Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
Genre: Action/Puzzle/Horror
ESRB Rating: M
Release Date: July 26, 2011
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

Puzzle games and myself have a bit of a fickle relationship. On the one hand, I often end up getting stuck on cases where I know the answer is glaringly obvious, yet I end up spending up to half an hour trying to figure it out. On the other, I’m always looking at these as opportunities to work my brain powers, so I can’t throw them aside that easily.

It’s especially a wonder how I managed to get so far in Catherine, the action/puzzle hybrid game from Atlus. This game in particular has pushed my thinking capacity to levels I hadn’t reached in years, at the expense of a couple levels of my own sanity. And I’m just going through the game on Normal mode.

In Catherine, you play as Vincent, a 32 year old man with no goals in life, a job that gives him a steady paycheck, a relationship with a beautiful woman that’s willing to put up with his carefree lifestyle, and a penchant for spending most of his time at the local bar with his friends. News starts to spread about how men are suddenly dying in their sleep, and rumors begin flying around that all the victims have been having strange dreams before their deaths. When Vincent starts having these dreams himself, he becomes caught up in a struggle to keep his own sanity. This conflict increases tenfold when a mysterious blonde bombshell enters his life, turning a drunken one night stand into a frightful dilemma. Now, Vincent not only has to struggle to survive the nightmare world he gets dropped into every night, but also balance a relationship between two women.

Now Entering: The Inquisition

Catherine itself is really amazing to look at. Having been developed by the Persona team, you can expect the characters to have the sleek anime-style look that inhabits their other games. The daytime locations you go through are all brilliantly rendered, and even the Stray Sheep that you hang out in has some neat decorations to look at. All of this on top of impressive animated cinematics, courtesy of Studio 4^oC, and an equally strong voice cast, with names like Troy Baker and Laura Bailey rounding out the roster.

In the nightmare world, the designs are enhanced to, well, nightmarish levels. That’s saying that in a good way. The stages for the most part fit their themes with gusto (for example, the Torture Chamber has spinning blades and other deadly decorations around the entire area), and while you may have a hard time taking a chance to look at your surroundings with all the chaos that goes on, they give you a feeling that you really are in a freakish world that defies logic and reasoning. The “bosses” that you encounter also follow this design process. Their appearances reflect the main character’s troubles in the real world, and will definitely give you reason to run like hell. Seriously, seeing a giant mutant baby with a chainsaw for an arm has an effect on how fast you want to get through the stage.

All this is accompanied by a brilliantly done musical score, done by Shoji Meguro, the composer for Persona 3 FES and 4, and the upcoming remake of Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Some of the tracks are actually remixed versions of various classical music scores. I can already tell some of you with more refined musical tastes are curling your nose at the thought, but the end result is actually surprising. Listening to Chopin’s Revolutionary March with a kicking techno beat, or Rossini’s William Tell Overture with wicked guitar riffs, you get a more enhanced feeling of dramatic tension as you work frantically to figure out how to set the blocks before falling to your doom.

It’s The Killer. Do Not Die.

For the uninitiated, the main portion of Catherine’s gameplay is pretty straightforward: you move blocks around a stage, which allows you to scale the tower, and eventually reach the goal before the tower crumbles beneath you. Seems easy enough, right?

The catch here is that the setups you encounter and the traps you come across will all test your block moving abilities with increasing intensity. You’ll encounter cracked blocks that will crumble underneath your feet, spike traps that try to skewer you, bomb blocks that damage other blocks around you, and more. Being able to adapt and come up with a quick solution while avoiding other hazards is essential to surviving each of the areas. You’re not alone, however, as there will be other people trying to climb as well (they appear as sheep while in the nightmare world), whom you can pick up various techniques from, and there’s also a small shop that will sell you an item to help you out.

Outside of the nightmare world is where the brunt of the story takes place. After watching the events that unfold, you get to spend some time at Vincent’s regular hang out, the Stray Sheep. Here you can interact with his buddies, as well as other patrons of the bars, respond to text messages, play a mini-game, and even get yourself sh*tfaced.

All of these aspects have some sort of effect on the game as a whole. The regular bar patrons have their own stories to tell, so interacting with them on a regular basis will get you more of what they’re going through. If you pay attention to the hints they drop, you can even recognize some of these people in the nightmare world, where you can continue to interact with them. Talking with these people can help to give them the will to continue, and doing otherwise may result in them being on the morning obituaries. Meanwhile, the mini-game is an interesting distraction that can allow you to brush up on your block climbing skills, while drinking enough liquor can actually boost your movement speed in the nightmare stages.

If you want to take a break from the story for a bit, then you have other options, most notably the trial mode called “Babel.” This mode is essentially a set of time trials that pit you against a randomly generated tower of blocks, with your goal being to get as far as you can with the best time possible. The randomly generated blocks make this mode just as challenging as the story mode stages, as you’ll need to think on your feet with how to progress. You can also tackle this mode with a friend, or go against each other in VS. mode to see which of you is the superior climber.

The Love Triangle From Hell

The story aspects are probably where this game shines brightest. Again, this goes back to your interactions with the other characters. Some choices you decide to make during conversations the real world (and even some in the nightmare world) have an effect of how the story will play out. This comes from what text messages you send on your phone, how you respond during conversations, and more.

Depending on which choices you make, Vincent’s inner monologues will also be altered, as he struggles to decide which girl he wants to be with. This control over the storyline is similar to many Atlus titles, which is a great boost to replayability. If you’re like me, you may be tempted to answer as honestly as possible to each particular question and run with the results, but if you’re shooting for a specific ending, then it shouldn’t be too hard to find the answers you need, especially since the game informs you of your progress when you make a story changing decision.

The story also has its fair share of psychological horror elements. While there’s nothing that should make you sleep with the lights on, they definitely add a fair amount of suspense to the game. Unless, of course, you have a very strong fear of mutant babies with chainsaws for arms. It’s also worth noting that the entire story is presented in a similar fashion to that of the old Tales of the Cryptkeeper shows from way back in the day, in the form of the Golden Playhouse. Only instead of a decrepit, talking corpse being your host, you have a buxom babe with possibly the largest afro in the history of afros.

I’m Falling!!

While the game itself does bring something truly unique to the field, it’s not without its share of flaws. The smallest of the lot are the lengthy loading times that usually pop up when changing scenes. They’re sometimes accompanied by some interesting quotes relating to romance from popular voices, but others you are usually forced to sit and watch a ticking clock for half a minute or longer. It’s not much, but it can be a bit of an irritant after a while.

On the other side of the spectrum, are the game’s brutal difficulty spikes. Simply put, the game has a hard time trying to find a middle ground in how much it wants to kick your ass. Let’s just say that having been stuck on a single area for three hours, and then blazing through the subsequent boss encounter in about 15 minutes, doesn’t exactly say a whole lot about the actual difficulty curve. For the most part, though, you will get challenged in this game, and you will most likely get destroyed on several occasions. Perseverance is your most trustworthy tool in these situations (and a lot of extra retry pillows).

To make things more annoying, the Babel mode actually requires you to get gold trophies on the story mode stages in order to unlock them. The first of the four stages only requires one, but the last and most challenging stage requires nine of them. While the intent here seems to be to weed out the inexperienced from those that know what they’re doing, having such a steep entry fee for a separate game mode seems more disheartening than encouraging.

Overall

All-in-all, Catherine is definitely a worthy play, if just for the story alone. The presentation is very solid, with just the right blend of action, puzzle, and horror elements to keep most anyone engaged, and there are enough random things to look out for to keep you playing for several run-throughs. The game’s target audience, however, is fairly limited, and the crazy difficulty can be more of a turn-off than a turn-on to many. Choose your fate wisely, lest you end up chucking your controller through the nearest window.

tl;dr - Too long; Didn't read

While Catherine is definitely someone you don't want to take lightly, the brilliant story and character interaction makes all the frustrations and awkward difficulty spikes worth going through. Just make sure to have a stress relief toy on hand.

Aesthetics: 4.5

GamePlay: 4.5

Story: 4.5

Quality: 4.0

Overall Score: 4.5