Catherine review

Well here it is. Let's go.

Catherine is unlike any game that has been released to date. And that's a very good thing. Catherine is a strong first HD experience from the people who brought us Persona and in my opinion, the best game to be released this year so far. Sorry, there will be spoilers.

Catherine's story centers around 32 year old Vincent, who has been dating his current girlfriend, Katherine with a K, for five years now. She's throwing out hints that it's time to settle down and Vincent isn't too thrilled about it. To make matters worse, Vincent goes to a bar for his regular night of drinking with his friends and ends up meeting the bewitching Catherine with a C, who he ends up taking back to his house. I won't say too much more, but the story is very satisfying. There are a couple twists and turns and a couple cutscenes that made me cringe just thinking what could happen next. Catherine's story is its strongest point.

The gameplay is fast and addicting. The game is split up into two different styles of play. During the evening, you'll be in the bar where you can talk to fellow bar patrons who all have their own problems, drink, answer text messages, replay previous levels, listen to music from Catherine and other Atlus games and play Rapunzel. Rapunzel is Catherine in arcade form but there isn't any time limit but you do have a limited number of moves. To be honest, it could've been its own XBLA or PSN game. There's a little story and if you play it right there's over 100 stages! You only get 3 tries every night but after you beat the main game, you get unlimited tries. That pretty much sums up the evening portions.

After Vincent falls asleep, he'll be put into a nightmare, where Catherine's main gameplay is displayed. Catherine is best described as a puzzle game. Basically, every night, Vincent has to climb a tower to his freedom. The beginning stages have 3 stages a night but as you get further into the game, that number becomes larger. As I said, you climb a tower to your freedom. You have to push and pull blocks to climb all while the tower is slowly falling apart. On some stages, you'll have something chasing you. It could be Katherine's hands, a baby, and a couple others. Overall though, the gameplay is pretty fun. It's fast and even on normal, the game isn't as hard as it's put out to be. On Easy and Normal difficulties, you're allowed to undo your last 9 moves and if you exploit the move correctly, it can make the game SO much easier. Hard difficulty doesn't have that. The game also ranks you on how quickly you move up the tower which adds more replay value to the perfectionists out there.

The game will last you 10-15 hours. It also has 8 different endings and a couple different gameplay modes. Colosseum Mode has you and a friend challenge the stages from the main storyline and Babel has you challenging four different towers that are randomized each time you play it. There's also no undo function in those so good luck. The requirements to unlock the Babel stages are a little deep though. To completely unlock the mode, you have to get Gold Awards on EVERY level in this game AKA you basically have to be perfect on all stages. I think that's a little demanding but it kind of makes sense. It's impossible to get EVERY ending in one playthrough so they make you go back and master the stages while getting new endings and preparing for the horror that is the Babel.

Overall, Catherine is the best game to be released this year. It's edgy, addictive, and different. The story mode is fantastic and the gameplay is just as good. Don't let this gem pass you by. Give Catherine a chance and I guarantee it will change how you think about video games and maybe even your life. It did for me.