Catherine was announced some time ago by Atlus, and was released on PS3 and Xbox360 in February 2011, in Japan. Since the date of its announcement, many people have been waiting for it with trepidation, waiting for a puzzle game with dark, horror, and also quite adult and erotic tones. To have it in our hands as Europeans we will have to wait until the first months of 2012, but in the meantime we have tried it and we are ready to review the title as a whole, so as to give you a precise idea of what you will face and give you way to choose more rationally if it is in your interests.
Poor, poor Vincent.Catherine… or Katherine?
The hero of our story is called Vincent. A young boy who has been engaged for five years to the beautiful Katherine, who begins to propose to him to get married. A shower of cold water for Vincent, who in addition to not feeling ready, is also confused by the recent and persistent rumors that are starting to circulate in his neighborhood. In fact, it seems that several people have started to die in the neighborhood, coincidentally all boys. Death always comes at night, during sleep, leaving the corpse in pitiful conditions, similar to those of zombies. And with so many thoughts in mind Vincent goes to his usual bar to get drunk, eager to ease his anxieties at least for a while, and that's when she shows up. The perfect girl, the girl of his dreams. And of course, without any kind of memory, the next morning Vincent wakes up with this naked girl next to him in bed. A girl whose name, twist of fate, is Catherine.
Vincent thus begins, night after night, to find himself in strange and terrible nightmares, nightmares where everyone except him are sheep, and everyone has to face a crazy climb to safety, to avoid being sucked into a void that would lead them to death even in the reality. During the day, however, the nightmare worsens, in a situation where indecision reigns supreme. Katherine, the one we have been with for years now but who seems to no longer understand us, or Catherine, the girl of our dreams and who continually shows us Heaven in bed?
How can you resist it? ...Cubes, cubes everywhere !!
Catherine is a very simple and at the same time very complex game. We can say that it takes place in two different phases, that is, day and night. Let's see in detail what happens in these two phases.
During the day the title confronts us with Vincent's problems, making us live his love misadventures via clips in beautifully drawn and animated anime. Once the evening of each day arrives, we will find ourselves in the usual bar of Vincent and his friends, where we will finally have a completely playable stretch. Here, in the bar, we can do several things, first of all talking to the various patrons, Vincent's friends, the Boss behind the counter and the waitress. Among the various options that will be given to us while chatting with people, we will realize that our every action and decision will affect a "good" or "bad" status of the character. Therefore, depending on how we behave, the story will also change in a rather heavy way and, consequently, also the ending among the 8 possible. We will soon learn then, that most of the bar patrons are some of the sheep we meet at night in our nightmare, and an important sidequest is to talk to them, find out their problems, and cheer them up to prevent them from night they let themselves die. Between a chat and the other we can also drink alcohol (which will speed up our movements during the dream), or play the arcade machine "Rapunzel", an alternative version of Catherine's puzzle game where we will have all the time we want but with limited moves. The mobile phone is also very important, on which we can save the game but where we will often receive text messages from our two women, to which we can respond as we please, choosing from various predefined phrases and thus also influencing our good or "karma" bad. There are many other little things to discover in this bar, but I will let you discover them for yourself, so as not to spoil all the fun.
At night there is the real "heart" of the game. Vincent falls asleep and finds himself inside a nightmare where there are many other people in the form of sheep. In this nightmare the sheep find themselves at the bottom of a sort of mountain formed by cubes, all of the same size, about the same height as a human being. Below them, at short intervals of time, the "levels" of cubes collapse one after the other, into an infinite void. Needless to say, if Vincent fell into this void, he would also die in reality. And that's how, in an absolutely desperate way, Vincent and the other sheep have to climb these cubes, moving them one at a time to create steps that allow them to go higher and higher. Of course, during the first few levels this is quite simple, but as you progress it gets more and more complicated, requiring more and more complicated strategies. The basic strategy is based on the knowledge of the "edges" of each cube: they are in fact created so that, magically, if the edge of a cube touches that of another that is anchored to the other cubes (although the cubes are suspended in the void, in fact, they keep attached to each other as if they were glued on their faces), then not even this one will fall. Knowing this, it is possible to create very particular staircases that require a certain ingenuity, but it will not be long before even the strangest cubes that will complicate things will arrive. Heavy cubes, for example, will take us longer to move, ice cubes if we are not careful will make us slide towards the void, cracked ones will break after a couple of times we pass over them, explosive ones will cause everyone to become cracked those that are around, and so on, arriving at types of cubes that are also quite annoying. During our climb we will be able to find objects, such as pillows (which are our "lives", the possibility of restarting the level from the beginning or from a checkpoint in the case of death), cubes (which in our possession will allow us to place a new cube where we want, making things much easier), the bells (which will kill all the enemies in the field of vision, usually the other sheep, who otherwise will hinder us as best they can: basically in this world there is a struggle for survival ) and several others, but remember that, with the exception of the cushions, you can only take one item with us at a time. Climbing these cubes sooner or later we will reach the exit, which will make us finish the stage and will give us a bronze, silver, or gold trophy, depending on how many points we have scored by collecting the coins scattered during the climb and also considering the time it took us to reach the top.
Unless the exit we reached was the final one of that night (and in that case it would mean that we had to face, during the last stage, a boss, who is usually a huge monster that climbs chasing us and complicating our lives. in the most bizarre ways), we will arrive on a “safe” plane, where we can save the game and meet the various sheep that are camped there. Here, fortunately, we will not have to fear attacks from the woolly creatures, and indeed we will be able to talk to them to discover new information. Not only will we recognize different bar patrons by their clothes, but thanks to their advice we will be able to learn very useful new climbing techniques. In this floor there is also a merchant that we can pay with the points scored during the climb to buy an item that can be used during the next phase. Once we're ready, we'll have to head to what looks like a confessional. Within this, what appears to be a child and who is probably the mastermind behind this whole situation will ask us a question, to which we will have to answer absolutely sincerely. His questions are always inherent to love or otherwise to morality, and an answer will be blatantly good while one blatantly evil. What we answer will affect the story to follow, and we will also be able to see the percentage of the various answers given by various people on the internet. Once we have given our answer the child will lead us to the next phase of the area, where another climb awaits us, and so on until the arrival of the boss and then at the end of the night.
In the safe plane we will be able to talk to the sheep that have set up camp.A playable anime
Graphically, Catherine is truly amazing. Its models and animations are rendered superlatively, reminiscent of an anime in every aspect, especially thanks to the accompaniment of real cartoon scenes. The characters are all very charismatic and convince in their stories and personalities, and even a story that may initially seem banal and obvious will instead reserve several twists. The audio is also very good, the music is optimally linked to the setting and the situation in which we find ourselves, and, although there is only the English dubbing and not the Japanese one, for once we can say that "it's not bad at all. ”, Even if the option for Japanese voices would certainly have given an extra point to this excellent title. The longevity stands at 8 hours, which is not bad, if we consider that these can be lengthened in an incredible way if we take into account the Rapunzel game, the various levels of difficulty, the trophies to be obtained and of course all the various story changes depending on of our behaviors and 8 different endings.
The scenes in anime are a joy to behold.
In conclusion
Catherine appears, initially, as a strange game, well out of the ordinary. But this "strangeness" of his is what leads it, then, to become such an interesting title that it does not allow us to detach ourselves from the pad, at least until our brain will not be fed up with thinking too much. A particular story, a particular game system, particular characters. A game so particular that in its entirety it made many people shout at the masterpiece. And we admit that it really deserves to be played, but the moment you put it on your console you need to be honest with yourself and respond to situations as you would. Are you faithful or traitors?
