Review: Catherine (Xbox 360)

Catherine, the pseudo-perverse puzzle platformer that might as well be a Persona title and is (and is not) an unofficial MegaTen title. Since we're the official unofficial MegaTen Review Website on accident apparently (we're kidding), let's get this review underway.

You are Vincent Brooks, alcoholic extraordinaire (seriously, he has a problem, in both games he appears in), patron of a world where chicks apparently love their men drunk and directionless, and boy is Vincent directionless. He wants life to stay exactly as it is, comfortable with his tentative fiancee Katherine McBride, his apartment, his all-hours coding job, and his buddies at the local pub.

Vincent soon meets Catherine, the titular character, when she intrudes on his lonely, lonely drinking at the pub (it's still drinking by yourself if it's in public, and really that's even worse bro) and starts hitting all sorts of on him. He finds himself instantly smitten with what he perceives to be everything he could ever want in a woman.

In true Persona fashion, you spend time throughout the day chatting with both K/Catherines, your buddies at the pub, and strangers who can become friends over the course of the game.

Your interactions with characters, how you answer their questions and address their dilemmas, even how you respond to text messages will influence your morality and desires. Your responses to characters and certain plot points evolve and change in response to how strongly your character desires freedom or order. Also dependent on how you influence your gauge and answer questions influences which ending you receive. There's eight endings.

At night, Vincent finds himself thrust into a world of nightmares, where death in the dream means death in real life. In order to escape the nightmares, he has to maneuver and overcome a puzzle of the "blocks" that make up the issues and dilemmas he is subconsciously facing.

The game mechanic ends up taking a puzzle-platformer slant here, with all of the puzzle aspects being extremely satisfying for all difficulty levels, including first-time gamers and those who are looking more for story than challenge. Easy mode provides a satisfying level of challenge for basically every first-time player, unless you're a Professor Layton et al veteran and are used to bashing your brain against your system until the solution drips out of your nose. Or blood. Either way please just save at the pub every night and then do all of the nightmare stages on another save file so you can always go back and change the difficulty at any time. Don't feel ashamed, the Japanese got a version that was harder to the point of near unplayability.

Also, and this is pretty critical, don't ever physically harm yourself, others, or pets/objects over a difficult game. If the game is too challenging it's fine, maybe it's not for you. Step down the difficulty, do whatever you need to do. It's worth it.

Graphics

I seriously love the Shin Megami Tensei art style, and it's translated brilliantly here. Most of the character art is fantastic, Vincent's outfits are constantly enviable if you're male, and both K/Catherines are attractive in their own fashions. All of the scenes have believable detailing, down to the wood grain floors and booth seating of the pub, Vincent's tiny-ass Japanese apartment with a bed, laptop, kitchen, and a door, wherever the game brings you. The nightmare levels and block design are interesting as you get through each night of nightmares, reminiscent of Tartarus from Persona 3's changing designs, the boss designs are appropriately terrifying: everything is in its place.

My gripe is this: on the Xbox 360 version, the version we played, it is evident that there are sections of the game that are upscaled from 720p to 1080p, like unacceptably noticeably so. I say "unacceptably" in the sense that, no matter how great the rest of the game's visuals, designs, and settings are, I simply can't give Catherine full marks here. Feel free to respond in the comments if you've played the PlayStation 3 version and can comment on the quality of the animated cutscenes on a 1080p screen.

Score: 9/10

Sound

Pretty much everything about the game sonically is fantastic. The voice acting is my only gripe, since sometimes the enunciation and facial expressions don't match the script, or some other combination therein. Other than that, the music is great, the cameo selection from other Shin Megami Tensei titles is well-appreciated (but I'd appreciate a lot more Persona tracks since really there's no reason you couldn't). The sound effects during the game are pretty authentic, the "gameyness" of the sound effects during the nightmare levels is pleasing and nostalgic to the point that its repetitiveness is a welcome treat.

Score: 9/10

Controls

So, this game has two different control schemes.

When you're in the outside world, the game is mostly menu-driven like the game's cousins, and the pub acts as a semi-free roam hub where you can talk to the other pub denizens until they decide to go home, even granting you an achievement for staying at the pub until everyone else goes home, drink until you're trashed which grants you a bonus in your nightmares, and even help your strangers-turned-friends with their personal issues. Pretty much un-screw-up-able, and Atlus managed to pull it off no problem.

Now, when you're in the nightmare it's a somewhat different story. The game follows what I'd call "literal puppeteer controls". Basically imagine what The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past controls like (isometric top-down view with literal directions, a la up = north, down = south, etc.) where your movements are modified with the face buttons to perform actions like grabbing and pushing blocks, using items, and attacking foes and obstacles. The following is why I give these controls a 9.95/10.

When you're hanging off of the edge of a block, sometimes the controls get wonky and left stops being left and vice-versa. That's my one complaint.

Scores: 10 and 9.95/10

Story

The main story is great. We've played three of the endings so far. Catherine's "true" ending is fantastic even though it's the true freedom/chaos ending as well. Katherine's bad ending, or at least the one we encountered, is well-deserved. Katherine's "true" ending, being the true order ending, takes a goddamned nose dive out of nowhere and ends up being completely boring and confusing. It's also the first ending we got, which almost made us abandon continuing on with getting more/all of the endings.

That notwithstanding, we still intend to play this game to completion, including obtaining all achievements. Based on having seen three of the endings, we feel comfortable in being able to review the meat of the story since most of it remains unchanged.

Score: 9/10

Catherine is a welcome addition to both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 lineups, and it shows that Atlus' Persona team understands the market's shift towards puzzle games, ungamer-friendly gameplay and storytelling, and a final note I wanted to save for the end of this review.

The original run-up to the game's release began with a lot of tantalizing imagery of Catherine, which had a lot of gamers questioning how the puzzle mechanics, not long enough in the demo to display how the puzzles evolve in complexity and inventiveness across the course of the game, would mesh with a love triangle story including a girl perceived initially as "whorish" or "slutty". Despite this, every single aspect of the game's plot is handled in an appropriately mature fashion, both Katherine and Catherine end up being compelling and interesting characters in their own right as well as being seemingly repulsive in parts, at least until the truth behind the events of the game is unveiled, all becomes clear, and you, the player, says "oh right, I do have every reason to trust Atlus."

Final Score: 9.25/10

- Evan