Catherine (2011)

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 65 was Catherine. This is a puzzle game where you need to push/pull blocks in order to create a pathway to the top of each level. This core gameplay loop is amazing and the story/atmosphere are truly fantastic. I loved (almost) every moment playing this game.

I don’t think there has ever been a puzzle game with a story that comes anywhere close to Catherine’s story. You play as a man named Vincent who is in a long time relationship with Katherine with a K. Things aren’t going so well and Vincent ends up drunk at a bar one night. There he meets Catherine with a C, one thing leads to another, and he begins an affair with her. That night as he is asleep, Vincent is starting to develop nightmares. Vivid ones where he has goat horns and needs to climb up mysterious staircases in order to survive. Similarly, in the waking world he has heard about a string of deaths that occurred to men while they were sleeping. In order to survive, Vincent keeps ascending these staircases each night as the drama with his affair and relationship develop more and more.

Wow, this story is awesome and I cannot think of any other puzzle games that spend so much time on it! Each night you get to spend time at the bar and interact with Vincents friends, the staff, and other customers. It really helps develop the world. REMEMBER TO ALWAYS DRINK AT THE BAR. It increases your speed in the nightmares.

The presentation is also nothing short of fantastic. The whole game is set up like a season of an anime, much like the Persona games. There are fully anime cutscenes, wonderfully voiced characters, and great music. Catherine is an absolute treat to experience and the team went the extra mile to make everything look and feel perfect… except for 1 thing.

My one and biggest complaint about the game was so annoying that I feel it deserves its own paragraph. The BELL!!!!! Who thought that the bell was a good idea? At the end of every level you go to a small stage where you can save, buy stuff, and interact with other people experiencing the nightmares. During this area a church bell is constantly ringing and it is possibly the most annoying sound I have ever heard. I had to mute my TV when I beat a level because it was getting to me so much. I would have zero complaints about the game if this stupid bell just had an off button… ugh.

The gameplay is nothing short of fantastic. Vincent needs to ascend staircases made of blocks. He can push, pull, and climb blocks. The challenge is that things are not usually arranged in a simple staircase and you will need to create your own paths up. This system has so much depth and there are multiple paths up each level. The better you get at the game, the more patterns you will start to notice and better you will become. Catherine was so difficult for me for the first half of the game and then it just sort of clicked. The game never gave me a powerup, item (permanent), or cheat code to win. I personally got better and was then able to recognize how the game was supposed to be played. I get that sensation very rarely and I really appreciate the puzzle system for letting me figure it out.

That being said, there are a multitude of things that will help players figure out the game. There are items that do things like jump up 2 blocks instead of 1, create a block, or kill enemies (yes there are enemies that will try to push you off the staircase). These are cool, but I rarely used them and don’t think they play a super large role in the game. The other thing the game does to help you out is that it teaches you climbing techniques. After most levels there will be sheep you can talk to and they will help you come up with better techniques for moving blocks around and climbing the tower. None of these techniques are locked and I was already aware of a couple of them. But it is nice that the game wants you to win and will help you learn how to play!

Overall, Catherine is absolutely fantastic! I think this is my new favorite puzzle game. Sorry Tetris and Portal, but Catherine is just the full package. I loved every second of this game (except the bell lol). Please play this! It will be hard and a bit frustrating, but it is so much fun. I promise! (10/10)

I spent 10 hours and 24 minutes playing Catherine.

I have spent a total of 835 hours and 38 minutes on the Road To 360 challenge so far.

Next Game: Armored Core 4

Biases:

1. I have never played the Persona games and have limited experience with current Japanese video games.
2. I am not very good with pure puzzlers (I didn't bother finishing Limbo for example).

Played on PC through Steam.

Catherine is an interesting, not to say weird, video game. It sets out to tell a serious, adult story about a relationship that's going sour, with a supernatural twist where the playable parts are the strange nightmares the protaginist is having. This is where the game excels. The nightmare areas are truly bizarre, where everyone looks like sheep, and the soundtrack in comprised of lounge music coupled with... constant bleating. the kind of surreal world that's hard to forget.

Outside of the nightmares, the game plays more like a visual novel, with many, many long (way too long) cut scenes and parts where you can talk to characters and change the story. How much did I change the story by my decisions I have no way of knowing, but I stayed firmly in the blue side of the meter. It kind of felt like a straightforward take on the Renegade/Paragon system from Mass Effect. The story itself is intriguing at first but the characters are unlikable and the story drags too much without going anywhere interesting, just repeating itself over and over. At some point I just wanted to get it over with. During the later parts of the game I had to sit and watch close to 40 minutes (!) of cut scenes strung together. At this point I felt less like I'm playing a game and more like I'm watching a half-cooked Anime show.

The meat of the game, i.e, the playable parts, are the nightmares sections where you need to climb huge towers made of blocks, full of booby traps, sometimes with monsters chasing you (it's here where the game does something interesting with the Id of Vincent coming back to haunt him). I felt like the two parts really didn't gel well. The story part was, again, more like a laid back visual novel, while the gameplay part consistend of incredibly difficult cube puzzles. After dying about 500 times on Normal I switched to Easy 25% into the game and never looked back. This allowed me to finally really enjoy these parts of the game.

Catherine also features challenge modes and PvP for whoever is interested in these things, but I didn't check them out.

In summation, an interesting and bizarre game for adults, certainly unique enough to give it a try, but also overlong and overly difficult/frustrating for what it is. The super easy mode though is a god send that fixes the difficulty problem for those of us who otherwise whould've put the game down and moved on a long time ago.

Try it out if you like story-rich games and pushing blocks.

One part visual novel and one part puzzle game. The themes are about infidelity, love, guilt and existential dread. The game focuses on a depressed 32 year old and his washed out friends who spend their nights drinking and complaining about their meaningless lives. Vincent is approached by his dream girl and decides to cheat on his long term girlfriend. What follows is a twisted purgatory that somehow involves sheep, demons and lots of boxes.

I think the story can be both clever and subversive. At face value, it would come off as chauvinistic since it's from a male point of view, but it feels like the writer and director were self-aware and instead wanted to be de-constructive and satirical about a believable type of guy. The characters do feel real, even when they are hammed up to a ten. The best satire, in my opinion, is also a good example of the source material.

That said, it's not perfect and they perplexingly decided to throw in a transphobic 'joke' in one of the endings... My biggest criticism is that I will now be targeted for dating sims on Steam. Another issue I would levy is the futility in the decisions you make. The only real change is the "ending" cinematic. It's a shame, because I would have preferred less/shorter endings and more branching paths for the narrative. As it stands, the story isn't a good reason to re-play it and decisions are mere illusions.

You can also criticize how they portray Katherine. The director decides to jump into the relationship after Vince is already bored and second guessing his relationship with her. While I don't think she's 2-dimensional, she isn't given an opportunity to shine and instead just comes off as grumpy all the time and not too likeable despite being the victim of the story. In addition, the director decided to add a 'sigh' every time you get a text from her. In contrast, Catherine's text are accompanied by a giggle. There are narrative reasons for why Catherine comes off as a manic pixie girl that I was able to guess through the hints planted in the writing.

Finally, there is dissonance between game play and narrative. You have the visual novel and you have the puzzles. I appreciate when a game goes the extra mile to connect the two, such as with Dark Souls and dying as both a mechanic and story element. The devs instead opt to side-step the issue and present a cheeky explanation during the credits: "It's a metaphor for life!" How profound...

I found myself enjoying the time in Stray Sheep. Whether it was the narrator listing alcohol trivia or listening to the banter of Vince with his bros and fellow patrons, it worked and serves as a nice break from the tense puzzles. The inclusion of Rapunzel was also a clever way to allow the player to practice skills in a safe environment. It's a surprisingly deep mini-game including 64 levels with 3 different endings. There are plenty of ways to spend your time in Catherine.

What about the primary game play? It's one of the most challenging games I have ever played. Don't be fooled by "Easy" difficulty. It's deep, well crafted, fast and open ended. It strongly encourages and rewards you for mastery. In fact, you cannot play any of the challenge maps until you are able to earn gold trophies on 'normal' difficulty. I think it's a good idea to lock the steepest challenges behind good performance. Most of the time, when you play well, you are rewarded with something that makes the game easier rather than harder. Each level is a large grid comprised of blocks with varying properties. Some require more time to move, some will crumble after stepping on them, some will cause spikes to shoot up and kill you, ect. The game is constantly introducing new mechanics even during the final stages of the game.

My biggest issue with the challenge of the game is they introduce a critical move about 3/4 of the way through it. While you could discover this move yourself, it's unlikely. This decision inflates the difficulty of the first 3/4s of the game as a result. Another issue I had was with the AI. The second to last stage got pretty frustrating after the 10th time I failed because my AI companion was a complete moron. I was playing well, but through RNG I still failed. Twice I was inches away from the finish line...

Still, it felt satisfying overcoming this game and it was a unique experience. It won't be for everyone and I'm not sure if/when I will replay it.

Yeah, at its core it's a relatively simple puzzle game, but there is so much love put into every inch of Catherine, it feels like so much more. Like the Persona games, this gem is full of great characters, witty dialogue, and a story that gets progressively weirder and more entertaining as it goes on. The anime-inspired visuals really come into their own here too, a stunning mix of bold graphic colors, creative and disturbing monsters, expressive characters and atmospheric environments. What's really amazing about Catherine though, is that what would appear to be a repetitive rinse and repeat cycle of puzzle solving and character interaction never, for a single second, gets old, a testament to the clever pacing of both the story and gameplay.

PS: This game will always stand out as a visually impressive game to me because, shockingly, it was the first game I played in HD using an HDMI cable instead of the RCA cables that came standard with the PS3. Turns out that makes a PRETTY BIG DIFFERENCE! Lol!

I didn't know what to expect going into Catherine, I felt fascinated to it because of the style similar to Persona 5. I am really happy I took the time to play this!

I don't really play puzzle games but this is a such a fun experience because of how big of a role the story plays. Loved the fact that they added the little exploration part with the bar, it's a nice way to alternate to the sometimes quite hard puzzles.

The characters and the story are really fascinating and adult, definitely had me hanging on my controller to know what would happen next, and felt especially rewarding with the long anime scenes.

The controls in the puzzles are incredibly smooth which is very satisfying for someone like me that doesn't really play that type of game.

This is a perfect game to play between bigger and longer titles, since it's not too long and has different endings :)

I liked Catherine. It's good, but I'm aware that I'm below the age demographic. I mean I just turned 18 about a week ago, of course I wouldn't relate to the decision of marriage as of now.

Catherine tries to be a game about growth. On paper, its theme is brilliantly shown through the characters and their designs. Katherine acts more mature. She keeps talking about the future with stuff like marriage and wanting Vincent to drink and smoke less. Catherine is the perfect looking girl. Almost as if she were everyone's fantasy girl. She's peppy, she wants to get down to business (if you know what I mean), and she always wants to have fun. The irony here is that Vincent's development remains static that you could kinda doubt that he really learned as the dynamic change is so sudden. Vincent starts off as unsure about his decision to marry Katherine. When the stakes keep raising, Vincent just keeps making excuses. He keeps saying that he'll be honest this time, but he keeps doing the opposite for a majority of the game. The story is pretty on rails, despite the multiple endings, that I wished that the paths were more branched. I mean the branches are only at the endings. I would've liked to see Vincent gradually change depending on the decisions throughout the game. I don't know if any of this has changed in Full Body but I don't have a PS4.

My favorite part about the game is chilling in the bar. I loved talking with other people about their lives and trying to make them feel better so they won't die. Whenever someone died, my heart felt empty, knowing that I could've saved them, but I didn't because it's too late. These characters were some of, if not, the most grounded I've ever come across in a game. The game doesn't really talk down on you for choosing an ending unlike other games. Cough Undertale cough. Do you want to grow up and start a healthy family despite the hard work of having a job, taking care of a child/children, etc. or do you want to live in a fantasy where you never grow up and have as much fun as you would like? I liked climbing up the steps. Some levels can be really hard, but they were fair. If I had criticisms with the climbing, hanging around ledges was weird. There were moments where I pressed down but I went some other direction. I wish that there was a backside of what you were climbing. Also you can only look 180 degrees. You can't see the back even though there were parts where you climbed on ledges. A solution could be that you pressed the a certain button to look at the back. Maybe the right stick in particular.

In the end though, I liked Catherine. It has mature themes to be told, even though they are muddled with contradictions. But the motivation, the characters, and the climb make this game a memorable experience that I would recommend. Most particularly for 20-30 year olds.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

I'm normally not into puzzle games, heck the last one I spoke about was Professor Layton, BUT man Catherine is such a unique and bizarre experience I can't help but recommend it lol. Just like Atlus' Persona games, Catherine is just dripping with style. I was on the fence originally about whether or not to get Catherine: Full Body, since I had played the original so much and even went as far as unlocking all the achievements.... but after everything I've seen on the new game, and seeing as how they even went as far as bringing back the original voice actors to either create or expand on previous scenes.... I'm sold. I'm buying this game again lol. I think there's enough new content to justify buying it again, plus it was released back in 2011, so I think it's worth going back into the madness that is Catherine xD.

I wanted to play this game for a long time and it finally came out on PC. So far (~2hrs) it's great and well worth the wait. The puzzle mechanic is surprisingly deep and challenging and the artstyle is great. I love how as you progress you are thaught "techniques" instead of your character just gaining new abilities.

The story is... I don't know. At the time I remember critics praised the game mature take on mature themes. While I can see that, what I mostly see are the profoundly sexists opinions that almost every character spouts. It's too early to tell, but as far Katherine and Catherine have no personality outside their one-note characteristics of shrewd and carefree, respectively.

I hope this changes and the developers show a more enlightened stance. A remastered and expanded version is coming in about a month and there was some contention that it might portray trans people in a bad light and I would hate for it to be the case.

Surprisingly I really enjoyed the puzzle gameplay in this. I found it to be simultaneously challenging and very satisfying, as well as intuitive to learn.

The story I thought was a mixed bag. I absolutely adored the mythical fantasy elements and horror tropes; but the weak characters and some strange leaps of logic overshadowed the narrative (which is a shame because the themes involved are actually unique and interesting).

Overall a worthy experience for fans of puzzle gameplay or ambitious, artsy video games. Definitely not for everyone though.

I just finished playing Catherine on Easy, because ugh, it's astoundingly difficult. Overall, I actually give this game a strong 3.5 (hence why I put 4 instead of 3 stars) because I really did enjoy the story and the characters, but there were some aspects that I found frustrating.

Story: You play Vincent, a 32-year-old bachelor living in a small apartment, working a basic job, and dating a woman named Katherine that you have been seeing for about five years. You often join your friends Orlando, Jonny, and Toby at a local bar called Stray Sheep with a waitress named Erica and headed by Boss. During a date, Katherine suddenly reveals to you that she might be pregnant because she is late and suddenly, your life starts going crazy. Additionally, while you're at the bar drinking alone, you encounter a young, pretty woman named Catherine (who is precisely your type) and you end up having a one night stand with her. Thus, the nightmares begin and now you might fight your way through the stairs every night until you can get to the bottom of why this is happening.

Characters: I loved all the characters... well, except for Catherine. I'm just biased, but she was a little too whiny for me. Each character you encounter, in addition to all the main ones, have a story to tell and your job (aside from surviving every night) is to decide how much you will support everyone. It's evident that they took the time to really develop each one and make their stories believable.

Gameplay: There are three parts to the game that you will do. There is the verbal interactions face-to-face with the characters, where you will select the response. There is the texting interaction through your phone where you can choose to respond to selected messages. Lastly, there is the puzzle stairs you face every night in order to wake up in the morning or die in your sleep. The idea with both your verbal and text interactions choices will dictate your Good-Bad meter, which will indicate what kind of ending you're going for. As for the puzzle stairs, you will shift and move blocks around in order to create your route in order to make it to the top. As you continue through the levels, you will encounter trick boxes, such as Ice, Dark, and Monster.

Cons: Why didn't I give it a 5? The primary issue was the camera during the puzzle phase was difficult to work with. While Vincent can climb on the blocks in front and in back, you can't see around certain points of the block and get stuck. I had one point where I went up the steps too quickly for the next set of stairs to load, got stuck hanging on the back edge of the blocks, completely blocked by the newly dropped rows. This may sound a little too specific, but the main point is that the camera can be wonky. The other issue I noticed is that you have to take note precisely what and how many steps you're making; if you try to get Vincent to move differently while he's in the middle of an animation, he may not respond immediately. As earlier stated, I just didn't like Catherine's character at all, so she kind of killed it for me in some scenes.

Overall: It was definitely a fun and enjoyable game. The characters were very likeable and easy to relate to, the puzzles were a lot of fun to try as you start to develop techniques, and there a lot of additional things to do in the game, like the jukebox and Rapunzel arcade game at Stray Sheep. I loved the concept of utilizing the cellphone as part of your interactions. It took me about 13.5 hours to play towards one ending (I got the True Good ending), but if I play it again, I will probably get it on Very Easy.