This console generation has been kind of like puberty for gaming. Think about it; Games such as "Pong" and "SpaceWar!" could be considered infancy because of there simplicity. Next would be "Space Invaders", "Pac-Man" arcade games and all the way up to games on the "N64"and "Genesis" could be considered the toddler stage because of the nee developments. "PS2", "XBOX" and "GameCube" would be Adolescents (A good game for this analogy would be Kingdom Hearts, you wanna be cool but you still kinda like Disney.) . And with the "PS3" and "Xbox 360" we've reached puberty and are now totally obsessed with guns, girls and hanging with our friends, online of course(Story and gameplay be damned!). And if this gaming generation is in puberty, Catherine is its wet dream after a late night of experimenting with drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
The gaming industry nowadays is over saturated with copy paste games. Most of these games have "puzzles" to break up the main gameplay and have a "story" for the same reasons. So it's revolutionary to have a game using these mechanics as the main gameplay (EXTREME sarcasm). But seriously, I can promise Catherine is NOTHING like ANYTHING you've played before in terms of both story and gameplay.
Now the biggest "make or break" thing about this game is the story, as its a very story driven game. So without going into TOO much detail the story centers around a guy named Vincent. Vincent's middle-aged and has THAT girlfriend, you know, the nag nag nag girlfriend, named Katherine. But even still Vincent loves her, and they've been going steady for a while now and Vincent couldn't be happier with his easy going life. That is until his nagging girlfriend says those fateful words "Let me chain you down for the rest of your natural born lif- I mean lets settle down." . Now THIS rattles Vincent's world at the CORE. Setteling down leads to kids and all other forms of responibility directly corealating Vincents laid back dimenar. So Vincent does what any true gentlemen would do, stumbles over his words until he can find a valid excuse to leave. Later that night, Vincent hits the bar with his drinking buddies (If you watch anime you should recognize all of there voices) and they talk about Vincents situation until they all decide its time to head home, all except Vincent of course. As Vincent sits at the bar drinking away his sorrows, a woman enter the bar, and by woman I of course mean half naked blonde bombshell (in case there was any confusion). She walks up and sits right next to him. They strike up a conversation and Vincent ends up throwing out a hypothetical about marriage. Her response "Marriage is just a word. I mean, no one should really want to be tied down like that, right?" So for all intensive purposes the woman of Vincent's dreams is right in front of him. And as one thing leads to another they end up accidentally kissing. Vincent decides to go home before he makes any further mistakes and in a drunken stoopet falls asleep
(which is where the toturial takes place but ill get into that in the gameplay section. But when he wakes up, the girl from the bar is sleeping right next to him when he's SURE he went home alone! And basically the rest of the game is Vincent juggling both girls and trying to keep his life together in the process. And as if that wasn't enough he starts having these strange nightmares where sheep are talking to him!
The actual game part of the game takes place in Vincent's dreams . Basically a wall is formed from the Ether and you have to move the blocks left, right, in and out to make it to the top, easy right? Wrong, really wrong. In its later stages (later as in after level one) you're REALLY gonna have to use your head. And it doesn't help that the floor is falling from under you being swallowed by the Ether from whenst it came. Now I know what you're thinking " Aesop, I don't know about you, but I don't have wet dreams about walls made of moveable blocks," and to that I say stop judging me and let's move on. There are few different kinds of blocks, ice blocks, unmovable blocks and even some exploding blocks just to name ...three. There's also a moral choice system that ends up influencing Vincent's choices concerning the women and I probably should've mentioned it in the story section but yeah, you're doing that judging thing again. The way the moral choice system works is at the end of each level you're met with a platform. On that platform there is a few people (that you see as sheep) and a confessional box. You go into the confessional and are asked a question by the guy on the other side (#NoSpoilers) and you're given two choices. once you've picked the ENTIRE CONFESSIONAL BLASTS OFF AND BRINGS YOU TO THE NEXT LEVEL! I CANT make this up. Oh they also do this awesome thing where in the loading screen after you've made your choice they show a pie chart of what everyone else has chosen. I think thats pretty cool.
So yeah I don't think there's much left I can say with out wandering into spoiler territory so here are my final thoughts. I LOVE this game. I've played Catherine over MULTIPLE times to see its MULTIPLE endings MULTIPLE times (I regret nothing). It's really inthralling if you're into a good story and has awesomely unique gameplay that I'd honestly love to see more of. Plus it's the only video game ever to get me laid. This has been Aesop, until next time.
Comments
Post a Comment