Title: Catherine
Published By: ATLUS USA (North America), Deep Silver (PAL Regions)
Based on: A new title from the Persona Team.
Console: Playstation 3 and XBox360
Release Date: 26th July 2011 (North America), TBA (PAL Regions)
Genre: Action, Puzzle, Survival, Horror, Adult
Rating: This title has been classified Mature under the ESRB for Blood, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol and Violence
Audio: English Dubs Only
Subtitles: English
Region: This review was conducted on a PS3, North American version of the title.
Cost: $59.95
Blurb: Shove all your favourite puzzle console games to the side – Catherine could potentially be the best puzzle game on the market. The concept of block towers may have some wondering if they can base a game on just that alone – however with the extremely complicated puzzles that even 20 lives may not permit victory and all the other gameplay features make it highly enjoyable. The slight Persona 4 element of helping your fellow sheep is also a creative way of altering the story. The storyline is very well designed for the gameplay concept, however I felt it fell short lengthwise in comparison to other games. Both the Graphics and Music used in the game were brilliant and left a memorable impression.
Every frequent reader to this site should be familiar with the game by now – and after eight batches of screenshots and eight trailers (and even more articles to follow), it has finally come to the point where I can sit down and review this title. Puzzle games are usually a hit or miss genre with the Portal series being the only recent game series coming to mind that was a solid addition to the genre. However, I can happily say that Catherine has set the bar even higher and showed that a game can be both brutally complex and enjoyable at the same time. I shall not take any more time – so please read on for my review of Catherine.
Vincent Brooks has little ambition in his life, and it seems that’s the way he likes it. His job is simple enough, and his beautiful girlfriend Katherine is devoted to him. However, part of her devotion is in making Vincent improve himself, and recently she’s been getting more and more insistent that he make something of himself and become someone that is worth settling down with. It’s starting to become worrisome for him, especially when the word “marriage” begins to pop up more and more in their conversations… Vincent’s been a faithful boyfriend to Katherine, but a single drunken one-night stand sends his life spinning. A mysterious beautiful stranger named Catherine seduces him, and he can’t bring himself to make a committing decision between his faithful significant other and this new girl who may be everything he ever wanted in a woman.
Making matters worse are the horrifying nightmares Vincent begins to have after starting his affair: nightmares of climbing endless towers of blocks, and of death and terror. At the same time, a series of unexplained deaths has the entire city on edge. Otherwise normal, healthy people have been discovered dead in their beds with expressions of extreme agony and terror on their faces. Tte only common linki between all the victims is that they are all men. A strange rumor has been circulating that if someone falls in their dreams and doesn’t wake up before landing, he’ll die in real life…
Introducing Vincent Brooks – our speaking protagonist who is 32 years old, holds an average job and has a beautiful girlfriend who is wanting to settle down and get married. Enter Katherine, his well-0ff and beautiful girlfriend who spend her childhood and teenage years with Vincent and wants nothing more then to tie the knot. The issue is…. Vincent is happy the way things are between them and is worried about change. So what happens if a young woman ten years younger then Vincent appears and drags him into a secret relationship that he is not too sure about himself, even if she is everything he desires? Well, let’s just say that it involves nightmares, block towers and sheep.
The game starts in a very Rocky Horror-esque way, with an all-knowing and afro’d female host welcoming the player to the game and explaining their role – to help Vincent make the right decisions in life and to survive the tower of blocks (Also a slight reference to the Midnight Channel in Persona 4). After that, you can forget about this and enjoy the eight days that this game spans over. The storyline starts in a relatively normal fashion with Vincent and Katherine as a happy….ish couple discussing about how they should proceed in their relationship alongside Vincent’s nightly trips to the Stray Sheep bar where he and his mates catch up and discuss their relationships and other manly business. The storyline slowly descends into more of a psychological mystery tale where Vincent finds himself with another woman (Catherine) with no recollection of why she is in bed with him – Katherine getting more suspicious and troubled and even his friends and the other patrons of the Stray Sheep find themselves in increasing trouble.
The storyline is delivered through many different means. Outside of the tower nightmares the storyline is delivered generally in the morning after and the night before style as he finds himself keeping one girl a secret from the other, struggling to decide who to choose and talking with his friends. These are generally delivered through a mix of animated and in-game cutscenes. A majority of the socializing that takes place in the game is at the Stray Sheep where you have a certain period of time in which to interact with the different characters and help them solve their problems in order to save them from “falling”. This same form of interaction also carries in the Nightmare world where you must help the sheep resolve to keep climbing. The storyline with Catherine and Katherine specifically also carries out through text messages in which you can more or less mould your relationship with the two through them.
A number of responses you give in this game have the effect of altering Vincent’s Karma. For the sake of this review, the two sides of the spectrum are LAW and CHAOS – to keep in the style of the Shin Megami Tensei games. This karma system have a distinct effect on what sort of storyline you get – so being more LAW inclined will have your loyalty closer to Katherine whilst having a more CHAOS aligned karma will result in your loyalty being closer to that of Catherine – which may change the interactions between Vincent and the two -atherines, especially at the end of the game where the storyline deviates into one of eight different endings. Whilst I have only witnessed one of the Katherine endings at this time, this is a good storyline system that allows a deviating story experience each time you click New Game. Karma can be changed through confessional booths (More on them later), text messages and your interactions with the many characters at both the bar and the nightmare world. Even if you were to choose ones that you thought would give you a specific ending, you will be surprised how many times you will hit a negative karma response.
The one issue I had with the storyline is that whilst there was plenty of tower climb levels, they could have done with a longer storyline overall. Whilst the storyline isn’t bad by any means, I felt that the storyline elements for the first few days at least, were there just to deviate from the tower climbing to make them seem less repetitive (Not that they were). Whilst the storyline is more dominating near the end, I felt that the storyline could have been expanded upon more to give Vincent, his two ladies and Vincent’s bar buddies more of a chance to get some character development in and to give the storyline more body to it. However, I will say I enjoyed what they put forward and was a solid storyline about relationships and the impact they have on different people. The character development could have used a bit of work on some characters, but for the time they had on the storyline, it was suitable.
Now onto the design of the game. The game uses a mix of cel-shaded designs for the actual game and in-game cutscenes whilst also using some anime style designs for the important cutscenes. The anime cutscenes are brilliant and I have no real negative comments to make on them at all, with the environmental and more importantly character designs in them being fantastic. As these scenes predominantly feature Vincent, they show off some of the expressions and moods that cel-shaded designs wouldn’t do the scenes justice. After all, how else are we supposed to know that Vincent’s bottom jaw can descend lower then a normal humans or how scary Katherine and Catherine can look when they are angry if it wasn’t for the animated cutscenes? Still, a majority of the gameplay takes place in the cel-shaded designs and these do a great job at both putting forth a sense of realism in the normal day-to-day life of Vincent in his bedroom and bar and the supernatural-elements of the nightmare world of blocks.
The bar looks almost like a realistic model for a normal watering hole, with included bits of design such as half-eaten pizza, mugs of beer and the like and overall gives a good impression on the eyes. Perhaps one of the only flaws in the design of this game is that there are only a couple of areas Vincent actually visits, therefore lacking the diversity of human world designs – Vincent’s Bedroom, Kappa Something-or-rather (A popular eating place with Vincent and his friends), The toilets at work and the Stray Sheep are the only areas that are predominantly features, but they are designed well, I will give them that. You would think that a world of blocks would be very hard to design well, but they do a surprisingly good job at keeping the locale designs appropriately themed for the night of terror. However, you generally miss the background designs when climbing blocks due to the difficulty, but it is always nice they keep with the theme. However, I did notice a slight issue with the camera angles in the towers. Sometimes you are required to go to a back layer of blocks to complete your method of finishing the tower, however at times the camera does not properly swing round to the sides to give you a clear view – forcing you to guesstimate the movement of blocks.
To character designs now. The cel-shaded character designs are very realistic and the use of lighting in the buildings adds to the realism. Each of the characters have their own specific style which matches their personalities and occupations. There are no qualms with the character designs in this respect. The same stands for the overall character designs of the sheep, with some of the dozen or so sheep you join with having small clothing mementos on them such as jackets or hats which relate back to their real-world counterparts. In terms of the actually grinding your way through the levels, Vincent remains in nothing but a pair of pink and white dotted boxers and a pillow for modesty. This adds a nice little bit of quirkiness to the mood of the game which I enjoy. The animations of Vincent whilst running through the level is nothing stellar, but as I stated before in the environment style for this part, you are too busy trying to complete the levels that you most probably won’t notice.
Overall, I have no issue with the designs in this game and I think for a game of this genre which has generally been 2D or varied quality 3D, I think they have done a brilliant job at bringing the characters and environments in the Universe of Catherine.
Now we are on to the music and sound side of this review, and I have quite a lot to say about this. First of all, the composer for the music in this game is Shoji Meguro – one of my all-time favourite game music artists being responsible for music in a number of the Shin Megami Tensei games since the release of Persona Revelations in 1996. Being a jack of all trades (and possibly master of all) in the field of music, he brings a considerable number of different styled tracks to this game – and most of them are brilliant. To add to this, as I mentioned in my packaging review yesterday, quite a few of the songs have been remixed versions of famous classical pieces by Bach, Chopin and so forth. Whilst perhaps missing the J-POP style tracks that I think quite a few people remember him most for, I think this game has a brilliant compilation of different songs that were suited to the more serious nature of this game. As well, in the Stray Sheep, there is a jukebox where unlocked tracks from the game can be played, alongside those from other games such as Persona 4 and SMT: Nocturne.
In terms of voice acting, I believe they have included a number of big name voice actors/actresses to be included such as Troy Baker (Final Fantasy XIII, Tales of Vesperia etc) as Vincent who does a brilliant job at capturing the emotionally confused nature of his role, Michelle Ruff (Famous for her role as Etna in the Disgaea series) as Katherine who takes the cake as the best voice actress in the game at capturing the multiple personalities of her role and Laura Bailey (Persona 4, Disgaea 3) as Catherine who also fulfills the sexually seductive tone of her character. The secondary characters also have strong voice roles, making for an overall pleasant listening experience. However, I found that in a scene or two at the start of the game (At least on my television), the voice acting between Vincent and Katherine sounded as if they were talking too close to the recording microphone, thus giving off slightly distorted quality. Oh, and just incase you want confirmation, there is no included Japanese dub, however I feel that the quality of the English dub is more then sufficient for this game.
If you havent been reading the rest of the review, the gameplay is primarily based on block towers in which you must go from the bottom to the top without falling off, getting attacked or being crushed by falling blocks. Simple? Far from it. You are presented with towers approximately a hundred or so blocks high (Rough guesstimate) in pre-defined sequences and you generally have two to three of them to do per night. Through that, you are not given a clear path but instead have to move, push, pull or otherwise pull-off complicated strategies in order to get to the next layer of blocks and repeat the same process. I played this game on normal difficulty and after doing the first two nights thought this game might have been simpler then they were letting on (Having unlocked two in-game Gold Trophies for them), and upon thinking that, was rewarded with a level that I used up all of my twenty-something saved up retries doing. The thing is, not only do you have the puzzle solving to worry about but the actual timeframe and potential enemies who want Vincent on a skewer. As time progresses, you are not afforded the luxury to stop and think, but have to compete with the blocks below you falling, and you will be surprised with how close you can get to falling even if you think you are ahead.
As the levels go forward, you are also provided with many other “trap” blocks which will hinder your progress. Spring blocks (Spring you up five blocks), spike blocks (If you stand on them without moving even for a brief moment, Vincent shall be a corpse), Ice Blocks (Which send you in the direction which you were initially heading without stopping – so without a normal block, Vincent will fall) and many others are provided to add an increased level of difficulty to the game. As well, the final level in each set is a boss level. You may be wondering how a puzzle game would implement a boss fight right? Well, the boss acts as a hindrance to potential death means to Vincent, so he needs to climb faster whilst avoiding said bosses attacks. As I seem to work better under such pressure, I surprisingly found the boss levels easier then the general puzzle levels. Of course, these levels are hard so you are supplied with a substantial number of Retry pillows, which allows you – upon your death, to reset the level at the start or at a check-point and have another go. Whilst you do become a little wiser of the course, you still run the risk of forgetting about a previous trap or take another path and get stuck – so it is a lifeline with thorns. Provided you haven’t died however, you are also able to undo a few moves which allows you to make an alteration to your actions if they fail. Issue I found is that it can be abused – so if you were attacked by a boss and fell down several blocks, you can undo and then as the boss is reset, will not be attacked. Finally, you can also pick up items in the levels such as spare blocks and “Wipe out all Enemies” trophies which help in a pinch, and were a lifesaver in several levels.
In terms of replayability, there is a significant amount of content in the storyline that allows for multiple playthroughs. First of all, there are three difficulty settings – Easy, Medium and Hard. Whilst the Easy and Medium difficulties are patched versions of the original Japanese release of Catherine as they were deemed too hard for even them, the Hard mode is supposedly more representative of the original difficulty that involved less retries. As well, they have included multiple endings which include a Bad, Good and Truth end for each Katherine and Catherine alongside a Good and Truth Freedom end. Whilst I cannot comment how each of them differ having only played the one route, I think it would be a worthwhile reason to play through thrice. For those inclined to non-storyline gameplay, they have also included Babel Trials – a set of four randomly generated levels meant for single or multiplayer play in which you and a partner must try to climb as far up babel as possible in increasingly difficult levels. The downside with this? You have to unlock the levels by getting Gold Trophies in Normal/Hard difficulty through the “Golden Playhouse” Single Player mode. If you are willing to invest the time into it however, there is quite a lot of content for you and possibly a friend to enjoy. Finally, if you love block climbing so much, there is an arcade game with a few trophies attached to it, where you can play Rapunzel – a game where in a certain amount of turns you have to get the Knight to reach Rapunzel to which then they make love in the tower. There is something along the lines of 60 levels in the game and whilst being simple, it is addictive.
In terms of online functionality, it is very limited with an online leaderboard for the Babel climbs and results from the confession booth surveys. In the hub level before starting every tower climb, you have to enter a confessional and answer a karma-altering question which sometimes is determined by your age and gender. These questions are essentially about your thoughts on relationships and the like – but it is a clever innovation to show the communities thoughts on such issues. Overall however, I think the gameplay might sound bland to someone who has not played the game before, but it is a very enjoyable experience which offers a very complex gaming experience. Depending on how much time you are willing to dedicate, there is a considerable level of replayability in this game as well.
For those of you who are interested in the overall packing of this game, I shall redirect you to my review exclusively dedicated to the packaging and extra content at THIS LINK.
Personally, I felt this game was a winner. The game tries to set itself apart from most games with a brand new “Never Before Seen” gameplay system, and where many have failed in this respect, this series has succeeded. I like to think I am pretty good at puzzle games and challenges, however some of the levels had that Demons Souls style of difficulty to it, where if you take your time you could complete the level – but could quite as easily fall victim to one of the other traps or challenges set by this game. I also appreciated that the game was willing to both let the gamer think up of strategies but to also supply them with video strategies as a basis to design their owns as the levels went on. Overall, I would highly recommend getting this game and for anyone who can complete Hard mode without much difficulty, I applaud you *clap* *clap*.
Final Score
Storyline: A-
Character Development: B+
Design: A
Music: A
Voice Acting: A
Gameplay: A
Replayability: B+
Personal Opinion: A
Overall Score: S
