Catherine

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Atlus' 2011 puzzle-platformer adventure video game - Catherine.

[gallo_pinto]

Catherine is my least favorite video game of all time. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, but while there are some games that I don't like, Catherine is the only game in my video gaming life that I've actively hated. I played it for the first time last year and I was actually really excited to play it. I read the reviews at launch about it's fascinating, mature take on a subject matter rarely discussed in games. I played Persona 4 Golden and it ended up being my favorite game of the last 15 years. When I found out that Catherine was made by the same team, I decided I had to play this game. And what a disappointment it ended up being.

First the gameplay. This game is extremely difficult, but I didn't find its type of difficulty fun or rewarding in any way. The puzzles themselves aren't that hard, but you are put on an extremely strict time limit where you'll fall to your death if you don't immediately figure out which block to push. They never give you a chance to practice the new moves the other sheep teach you, so I never felt like I was getting better at the puzzles. The use of pillows as lives added nothing to the game and it just tacked on another layer of frustration. And while I thought the idea of bosses in a puzzle game was cool and that their designs were pretty interesting and twisted, actually playing them was horrendously frustrating. Boss levels have all of the normal gameplay mechanics that are there just to induce rage-quitting, but in addition, you could be solving the puzzle quickly and efficiently and then BAM, you're cut in half by a chainsaw wielding baby, sent back to repeat the last three stages and question why you are playing this game.

I think that whether or not the story connects with you is a very subjective thing and I know a lot of people had a powerful response to Vincent's predicament. I didn't get that at all though. I thought Vincent was obnoxious, weak and childish and I had trouble feeling invested in his story knowing that having one conversation with either girl could solve his problems. I think the use of a choice-based morality system was a big mistake as well because it had zero effect on the plot, at least until the endings. I tried to get Vincent to stop seeing Catherine, including sending her messages telling her to stop texting me and then the next cutscene would feature them both flirting. The only thing the choice system added to the story was dissonance. The endings of the game heavily incentivize you to fully commit to either a full Chaos or full Order play through, because that's how you get the true endings. But it's when you fully commit that the story makes the least sense! When you're committing to one true ending or the other, you spend the whole game being nice to one girl and mean to the other. But then the cutscenes all show Vincent being conflicted and unable to decide, which just made me stop caring about the story.

I did think that the soundtrack was pretty good, the alcohol trivia was funny and I overall enjoyed the scenes in the Stray Sheep bar. But hearing the game over theme followed by Vincent yelling "Catherine!" has been seared into my brain as the most unpleasant memory in my gaming life. I'd recommend a hard pass on this one.

Three Word Review: Opposite of fun

[Todinho]

I the first time I heard about Catherine was in some article on the internet talking about how this was a game about infidelity where you spent alot of time in a bar sending text messages,that immediatly caught my interest it was such a weird concept being done by a AAA game that I just had to check it out,the fact that I had just played Persona 3 and that this was made by the same team just cemented that.
I remember booting up the game and being greeted by a pink background with a sheep falling to his death revealing a pillar where the main character Vincent was tied up screaming “Catherine!“,at that moment I knew that I had made the right decision in buying the game.

One thing that took by surprise was realizing that this was mostly a puzzle game about climbing blocks,this could've been a deal breaker if I didnt like them but for me the puzzles are one of the main reasons why I loved the game, at first the levels were really intimidating but the game does a good job teaching the player all the techniques required to climb efficiently, you'd often learn a technique just before a level where using it was necessary,this and the addition of the Undo button and checkpoints(absent from the japanese version I believe) helps the player to start “thinking with blocks” so they can overcome the levels, and while Catherine is a challenging game throught by the end I felt like a block climbing master despite almost never getting a gold ranking. Another aspect that made these levels really enjoyable was how exciting and tense they were,puzzle games tend to be slow methodical affairs,not Catherine though,here you're always racing against the clock trying to come up with solutions quickly before falling to your death,add to that the setting of the levels that are always grandiose with different challenges being introduced regularly and the classical music that plays in the background,it all combines to give an energy and feeling that turns a simple puzzle game into something of epic proportions. Lastly these levels have a brilliant touch in adding a scoring system similar to character action games,the game constantly gives you positive feedback so that you want to keep a climbing streak going and get a high score at the end,this doesnt just make the levels more replayable but it also makes watching someone do a perfect run really interesting in the same way watching someone in Bayonetta get a perfect platinum in a really hard fight interesting.

The thing I was interested the most at the start of the game was the story though and luckly it didnt disappoint,yeah the morality system wasnt great,the player barely affected the story with the choices they made and the game thinks it's alot more clever then it actually is. I didnt really mind that though,I just liked the overall plot with its twists and turns and more importantly I loved the characters,they werent the deepest like you would expect from some social links in persona,but they were all characters that I enjoyed spending time with and learning more about.
And last but not least the music is excellent throught the entire game,the marriage of Shoji meguro's style and classical music gives this game an indentity of it's own capable of stading shoulder to shoulder with the soundtracks of Persona 3&4 and one that I never get tired to listening.

While I was expecting to like Catherine I didnt know just how much I would actually enjoy it, this was a game that put a smile on my face from start to finnish,everything in the game from the puzzles,story and music worked together to create this amazingly bizarre experience that I never got tired of playing and something I`d love to see Atlus try their hands on more,not in a direct sequel but in making other games that have the same spirit,because I think the games industry needs more games like this one.

Three word review: Cocktail Trivia Heaven

[ToQi]

This was a most curious game, mainly for its weird and risqué storytelling; seemingly one of those idiosyncratic Japanese stories, but I'm guessing it was quite heavily tailored for a Western audience – relative to the hundreds of games that don't make it over to our shores.

It's an OK, reasonably entertaining 3D puzzler that for some reason reminds of Kula World on PlayStation 1, but I think it's difficult to argue that its strong appeal comes from the gameplay rather than the interactive cafe sections, character development, moral dilemmas and mid-level sheepish baaaaa-nter.

If cinema gets to celebrate cerebrally weird and wonderful films almost as a sub-genre (think Davids Lynch and Cronenburg), then why can't games? I would recommend Catherine to anyone who wanted something challenging, unsettling and quite set apart from other games.

[Alex79]

I played Catherine a few years back when it was free on PS+. I'd always been intrigued by the game since it was released, but it's not the sort of game I'd usually buy being what was ostensibly a puzzle game with overtly anime stylings, but I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with it. The actual gameplay itself was a lot of fun (at first) although it did get to the point where it started to wear a bit thin, and I had to knock the difficulty down to easy - and even that wasn't enough in the end. With enough perseverance I could have made it through the game I'm sure, but I got so far and decided I just wanted to see the story through and actually activated a special cheat mode enabled ultra easy mode in the end, which just kept dropping loads of 'jump three lines' power-ups, making the rest of the game a breeze. Some of the game featured genuinely quite disturbing boss characters, like the weird baby thing chasing you up the stairs (if my memory serves correctly!). Ultimately though, what kept me playing was the bizarre as shit story. Never have a bunch of more unlikable characters appeared in a video game together - so utterly self absorbed - I related to them well!! The main guy came across as a completely pathetic slimebag, and his friends were a proper bunch of simpering jerks. The only character I really liked was the barman. But it was an interesting story nonetheless, I did enjoy the RPG like sections between the main gameplay, and I thought it was a nice touch when you had to answer questions and then found out how other people had voted - an even better and potentially more revealing feature might have been to see how individual people on your friends list had voted - a feature that could have potentially caused plenty of real life debate I'm sure. The whole oddness of the game really struck a chord with me in the end, I loved the way the people in the dream world were all sheep, all trying to work out how or why they were there, and I did enjoy the ending of the game, it had a couple of twists I didn't see coming (and one I SO did!) Overall, yeah, definitely a game I'm glad I played - despite becoming quite bored with the actual climbing mechanics of the main gameplay, however clever it seemed for those first few goes. In fact, somewhat bizarrely whilst writing this I've been overcome with a sudden urge to play it again, so I might!

THREE WORD REVIEW : Blocky adulterous nightmare

(Apologies for the poor writing - it was very much a stream of consciousness from a foggy memory when I am supposed to be working...!)

[Doc Funky]

In addition to being one of my absolute favorite games of the PS3/360 era, I'll always remember Catherine for being one of the few games in recent memory that I've been able to share so completely with one of my best friends. We both picked it up on launch day (or at least close to it), and since we worked together, we could play the game separately each night and share our experiences with each other in the morning. He and I would share theories about the story, hints and tips for shifting blocks to make pathways, the choices we made in the confessionals, and the fun alcohol facts we learned from drinking in the Stray Sheep each night. Once both of us had completed the game, we even started to meet up at his house to drink a few beers, perfect our gold statue runs, and ultimately tackle the Babel stages as well. We don't often share the same level of passion for the same game, so Catherine was something really special in that department.

On a more individual level, Catherine was a game that sucked me in as few games have done since. During my initial run through the story, I would routinely stay up far too late with that "just one more" mentality...just one more landing, just one more boss, just one more morning, just one more night in the Stray Sheep...especially when things really started going off the rails, Vincent's friends began to appear in the nightmare, and the other sheep became darker and more violent (the SHEEP JUICE one being my favorite). I even started to have dreams about climbing block towers in the style of the game. The puzzles were just difficult enough to provide me with a challenge, but were never really frustrating, as any outright deaths I experienced were clearly my own fault for running across the wrong block at the wrong time or moving the wrong blocks in the wrong sequence...and, really, once you start using the Undo button, you can get yourself out of nearly any jam.

While I do wish that your choices had a more immediate effect on the story (as Vincent will end up fooling around with "Catherine With a C" for a while no matter what you do), the world this game created was so entertaining and engrossing that I can't look back on it with anything but positive memories. If you like puzzle games and are old enough to think seriously about the kinds of themes this game deals with, you owe it to yourself to play Catherine.

Three Word Review: Sheep juice factory.


(In case anyone forgot who I was referring to.)

[Indiana747]

I started this the other night as ive had it on the backlog for ages & seeing as the podcast was coming up, why not give it a go?
To be straight, this isnt my cup of tea at all. I wanted to like it but i eventually came undone in the Nightmare levels. Even on easy i felt that they were annoyingly harsh, especially the final stage of each night when you were being chased by a demon. The stages preceeding them were a breeze in comparison then the difficulty just spiked. I tapped out at night 4 or 5, my skill level at this sort of game is only moderate to say the least, so i was always going to be surprised if i managed to finish this game, which will bug me as i always like to finish a game ive started. When i did feel i had the better of a section i would get punked by the rather dodgy control system, dodgy in the instance of when Vincent dropped the far side of a block and the controls for him flipped, left and right got swapped at the most inopportune moments, leading to time wasted hence leading to a frustrating death. This coupled with the inability to rotate the camera around really bugged me when that happened.
It wasnt all bad though, i rather enjoyed the parts in the Stray Sheep, which surprised me as i thought that was the part of the game that would annoy me most. The cut scenes had adult issues but seemed to be tackled by Vincent or the game itself in a absurdly juvenile manner. Needless to say ive FIITB, i havent the patience any more to be constantly fucked over by a game, so im moving on.
Im not sorry i gave it a go though, it has its merits, but ultimately, it wasnt for me. Good to have diversity in the gaming medium and is nice to see other people did enjoy Catherine.

[Todinho]

If the diversity in opinions here is any indication the Catherine podcast is gonna be an interesting one XD

[gallo_pinto]

Yeah, I'm really excited for this one!