AnimeNine Reviews: Catherine

I have officially defeated the story mode of the game that is Catherine! After 24 hours and 54 minutes of hard decisions, complex puzzles, and a lot of getting stuck I beat the game on normal mode, unlocking the versus mode in the main menu. Yes that’s right. Catherine becomes a two player game.

For those of you who don’t know what Catherine is here is the synopsis from GameSpot.com:

    “Catherine is a thrilling action adventure game from Atlus. In Catherine players will enter the life of Vincent Brooks, a 32-year-old man who finds himself caught by the irresistible attraction of the game's titular diversion. Vincent wakes up, hung over, next to a stunningly beautiful woman who isn't his girlfriend. This lands him in a predicament that occupies most men's dreams and nightmares. Did anything happen? Does he tell his longtime girlfriend, who's pressuring him to commit to her? Can he get away with stringing both women along? Who will you choose to hurt? In life, cheating can ruin everything, but in the world of Catherine, it can also kill you. Players must navigate Vincent through heavy moral decisions and as with real life, hardly anything is black and white. What is the right thing to do? What will you choose to have Vincent do? The game also features local competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes to ensure that the many thrills and horrors of racing through twisted stages can be enjoyed by more than one player. Multiplayer also adds additional hours and extra gameplay to the overall experience.”

This game was a whole lot more than I thought it would be. You can not only do the puzzles in Vincent’s nightmares but also play during the daytime and talk to his friends, drink in the bar, text Catherine and Katherine, and retry previously beaten levels from his phone or play the mini-game Rapunzel. Talking to your friends and even the random people in the bar allows you help to figuring out the great mystery of Catherine and helps to get you to the ending with a smile or a frown. Like other popular RPGs (Star Wars, Elder Scrolls, and Fable) the choices you make and things you say to people move a meter along a good or bad path, helping decide your ending to the game.

The story was great and highly detailed, definitely and anime, though the difference in the cut-scenes was fairly irritating. They had animated cut-scenes for you to watch where lots of actions were happening and CG cut-scenes where not a lot of anything was happening but talking. It took a while for them to load and they switched often enough that I didn’t want to watch them anymore. There were even load times between scenes that seemed shouldn’t have them. Like from one person talking at the table to another walking up to it. Granted the story kept me so interested I dealt with the loading times.

I do recommend this game to anyone who has an interest in anime, puzzles, horror, or even a good romance story. I think that Catherine should get 7 out of 9 overall. Go get it, play, and tell us what you think of the game. Do you agree with me? Why?