Okeydoke, here’s the review. Behind the cut there be spoilers but the short version is that I really, really can’t recommend it. (Which is too bad because there is a very interesting game hidden within… it’s just that you have to plow through waaaay too much crud to get there.)
Catherine is two disjointed games in one. There is a puzzle game mechanic and there is a relationship game mechanic. Here are the problems with both:
The puzzle game isn’t very good.
The main character is a jerk.
Now, the game looks really, really interesting (Maribou told me that she thought the puzzle portion really looked like a nightmare someone would have and, as such, wouldn’t want to watch it for more than a few minutes (which turned into a half hour)) and the story is engaging in the bar portion, for example, where you have the option of talking with folks and listening to music and texting your various interests.
Unfortunately, you’re a guy who is cheating on his girlfriend with a chick whose name he didn’t even know the first time they hooked up, neither knows the other exists, both are fans of monogamy (the new girl even said “never cheat on me” to the guy during their second tryst). Oh, and your old girlfriend is pregnant.
So, right off the bat, we know that the character you are playing is cheating on his pregnant girlfriend with a girl who thinks that she is in a monogamous new relationship.
Telling the truth is, apparently, not an option… so you don’t even get the fun of playing a magnificent bastard who does what he wants because it’s a game, dangit!!! but instead you play a weak, indecisive drunk who cheats on both of his girlfriends.
So when you finish a storyline portion, the reward is a not-very-well-made puzzle game and the reward for beating a puzzle game portion is to go back to being a jerky jerk.
While it’s true that you’ve not played a game much like this before… you won’t be inclined to play one like it ever again either.
Yeah, unfortunately that’s what it appeared to be from the outside. Glad I won’t be wasting money on that one. The strange thing is, apparently a lot of people like this particular theme, as the game is apparently Atlus’ biggest North American launch title to date. I can’t see a puzzle game with the exact same mechanics selling this well without the same story/visuals.
Maybe people just really wanted to see some video game anime breasts.
Well, relationship games are *HUGE* sellers in Japan. It makes sense that the right one, packaged correctly, would do well in the US.
If the puzzle game was good (like, intuitive, and you didn’t need to watch walkthroughs to get through the various boss levels to know which blocks you need to push out of the way) then that would be one thing… if the main character was someone who was pretty cool rather than a loser, that would be one thing.
But the game is not particularly rewarding despite being gorgeous and having awesome (non-puzzle) mechanics.
Certain kinds of entertainment are also huge in Japan. I don’t believe in argumentum ad japanopolium
There are experiences that are primarily cultural.
There are experiences that are primarily universal.
I think that there are corners of the universal experience that are overlooked by many, many American Publishers and I’m delighted that Atlus has acted in good faith on this game and hope that, someday, it’ll translate an actually good game.
Edelweiss is a better game than this. Hell, Cross Days (whose authors trolled their fans) is a better game than this.
Wait… The point of this game is you’re in a bad relationship… or I guess you’re in two bad, really stressful relationships… and you have to keep going along making choices that makes your relationships worse and more stressful… and that’s the game, is it?
I don’t understand. Why is this fun? Why can’t you just blow stuff up?
Yes. As it turns out, *THAT* is the point.
At the end of the game, you have the opportunity to pick one or the other… but, yes. The game is mostly devoted to making things worse for yourself and the people you’re schtupping.
The relationships in Mass Effect were more of the form “here are a handful of people and you can have a relationship with one (but not more than one!) of them.”
This is actually fun.
Micki and Maude? Not so much.
I find it perversely fascinating that this is a “thing.”
When I think of any of the awful relationships I had when I was single – awful because I was an immature dick or I was dating someone who was bat-shit crazy (or both) – the one thought that never occurs to me is:
Hey! It would be cool to relive that in digital form.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether I’m in the target audience.
Wow, I’m surprised.
I hate puzzle games (minuse the Portal Series), and I love Catherine.
Plus, the puzzle sequences and existential crises of Vincent’s day-to-day life seemed to dovetail nicely. The soundtrack and art are great.
What didn’t you like about the puzzles J?
I’ve reached the third boss and the way to beat these particular levels involve pushing blocks away, right? There is no way to know which blocks will result in your goal getting closer from just looking at them from the front. You have to guess.
On top of that, the controls aren’t anywhere near as tight as they need to be given the demands of the various bosses.
The controls aren’t tight, but you get use to them. Plus you have the reverse button, so if controls lead you to push the wrong block or do something stupid, you can just go back in time five seconds.
And you definitely CAN look at the blocks and figure out what to do. Of course you can rush through with a devil-may-care attitutude (my own preferred approach) but once you get use to certain “techniques” you can usually see which one fits in a given instance.
There are some puzzles that are just not self evident, even after an hour of trial and error, but they are few and far between. I think by the fifth night (if you have any desire to keep playing still) is when things feel completely natural.
Shit also starts to get really crazy and bizzarre after that.
And you definitely CAN look at the blocks and figure out what to do.
This is true for the ones that involve moving the stuff around from the front… it’s not true for the ones that involve pushing stuff to the back. It’d help, even just a little, to be able to spin around and see the back side of the stages. It won’t let you, even if you’re back there.
That turns “ought to be fun” into “exercise in trial/error”.
It is no longer a puzzle if you are forced to guess.
“(like, intuitive, and you didn’t need to watch walkthroughs to get through the various boss levels to know which blocks you need to push out of the way)”
It’s definitely challenging, which is a nice derivation from Portal’s lead-you-by-the-hand approach to problem solving. But it’s definitely still only a 20 hour game even without walkthroughs.
I have to disagree with this review entirely. Though I can understanding the frustration of the puzzles, it certainly is not guessing. The game actually introduces you to tactics to use as the game progresses, so your learning how to look at the puzzles and interact with certain block arrangements as the game progresses if your not smart enough to figure it out in the first place.
I have beat the game twice. The first time I died like 40 times on certain levels. The second time I was blowing through levels like a champs and securing gold status. Its the kind of game that rewards you with the feeling that you have gotten better the more time passes. It’s the best puzzle game I have played since tetris attack.
The only complaint I have about the story is its inflexibility to change what is really happening till the very end. Yes the character is a slight jerk, but really he is just unsure about what to do finding himself in such a situation.
For someone who has only made it to the third stage, and then says all these it just appears to me the game is just not for you. Which is true to form for any type of game, but being a long time player of Atlus games I have to say this was on of their better releases. The style, music and gameplay are just top notch stuff.
Yes the character is a slight jerk, but really he is just unsure about what to do finding himself in such a situation.
Dude, he’s a drunk. He’s at that bar drinking until he has max movement for the puzzles every night for a week.
Dude he got drunk and woke up next to this sexual goddess and he can’t remember anything. Anyone who has been in a rough relationship can know this is like a secret desire. Yet, he can’t even remember what happened so its not like he’s a pig he was completely unconscious.
And lets be real now, if something like this happened to me I’d be at the bar for a week drinking “to the max” before I decided what to do.
Haha, I would to refine my answer by stating that sure the man is a pig this is true. Though, thematic plot points I won’t give a way create an ample excuse.
Kids these days.
So, in other words, it IS the standard J-Dating sim/Hentai game.
And that’s what got to me. Not the game itself (opinions being subjective and all that) but the fact that people were playing it and hyping up how unlike anything it was and it really made them think about relationships when this is neither a new thing or a deep thing.
Even that would have been excusable if it was the average Western gamer but when Tycho, who has oft made fun of these games when they stayed in the East and he only played a handful of them when he wasn’t hanging out with Fred from Megatokyo, starts spouting the same BS, that gets irritating.
No it IS not. It’s not a dating sim, more like a story that unfolds with interactive moments along side a nightmare puzzle mode that reflects what’s happening in the story mode. The game is less about sex and more about pressures from society and the discontents they breed.
From what I understand, the standard J-Dating sim kinda game has a situation where you have a bunch of chicks around you and the point is to, ahem, get achievements.
The more achievements you get, the more achievements you get.
If you know what I mean.
This game isn’t about achievements. It’s about navigating relationship minefields. You don’t think “HURRAY!” when you find the blond chick in a state of undress but “OH CRAP”.
That alone marks a significant difference from the standard J-Dating game.
(erased rest of post above and below. Strikes me as a “meh” thing to argue much less create a TL;DR post about)
Saying that Catherine is in the high end of the J-dating sim does not mean that it isn’t the same basic game. Saying that Catherine is not a J-dating sim is like saying Halo was not an FPS when it came out because it didn’t have health packs. Sure, there are differences but, at the end of the day, you’re still manipulating your answers to gravitate towards Katherine or the shrieking hose beast then playing an odd fusion of IQ and Q-Bert. Wash, rinse, repeat.
At this point, I suspect that the main reason most Catherine fans protest this is because admitting it would mean that this game isn’t nearly as unique as it’s been hyped up as.
There was also the claim that it was similar to hentai games.
It seems to me that if one went out of one’s way to buy a hentai game and the game was devoted to making one feel guilty about cheating on one’s girlfriend after one knocked her up, one would have every right to feel misled. Especially if any given Bud Light commercial shows more skin.
Now, maybe, J-dating sims in Japan are devoted to fooling around on your significant other. I don’t know. I haven’t played any… I will say that the hentai games I’ve heard about (ahem) have put a lot less emphasis on your long term responsibilities to your significant other. They weren’t translated, though… so maybe the dialog was devoted to “this is the equivalent of a pre-nupt!” or similar.
It is in the same way Christian Bale and Adam West played the same superhero.
Part of what I erased was the fundamental similarities between the J-dating sim and Hentai genres and why one would say, in this case, J-dating/Hentai.
You’re kinda pulling a style over substance argument here.
A difference of degree, if great enough, becomes a difference in kind.
… there’s a game from Japan that’s not hentai? even suikoden had its moments…
The fan reaction is like this:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112091-Blizzard-Surprised-by-Reaction-to-Online-Only-Diablo-3
In both cases, the lady doth protest too much.
No, wait, it’s like this:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/6/7/
Yeah, you can try to explain to me how this game isn’t just a space monster but, in the end, you’re just splitting hairs and I still won’t care.
No, wait, it’s like this:
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20080602
Where people try to claim that the game is breaking new ground but there is this nervous quantity to the discussion as the fans try to justify not just being a high-end dating sim but it sounds like they’re just trying to quell that little voice in the back of their head that says “Actually, yes, it is.”
or maybe this comic represents the plot for the sequel….I dunno.
It’s all the liberal’s fault……or something.
No politics.