Catherine

I bought this game on import a few months ago and played it solidly until completion, which is pretty unusual for me nowadays, being an older gamer with other commitments. I simply don't have time to waste on playing sub par games. I can happily say that this game is far from being sub par. As soon as I started the adventure it pulled me in to it's sureal world. At least, half of the game is a surreal nightmare and the other being the main character Vincent's waking life and the moral dilemmas he faces. I won't elaborate too much on the story, as I feel this would spoil it. The game is essentially part RPGish interactions in the setting of Vincent's local, a bar named The Stray Sheep. Here you get to chat with the games other characters and piece together the story and it's bizarre turn of events. The other half of the game consists of an action puzzler. You control Vincent in his nightmares, underpanted and pillow in hand, shifting blocks to ascend an enormous tower whilst battling crazed sheep and tackling bosses that are projections of his psychological woes. I wont lie, the puzzle sections are really hard and frustrating at times. In this respect, the game can be quite unforgiving until you get some of the gameplay mechanics down. Although difficult, it's great fun to play and the frustration is quickly forgotten when you ring the bell to signify the end of the level. The sense of achievement is immense! The two styles of gameplay really balance each other well. After a tricky puzzle nightmare, it's great to go to the bar and chill out, talking to your friends and getting drunk. I love the way that the game subtly endorses the getting drunk part, in that it improves your abilities in the nightmare sections. I particularly enjoyed the drink trivia that the bar man imparts to you whilst drinking a skin full! This brings me to mention that the games adult themes are extremely well done. There is a great sense of humour and also some very serious, philosophical almost, examination of human relationships. The game is never overly moralistic either. It promotes neither infidelity or monogamy. Instead It allows you the freedom to choose to some degree the destiny of your actions. This means the game can end up with very different endings, depending on how you behave. I found myself really empathising with Vincent and the games other characters predicaments. The excellent story, presentation and art style of this game pushed all the right buttons for me. The gameplay, with its old school style difficulty and awesome bosses really gels it all together. If you like unusual, or original type games I would definitely take a look.

I'd like to split my review into the good points and the bad points.

The GOOD:
* Presentation is gorgeous. The scenes are like something out of an anime. But even the in game cut scenes and interaction are equally impressive.
* Brilliant voice acting.
* Good, atmospheric music. Quite funky in some parts and eerie in others. To anyone that has played Persona games, you wouldn't expect anything less.
* You have a very good, very interesting, unusual, intense, very thought provoking and somewhat very realistic in parts storyline. Your playing a character, Vincent, who, by all rights, is someone I think that a lot of people in that age group can relate to (late 20s/30 +). You do feel a certain degree of involvement with him, which is the sign of a good game. You also have interesting side characters that hold your interest. I'd go into the summary of the plot, but dozens of other people have done that already, so I'll leave it out.
* You have the ability to make Vincent's decisions, either making him into a good guy, a naughty guy or somewhere in between. A convenient bar appears when making decisions, that let's you know if you're heading more towards blue (good) or pink (bad). Equally convenient, is the fact that you can almost always save just before making a decision, so if you're not happy with it, you can reload and pick another choice.
* There are several endings to the game depending on what choices you make, which will definitely add to the replay factor.
* At night, Vincent has nightmares and it's your job to make him survive by having him climb a tower of blocks. If you like puzzles like this, you will love this task. I'm not that keen on puzzles and I got into it very quickly. It's a lot of fun and it makes you think quite hard at times.
* There are several different difficulty settings for the game, so if you feel that something is too easy or too hard, you can go and change the settings to your comfort.
* When you are not climbing the tower, you get to hang out at the bar with Vincent's friends, where they come and listen to your worries and try and give you advice. In turn, you get the chance to listen to them and also talk to other customers and try and help them out. In this time, your responses will affect how good / bad you are. This will also involve your responses to text messages you may receive. In the bar you can also have some fun playing on an arcade game. And getting drunk helps you move faster up the tower of blocks at night.
* The storyline is full of twists and turns that really does make you quite paranoid along Vincent's journey.

I will now move on to the bad. Please note that, apart from the length of the game, which is roughly around 12 hours, I have nothing bad to say about the game. But I will complile a list of things that I think may put people off.

The possible BAD:
* The game has multiple endings. Not everyone is a fan of a game having more than one ending.
* Despite the provocative cover and some of the scenes people may have seen on some video sites, this is not a pornographic game. The cover is very misleading. Everything is very tastefully handled and you don't see anything graphic. So if you're looking for that, you will be disappointed.
* This is not a lighthearted game. It actually tackles a rather difficult subject. Whilst the puzzles may provide the fun aspect, the actual storyline is rather dark.
* I'm convinced that people who like this game will be 50/50 mainly due to the subject. Whilst I'm sure that there are a lot of younger people, and even people of a similar age as in the game, that can appreciate the story's setting and the difficulties encountered in this time of someone's life - the other half of the people playing will be bored to tears. This is a story about people and their mental and emotional state and making big life decisions. This involves complaining about work and love lives and people's traumas and bad luck in the past, amongst other things. If this idea doesn't tickle you in the slightest, you will be bored.
* If you hate doing puzzles, climbing up the tower may drive you insane with the repetitive visit every night.
* The length of the story part of the game is roughly 12 hours, give or take. It's not a very long game at all.

And finally, the biased...

If you're like me, you may have decided to pick up this title solely based on the fact that you may be a Persona fan. And that's not a bad decision. Being from the people that brought us Persona, it is another very different, very unique game. That said, it is not a Persona game, so it's good to go into it with a very open mind.

Mind you, like with Persona games, you spend the brunt of your time climbing up the tower - just like you spend most your time in Tartarus in Persona 3 and inside the TV in Persona 4. So I usually go into these games, knowing that the in game "social" time will be the more limited part. I'd just say that if you're picking up the game based on previous titles, seriously, just appreciate it as another work and enjoy it for what it is.

You still have the same intense, unusual, crazy story that you'd expect, with the same great art and presentation and music. I don't think there's anything to be let down by.

My only qualm would probably be the price. As much as I've really enjoyed it and will be playing it again to chase after other endings, I don't think it's worth any more than £15 - £20. The release price for the game was unreasonable. So if you're reluctant to give it a try just yet, wait for it to get a bit cheaper. And remember. Be open minded!

Catherine is unique, I'll give it that. But although it's slick it's one of the most frustrating games I have ever played. From the creators of Persona and Digital Devil Saga, we have what feels like a dating sim game crossed with a platform puzzle game. You play as Vincent, a guy having a personal crisis about committing fully to a relationship with his girlfriend. At the same time he is suffering bizarre nightmares about climbing never ending staircases, and then waking up with a naked mystery blonde in his bed!

The gameplay of Catherine is very, very simple. During the day you play Vincent in a bar, drinking with his friends. The bar is the only playable area of the game (apart from the nightmares) and it's only one room, with conversation options that pop up with people as you walk about. You never play as Vincent at any other time of day. When you decide you've had enough of the bar, you can go home. Once you decide to leave, the other half of the gameplay kicks in...Vincent goes home to sleep and the nightmares begin. In these dreams Vincent has but a single task: to climb an immense staircase made of square blocks. Well, it's not really a staircase because the puzzle is that the blocks can be pulled and pushed and you have to work out how to make an initially unscaleable surface or pile of blocks climbable, so that you can reach the top and end the nightmare.

So why do I think this game is painful? Because these dream stages are so freakin' difficult! I ended up screaming, wailing and jumping out of my chair far more often than I care to remember. Ok that's an overstatement, but be warned - if you like brain teasers you'll be delirious, but if that's not your forte, "Catherine" can be almost unbearably challenging. The reason it's so hard is that the block puzzles require you to think predictively, logically, and fast. That last one is the killer. There's no luxury of contemplation, because in the dream, you must climb steadily and quickly as the bottom rows of the staircase fall away beneath you at a constant rate and if you're too slow you fall off with them and thats Game Over. Well you get retries, but these are NOT unlimited, and the main menu is not what you want to keep seeing. So things start of simple, but very soon the puzzles become quite tricky, and then they become more challenging, and then they become maddeningly difficult. As they get worse, the game designers throw more evil at you in the form of trick blocks that crack and explode, make you slide off the edge, or kill you with sudden spikes. And every few levels there is a boss, in the form of a giant ..creature that attacks you as you climb and rips away blocks as you scrabble to get higher. As a result I can tell you, that the end of some stages will be a blessed relief, but for me it was not a sense of achievement I felt, but relief at knowing I would never have to go through it again.

I should of course praise the game designers for having successfully designed such a devilishly difficult game, but, well maybe people who play for distraction and entertainment don't need their challenges to be quite this...punishing.

So in short, you have to like the block puzzles because that really is the entire game. Outside of this, the "plot" part of the game (Vincent's real life) is as weak as dishwater. Vincent is a loser with no charm or ambition. As his girlfriend Katherine berates him about not being serious he sweats and fidgets like a spineless worm, even going into full scale meltdown when she tells him she wants to start a family. It's actually quite pathetic to watch. Equally loopy are Vincents encounters with the mysterious blonde babe Catherine, who he can't be man enough to dump even though there's obviousy something a bit psycho about her. The whole plot revolves around helping Vincent come to his senses and make the right decision but he's so dumb I really didn't care about him. Some of this is due to the really terrible script, in which you hear the kind of dialogue they only seem to write for video games, along the lines of: "Vincent, you've been acting really weird lately", "Vincent what are you talking about? I don't understand you?" and the classic "Won't someone just explain to me exactly what is going on?" All of which happens in the bar and the lines of dialogue are little more than cliches tossed about to fill enough screentime inbetween the nightmare stages.

The design of the game is drawn anime style, totally flat (and actually quite poorly drwan) in the cut scenes, quite nicely cel-shaded in the bar, and full blown 3D in the nightmares. The best looking part of the game is the nightmares by a long shot, although they always look pretty similar (wall of blocks, always from the same angle), but the bosses are great, really fun to watch..if you can appreciate this while desperately trying to climb away from them!

So my bottom line is, there were times when I absolutely HATED playing this game. It's quite hard to recommend, you really need a masochistic streak to keep coming back to it and trying to solve the puzzle stages, but there are sure to be a few people that eat it up. The final few levels are insane, although I have a tip for you, in that things peak in difficulty at about 75% of the way through the game, and then actually feel easier as the last stages are more about speed and dodging attacks than solving seemingly impossible climbs. But it IS difficult, and when I finally finished it (I admit a couple of tricky moments meant I had no choice but to turn to the internet for clues, but the final chapter was all my own doing), I thought to myself: "Thank God that is finally over!!"

Is that the kind of feeling you want to have as you watch the closing credits of any game? Up to you!