Catherine Review

Catherine or Katherine…

Catherine is one hell of a game in today’s market. Atlus brings together a mix of horror, puzzle, and platforming for their first internally-developed release for current generation consoles. Described as “adult-oriented”, the focus of the game is about Vincent Brooks and his dilemma with his girlfriend Katherine (with a K) and a strange girl named Catherine (with a C). Players control Vincent, who after meeting Catherine, begins having strange nightmares, which can cause his death.

The game is separated into two parts, the day time at Stray Sheep Bar and his Nightmares. Stray Sheep bar takes up Vincent’s time with players able to send/receive texts, talk to customers, order drinks, play a mini-game called “Rapunzel” or listen to some catchy tunes in a jukebox which has a large collection of songs from Atlus titles.

Honestly, the core of the game is the Nightmare stages and the difficulty that befalls the player. In this dreamworld inhabited by Sheep, who are all men dealing with an issue as well; you are forced to climb upwards in a very unique style of puzzles. The puzzles in this game are beyond frustrating and the “boss” levels leave no room for player error. Playing this game on Normal difficulty was more than challenging for it to be considered “normal”.  Atlus did however add a patch that allows the “Very Easy” difficulty to be played but isn’t a selectable option, leaving the player to look elsewhere on how to activate it.

Catherine’s most enjoyable aspects are the scenes and playtime away from the puzzles. Vincent Brooks is a greatly designed character that draws the player into his journey of a harsh dilemma. The themes of relationships, commitment, and cheating have never been played out or focused heavily as well as this title delivers. Despite its strong story, the player is allotted very little time to enjoy the moments before going back to Vincent’s nightmares. It seems almost as if Atlus wanted the player to hate the Nightmare stages as much as Vincent hated participating in them.

Catherine is an experience that no other game offers on the market today with its share of difficult puzzles, character development, and involving situations that have never been implemented in a main stream video game before. The story is top notch and voice acting is beyond well but is almost shadowed by the hatred towards the puzzles and time spent retrying them. Catherine is not for the typical gamer, and for those who wish to indulge need to be warned of headaches.

Final Score = 6/10