There is a highly immature but amusing 'fart' button that causes Ben to appear and fart. This offended Tom's sensibilities and he holds his nose. If you speak to Tom at this point, he will repeat your words in a nasal tone, still holding his nose as he does so!

Other fun new features include a 'bag' button (Ben appears and bursts a paper bag behind Tom) and a 'feathers' button (Ben pops up and wallops Tom with a pillow) and even a 'phone' button that, surrealistically, makes Tom produce his own phone and summon up the original Talking Tom app that he then plays with for a while!

New ways to interact with Tom include being able to stroke him to make him purr and, rather disturbingly, the ability to slap him! It is also possible to make a video of your interactions with Talking Tom and these videos can be saved and shared with friends and family – or even be put up on social media, if so desired.

A quick aside: parents may be worried about the allegations of improper questions posed by one of Talking Tom's associated characters, Talking Angela. A Facebook post stating that Angela was asking inappropriate questions of a child, was circulated by a concerned parent, along with worries that a paedophile ring has somehow taken control of the conversation. Be reassured that this is not at all the case: Talking Angela is quite safe to use, although she is programmed to banter with adults as well as children – hence the slightly dodgy conversation as overheard by the parent in question. It is a simple matter to set the app to 'child-mode' which ensures that all interactions are safe for children and lacking in all innuendo – not that there is a lot of innuendo anyway! – and, in fact, prevents Angela from being able to ask questions of the user.

Pros

• An entertaining game
• Plenty of funny voices
• Lots of activities
• Good clean fun for children

Cons

• The fun can wear off after a little while, once you have tried all the buttons there is not much more to do with the game
• The mini game is not of the best quality and becomes quite repetitive after a while