Catherine Review: Now's Not The Time To Be Dead!

Catherine

Annoyingly I don't have my full limited edition set for this and only have the game with me, but still! Time to talk about the brilliantly weird game by Atlus - Catherine!

Now it's probably obvious by now that I'm a pretty huge Atlus fan and Catherine is just such an amazing game. It tells the story of Vincent Brooks, a lazy, good-for-nothing and weirdly attractive man who doesn't make the best boyfriend. After being with his girlfriend Katherine since Highschool, he ends up cheating on her and his nightmare begins.

Told like a cheap 80's midnight flick that a child sneaks downstairs to watch, Catherine uses stunning graphics and distinctive gameplay to create an emotional roller coaster of a story that will make you laugh, weep, and scream.

After cheating on his girlfriend, Vincent starts not only getting strange sheep filled dreams where he's climbing for his life, but can't get rid of the other Catherine that he had his affair with.

Catherine plays in two stages - the nightmare stage where you find yourself trying to solve block moving puzzles to get to the safe stage and ultimately the boss stage. Each night progressively get's harder with different kinds of blocks (e.g. ice blocks, monster blocks, shattering blocks.) that provide a hell of a lot of fun, a sense of accomplishment, severe stress as the lower blocks slowly start falling, and massive amounts of frustration as you can't figure out how the hell to do a certain bit.

Then there's the Bar stage where, as you probably guessed, you're in a Bar. In this stage you get the chance to talk to your fellow alcoholics Bar patrons and friends, finding out more about their lives, getting an idea of why they might be having the nightmare, and best of all - drink! Which leads to some amazing facts where the narrator speaks as if you have a drinking problem, you do.

Each stage is special in it's own way and brings it's own set of pro's and con's to the Catherine table. Nightmare stage can feel like it's taking forever and at times is more tedious than it is fun, dragging parts out for longer than they need to and making you want to throw the controller away in annoyance. But also provides a nice amount of character development and a good way to change your law and chaos meter, a feature I'll discuss shortly.

Bar stage also provides you with some character development in a bit more depth and gives you a nice min-game that you can play at your own leisure. The jukebox can be used to play music from other Atlus games as you unlock trophies for Catherine - a nice feature for any Atlus fan. Being able to drink is a great addition seeing as this actual has some form of effect, however after the third drink it simply becomes redundant. The passage of time in the Bar is great and staying late on some nights can even trigger some secret events which is pretty neat. Being able to respond to texts is something that I fell in love with, trying to decide on the wording to get the outcome you want, going back and revising lines that sound harsh and reading them in different ways just adds depth to the game that I don't think will ever be mimic-able by another game. But otherwise there really isn't anything to do in this piece and it can get a bit repetitive.

The chaos and law meter in the game helps to add a great sense of weight to your decisions, with each one moving your gauge either more towards the law side, or the chaos side. What I found most interesting about this feature, but also the most disappointing, is how it affects Vincent's way of thinking in certain critical plot moments. This was amazing as it showed you how a decision can alter a perception on a situation. However it's let down by the fact that it's simply just one or two lines of internal monologue that doesn't change too drastically. But still this is one of my personal favourite aspects of the game. Especially since it's the key to which one of the eight endings you get.

Speaking of the 8 endings - this is another aspect of Catherine that I thought was great. Mainly because as you progressively get further away from the max part of either the law or chaos gauge, the endings get more and more disappointing - an aspect I believe shows how indecisiveness doesn't pay off and ultimately does nothing for you. I myself always aim for the perfect Law ending, refusing to be mean or actively cheat on Katherine. My friend however, you know who you are, once forced me to get the max chaos ending - which might I add pained me deep inside. Actual pain. But still, not only are the max endings much more satisfying but they also develop the story in completely different directions and provide you with some beautiful cinematic's.

To summarise, Catherine is a wonderfully constructed game that unfortunately did lack a bit of rounding and at times could accurately be described as dull. Nonetheless, it does well to create such a unique game with an incredibly immersive story with wonderful characters with great development. It's definitely one of Atlus' greatest games.