Catherine

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***This Review is Spoiler Free***

***I won't reveal anything that has not been revealed in the official trailers***

Roger Ebert wrote in his blog: "I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art." Although it would be easy to bash him for his hypocrisy (he defended movies when people said they would never be an art form), the truth is he is old and out of touch with video games. I say unequivocally, that video games have surpassed movies as an art form, and Catherine is just one example why.

OVERVIEW:

First thing to note, this game is ALL about the the storyline and interactions between the 3 main characters. There is a strange love-triangle between Vincent, Katherine, and Catherine. Vincent has been with Katherine for years, and is he happy? Does he want to stay with Katherine forever? A beautiful woman (Catherine) stumbles into his life, and he begins to ponder about his life. Vincent is 32 years old. This should resonate with many people who grew up in the 80s (the original "Nintendo generation"), since today most will be in their early to mid 30s. He is not married (this also resonates with many people, since today more than ever, people are not getting married until their 30s or later), has a steady girlfriend, has a job, and is actually an intelligent and sensitive guy. When Catherine shows up, he really begins to ponder his relationships and his life.

STORYLINE:

You control Vincent, and the way you interact with people has a definite outcome to the ending of the game. Will you spend your free time at the bar with your friends, or go home early? How will you respond to Katherine's and Catherine's texts? How will you interact with people in general? All your actions mean something (as in real life), and will affect the world around you! This storyline, and you determine how it will end, is told through gorgeous cartoon-like scenes, and everything is fully voiced by professional voice actors who did a fantastic job! The dialogue is mature, well written, funny, and fairly realistic. The problems you (Vincent) and other people face, is (for the most part) very real. Who has reached their 30s and has never had relationship issues? Who does not from time to time ponder how their life is going and would they be more happy if...? However, the game is not just a melodrama. It also beautifully combines horror and humor! The dialogue as I said is very well written and funny. Even during "frightening" moments, the dialogue can make you laugh out loud. The dialogue also makes you think, but let's talk about the horror aspect. To discuss this, lets also talk about the meat of the game.

GAMEPLAY:

The core of this game is a platform-puzzle. It takes place during Vincent's nightmares. During these stages you have to reach the top of a structure formed from blocks. First, the game has been criticized for it's difficulty. I played the game on the "Easy" setting, and for the most part it is fairly straightforward. You certainly will die (quite often) even on Easy (at least the first time you play the game), however it is not frustrating. In fact, ATLUS USA toned down the difficulty level, so that Easy for North American costumers is substantially easier than the original Japanese release. However, if you are still worried about the difficulty, ATLUS even includes a "very easy" option! I have not yet played the game on Normal, but I am certain it will be MUCH more difficult than Easy, and there is in fact a Hard level of difficulty... which will likely be quite the challenge! Anyway, the point is, do not worry too much, since you will certainly be able to get through the game. Now then, about the platforming, as I said, you need to climb. You climb a series of blocks which you can push or pull to open up paths. A simple premise, but there is a lot of skill and variety involved. There are numerous ways to reach the top, and the faster you climb the higher your score (your score has no affect on the storyline and is for bragging purposes only). This game requires thinking! If you enjoy puzzle games, you will likely enjoy this game. When you first play, the controls may seem a bit awkward, for instance, sometimes you'll find you pushed a block when you did not mean to do so, because the controls are so sensitive. It's OK, ATLUS has included an "undue" feature! You can undue your moves quickly, and try again, with no penalty! This "undue" feature is available for the Easy and Normal modes. Now then, is the puzzle-part of the game actually fun? Yes, very fun. However, if you do not enjoy puzzle games, then you should skip this game. For everyone else, welcome!

MUSIC:

I LOVE the music in this game! It's a combination of soothing jazz, with arrangements of classic music. The music really hits the spot, and in my opinion is perfect. If you enjoy "fantasy" music (either in games or movies), then I think you will very much enjoy the music here. When the action gets fierce (and it does), the classical music also gets fierce (yes, you'll be surprised, classical music can be fierce)! When you reach the top, and have survived the nightmare, you will be rewarded with Handel's Messiah (and it sounds great)! All the classical music is arranged, which means that this is NOT the "normal" arrangements that you can purchase online or listen to at a performance. The arrangements were specifically made for this game, and not only are they lovely and catchy, but you get a FREE CD SOUNDTRACK of these arrangements if you pre-ordered the game (I believe every first print of the game comes with an artbook and soundtrack)!

MATURE CONTENT:

You probably noticed that I did not talk much about graphics. The reason being that you have likely already seen the trailers and know what the graphics are like. They are beautiful. However, you should NOT purchase this game for the graphics. You SHOULD purchase this game if you want a game with a deep, original, and fascinating storyline. The game does not hold back on the mature content. However, keep in mind that mature content does NOT mean pornographic material! I will say this once: other than a bit of cleavage and maybe a buttocks, THERE IS NO NUDITY HERE! This game is NOT "Leisure Suit Larry", your goal is NOT to score! If you're a teenage boy (either physically or mentally) and you just want to play this game because 'Catherine is hot... oh yeah... hot' then you are going to be very disappointed. Vincent is a mature man, and the game ultimately asks just one question: What is love? There is nothing more mature in art and literature, then the question of love.

PROS:

+++Original and thought-provoking storyline that is superbly presented! THIS IS INTERACTIVE ART!

+++Beautiful graphics, and fantastic music!

+++Top notch voice acting!

+++Various difficulty levels so everyone can finish the game!

+++Different endings depending on YOUR choices!

+++Humor and horror combined in a wonderful way that few games can match!

+++If you get a first print of the game, you get a free artbook and SOUNDTRACK!

CONS:

-Well, the game is relatively short (first time through will be 10-20 hours). However, with different endings and difficulty levels (as well as multiplayer) you can come back for more!

-MSRP is $60. That's quite a bit. The price will definitely go down. However, you might not get the soundtrack (which would be a shame). Honestly, this is $60 very well spent, and if you get it for less, even better (but trust me, you want this soundtrack :)

BOTTOM LINES:

Are you looking for something original, fresh, with a storyline and characters that most men AND women in their 30s can really relate to? Something with beautiful animated cut-scenes, fantastic music, and a mature storyline that is NOT about saving the world? In that case, welcome to Catherine! Catherine is the latest example of how video games can make us think, laugh, and even get teary-eyed. This is a true work of art!

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I got the Special Edition in the mail yesterday. Amazon rocks! So I put it in and... 7 hours later I'm still playing it and only stopped cause I had to go to sleep. This game is amazing. Right now I'm at stage 6, level 2. (There are 8 stages). It may seem too short but it has multiple endings and a lot of re-playability.

Graphics: I don't like Anime. Let me repeat. I'm DO NOT LIKE ANIME. I don't hate it, i just don't care for it. But this game looks beautiful. It actually makes me sorta like Anime more. But overall, the graphics look beautiful.

Music: If you've played Persona 3 then you will know some of the songs here. The music works very well. In the nightmare stages the music fits when the stage has a foe chasing you and when it's more a stage to get you used to the new stage elements that have been introduced.

Story: Here is where the game shines the most. You play Vincent who is having nightmares every night. At the same time, he is being pressured by his long time girlfriend, Katherine, to take their relationship to the next step. And on top of this, another girl, Catherine, is seducing him and trying to take him for her own. Now he is caught in a web of lies, secrets and guilt. Every time you pass a nightmare sequence you wake up to more drama in his real life. It's very engaging.

Gameplay: I really hate to call the nightmare sequences "puzzles" cause it sorta makes it less than what it is. These are Vincents nightmares. He has to climb to the top of these evil towers to escape so as to not die in real life. So the tower begins to fall down as you start climb, or there some huge monster chasing you. Everything in the dreams is connected to his real life in some way. There is more I would like to say to make sense of the sheep you see on the cover, but I don't want to spoil anything.

You are given questions to answer here and there throughout the game that determine the direction the story will go for you. The game has multiple endings and difficulties and medals you can get depending on how fast you climb the towers. So you can get a lot of game play out of it.

Overall, I love this game. I think it is pure genius. The issues that it addresses are very relate-able and really suck you into the story.

The Special Edition comes with just a pillow case, not an actual pillow by the way. The Special Edition isn't really all that worth the extra $20 in my opinion but this game is so special i just HAD to have it so I don't regret it. There hasn't been a game like this in a long time. I'm VERY impressed with how well they pulled off this whole concept and made a very VERY fun game.

If you are hesitant on this game, then try the demo. But i will warn you, the demo doesn't really do a great job in tying in the nightmare sequences with the story so you may get the wrong idea. Also the nightmare parts are a lot more complicated once you play the full game, and they get really creative, fun...and HARD. If you can rent the game, that would be best. But I would say if you like it, to go ahead and buy it. It's one of the few games out there that is worth full price in my opinion.

Buy Catherine Now

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 off 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 drawn) 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!

Read Best Reviews of Catherine Here

In a video game market so oversaturated with sequels and remakes, it's so hard to find retail releases that dare to try something new. Catherine is one of those few games that you don't know what to expect since the gameplay mechanics are so unlike anything else. Having something go outside the mold of what games are supposed to be is so refreshing.

GAMEPLAY

The game is primarily a combination of 2 games: a dating/relationship simulation and a block puzzle game. The general formula is cutscene(s) mixed with dating sim then going to sleep and doing 2-3 block puzzles in the nightmare mode.

The block puzzles involve moving blocks to get to the top of a long platform. The bottom of the tower is constantly falling or something else happens at the bottom that limits the time you have to complete the puzzle. The blocks vary from ordinary blocks to blocks that will shoot spikes at you if you step on them for too long. Occasionally you can find or buy power up items that can create a new block, allow you to climb two blocks at one, and other useful things. The mechanics of the puzzles and powerups allow for many different techniques to create pathways to get up the tower. You are scored based off of how fast you get up the tower and how many moves you make.

The dating sim part of the game involves around the main character who is traversing these block puzzles in his sleep. Inbetween nightmares the main character will make choices about his relationship such as if he wants to cheat, does he want to have a serious relationship, and other important decisions a man must decide fo himself. These choices are made through conversations with other characters, your choices in responses in your cell phone, and how you choose to respond to certain events in the game. All of your decisions affect the morality meter that affects both the story and the endings of the game.

STORY (Spoiler Free)

The story centers on Vincent (the player character) and his relationship with his girlfriend Katherine. The relationship between the two is starting to move toward the point of having to make serious decisions about what the future of their relationship will be. Vincent has to decide for himself whether to take the relationship to the next level or not and most of the conflict in the game revolves around this core question. Whenever vincent and other men fall asleep at night they have nightmares of climbing a huge tower in a hellish world. One man has apparently died in his sleep but is it coincidence or related to the nightmares?

The story of this game pulled me in and had me hooked from the start and will keep you glued to your TV throughout the game. The story is very mature, intense and extremely entertaining. The voice acting on all the characters is top notch even for the minor characters and they do an excellent job at making the characters believable.

WHO WILL ENJOY THIS GAME?

The gameplay is very different from most games out there so while i personally love this game, I can see this not being for everyone. If you are the type of person who loves puzzles, loves anime, or loves games that are unique this game is an instant buy for you. For all other gamers I recommend looking at gameply videos, trying the demo, and deciding for yourself if this is something you could take a risk on an try to enjoy. If you're willing to take a chance on a game that is outside your comfort zone, you may end up being highly rewarded.

I give this game a big thumbs up!

Review from Dan's Gaming Stream

Want Catherine Discount?

Hands down, Catherine is one of the most original and visually appealing mature games released this Summer of 2011. The presentation is absolutely gorgeous and the serious theme of morality is a welcome and refreshing change compared to usual violent video games of this generation. Unfortunately, the gameplay is not for everyone and while the story is very entertaining, the overall unbalanced pacing of the game can turn some gamers off.

The main attraction of the game is its puzzles and while they gradually differ as you gain new techniques and fight different bosses, the sad reality is, your first puzzle is not very different from the final puzzle. To balance out the puzzles are what I call "social" parts of the game where you can interact with other characters in the bar and further develop the excellent story. In order to further immerse players into the game, a mixture of anime and the unique cel-shaded graphics are used throughout to move the game along.

But is the game fun? For me, not really. I completed the Japanese version when it came out on February 2011 and just finished the US version a short while ago. I appreciate the fact that Atlus and the Persona team continue to evolve and develop such original games but this was not my cup of tea. For everyone else, play it for yourself and hopefully you understand why this is one of the most original and refreshing games to come out in a very long time.