This past week I indulged in the world of Catherine. An action-adventure puzzle based game from Atlus, Catherine was widely anticipated by many. This game tells the story of a man named Vincent. He is a 32-year old man who has been with his girlfriend, Katherine, for several years now. She is pressuring him to marry her, but he isn’t so sure if he’s ready to commit to her for the rest of his life. During one night at his favorite bar, The Stray Sheep, he meets a young woman with springy blonde hair named Catherine. From then on Vincent has an affair with Catherine and in result spends the next 8 nights living in a nightmare while he sleeps. In the nightmare Vincent meets a group of anthropomorphic sheep who are also living in the nightmare. Each sheep sees themselves as human, but others see them as sheep. In order to wake up from his nightmare, Vincent must climb a tower of blocks and make it through the door. If he dies in the dream then he dies in real life. When Vincent is awake he must deal with both Katherine, and Catherine, and decide who he loves the most.
The story for this game is a very interesting one. It’s almost like watching a soap opera. In fact the beginning of the game introduces a woman who is our “host” for a channel called Golden Playhouse, and she tells us to sit back and enjoy the “romantic horror” that is Catherine. The story is very twisted and shapes to how the player plays the game and answers questions. A feature in the game is whenever Vincent is in the bar he will be able to send and receive text messages. Players are able to shape the text message from several different options they can choose from. Players can also manipulate Vincent’s meter which will determine how the game will end. This is caused by what kind of text messages the player sends and how they answer questions that are given to them after each block level.
The graphics are excellent. Atlus is known for releasing games that have a Japanese anime style to it. The gameplay and some cutscenes have a 3-dimensional styles, and other cutscenes have a 2-dimensional anime style.
The overall gameplay is a hit or miss with people. Catherine for sure surprised me with the block levels. That is the only real gameplay in the level. Players are featured with a tower of blocks that Vincent must climb. Most of the blocks will have to be pulled and pushes in order to create a path for Vincent to climb up. Vincent can only climb one block at a time, and while he is climbing he will be faced with enemies, trap blocks, as well as the tower disintegrating from the bottom. Vincent must make it to the top and through the door in order to wake up alive. While he is awake players control who Vincent talks to in the bar, how to reply to text messages, and can make Vincent play an arcade game called “Rapunzel” that is similar to his nightmares. Throughout the game Vincent will discover that many of the people that are surrounding him will end up as sheep in his nightmare.
The sound and voice acting is decent. I have always like the music that is in Atlus games. It can be soft and it can also be rigid at the same time. It’s somewhat similar to elevator music, but I like to think of it as good elevator music. The voiceovers are good for the most part. I was able to recognize several voice actors that were in previous games released by Atlus.
Overall the game is worth playing at least once. For as big a deal as Atlus and gamers made it out to be it was a slight disappointment. I knew about the game’s storyline before I knew about the gameplay. Once I found out that it was basically about moving a bunch of blocks around I had an iffy feeling about it. It’s more fun to play with a group of friends who are also on the edge of their seats waiting to see what happens in the story next. My only true complaint is the length of cutscenes. I came across one cutscene towards the end that was probably a little under 30 minutes long. I’ve never experienced a cutscene that long before in gaming. And it turned out that it wasn’t even the ending cutscene so that upset me even more because I felt like I wasted time. Overall I would recommend this game to someone who wants a game to play. Catherine is different than any other game that Atlus has released and is worth playing through once.
Catherine was rated #14 on IGN’s Top 25 Playstation 3 Games.
I give it a 7/10.
