Okay Geek Farm
Xbox 360 - Catherine Review
Alex Tretrop
To say that Catherine is one strange beast would be an understatement. The newest game from the aclaimed publisher Atlus, and the development team that brought you the Persona series, takes large strides forward and many steps backwards throughout our protagonist’s journey to win the hearts of Catherine or Katherine. The story itself is easily the high point of our game, with some interesting twists and turns as it progresses. Even the gameplay feels really different from your average title as your put to the test climbing immense towers of blocks by pushing and pulling them into positions to make stairways. It’s generally a good time and, while there can be a large amount of frustration, I really enjoyed my time with Catherine.
Story
Vincent Brooks is your average uninspired 32 year old guy who likes things exactly the way they are. He has a job that pays the bills, a serious, brunette girlfriend named Katherine, and enough time each night to drink the night away at his favourite bar with some friends. That is until he meets Catherine, a much younger and adventurous blonde whom he can’t take his eyes off of. After a one-night stand with her, Vincent needs to fix things quickly or risk his entire life falling apart.
Catherine is broken up into two primary parts, similar to how Persona is structured: the daytime, which you’ll exclusively spend inside Vincent’s favourite bar, the Stray Sheep, and the night sections, where you’ll head into your nightmares to experience the bulk of Catherine’s gameplay.
One of the largest problems I have with the story is that it feels a little underdeveloped, mostly due to the fact that the aforementioned nightmare sequences require much more time to complete than the daytime sections. Where you’ll spend 10 - 20 minutes in the Stray Sheep, you’ll spend more like an hour in the nightmare (and if you aren’t good at puzzle games, expect to spend even longer!). The nightmare sections have bare minimum exposition relating to the overall plot and, especially when the plot gets to it’s fantastic moments, you’ll find yourself longing for Vincent to just wake the hell up already.
But even though you’ll be spending a ton more time than you probably want to in the nightmare, the story told here does have some really standout moments. Your friends and the other people you meet at the bar all feel like they have some really interesting personalities and stories to tell as well as help you make sense of what you should do in the strange encounters you have with Catherine with a C or Katherine with a K. While you won’t see much of either in the bar, you’ll usually be bombarded by text messages by both, which you can choose to answer by picking from some pre canned sentences for each line of your response.
These responses, along with many of your other choices throughout the game, affect a morality meter that only appears during some of the many cutscenes to influence some of Vincent’s decision making. By the time the game was over, I was somewhere in the middle of the “good” side, which makes these problems Vincent has all the more believeable. I feel like I was all over the place for the majority of the game, as I was trying to answer all their strange, relationship related questions as truthfully as possible. All too often in games we see these morality meters be in one of two places for every player: you’re either the nicest saint on the planet or the most demonic creature to roam the earth. It’s really nice to see something that constantly changed all throughout the game. It didn’t affect the story all that much however, as it just leads to one of the game’s many endings.
Gameplay
As I mentioned before, Catherine is broken up into two sections every in-game day, but it’s the nightmare portions where you’ll find the meat of the gameplay. Every night, Vincent is forced to climb increasingly challenging towers made of moveable blocks. Think of it as some sort of combination of Tetris and Jenga from hell, as you’ll need to push and pull blocks into certain positions to form walkways as you ascend to the top of each tower.
If you read my impressions of the demo,you’ll notice my main problem with the game was it’s lack of variety. Well, I’m happy to report that with the introduction of new block types and a difficulty curve that begins to become insane, it doesn’t slouch in that area at all. However, the concept of pushing blocks around never becomes especially interesting and I can easily see it becoming a chore for some people, especially the one’s who are only in it for the story. The sheer number of these nightmare stages, with little in terms of plot development, can really start to try your patience around the middle of the game, when the levels begin to get extremely lengthy and the story hits it’s high points. Part of the frustration also stems from the fact that this game is no walk in the park. On Normal, you’ll find yourself dying extremely often, as it only takes one shot too kill you in any circumstance. Pair this with some large distances between checkpoints and you’ll want to jam nails in your eyes after the bazzilionith time you’ve died.
But let’s look on the bright side a little bit. While the game lacks variety in many of it’s visuals, it definitely makes up for it in the sheer variety that you can solve each puzzle. Many of the game’s levels contain multiple ways of stacking the blocks in your favour and the speed you’ll be creating these makeshift staircases almost subconciously in the later levels is awesome to experience. The frustration can creep in occasionally when you end up behind the rising block tower, as there isn’t a reliable way to shift the camera to the backside of it, resulting in some random button presses in the hopes that you won’t fall to your doom.
Finally, let’s talk about what little gameplay you can experience outside the nightmare in Vincent’s favourite bar, the Stray Sheep. As you sit down to drink with your friends, you can answer text messages from your two lovely ladies, talk with the bar patrons and drink the night away to improve your speed in the nightmare. It’s interesting to experience and provides most of the exposition for the story.
Visuals/Audio
There’s no denying that Catherine is a really nice looking game. The animation quality on the characters are top notch and the few anime style cutscenes really feel original and well made, thanks to great use of depth perception end expressive characters. During the nightmare segments, the backrounds all look fine but you’ll be focusing so much on surviving the climb that you probably won’t notice them all that often.
What the game could use though, is some variety; You only ever get control of Vincent in the Stray Sheep during the daytime and it would be nice if the story developed the city he lived in a little more. While we’re shown a few restaurants and Vincent’s home during cutscenes, we never get to explore any of the spaces ourselves and that feels like a huge shame. In the nightmare, we encounter a similar problem, since the tower of blocks is always so prominent on the screen. It feels like all your ever really looking at are just boring tetris pieces. Sure some of them look different from each other but staring at blocks for a twelve hour game is as exciting as watching paint dry.
The audio in Catherine is also extremely well done. Many of the english voice actors return from their stellar roles in Persona 4 and they all do great jobs for the variety of characters present in Catherine. Vincent himself sounds like your typical average person while the sexy Catherine always sounds seductive, no matter what’s she’s doing. The music also sounds great, particularly during the nightmare stages, where the booming orchestral score completes the fast paced gameplay and epic feel of climmbing such a large tower. In the Stray Sheep, you’re treated to slower tracks, which you can change whenever you like at the Jukebox, so you can generally find something that you can enjoy each time you visit.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps the most dissapointing thing about Catherine is that it has so many little issues that can really affect some peoples experience of the game in a very negative way. To say this is a pretty niche title is almost an understatement: you need to enjoy puzzle games immenseley, be alright with the game’s themes and story as well as dealing with the occasional bit of frustration. But I always felt like I wanted to keep going in Catherine, mostly because of the interesting story and some of the occasionally fun and interesting block puzzles introduced to you in the nightmare. It certainly isn’t for everyone but I definitely encourage some of you who are interested to pick this one up.
Pro’s
- Original and Interesting Story
- Fantastic Visuals and Audio
- Some occasionally great level design
Con’s
- Can easily become a very frustrating experience
- Little Variety in the environnments
- The story can feel underdeveloped at certain points
For some, Catherine’s gameplay will really turn you off. Some bad checkpointing and a very high level of difficulty won’t be enough to endure to get to the interesting story. However, if you can deal with that, you’ll find the game to be both an original and interesting experience that has both brilliant moments and extremely frustrating ones. It’s definitely a good game but it’s numerous problems keep it from being an unforgetable experience.
