Platform: XBox 360

Developer: Atlus

Publisher: Deep Silver

Release Date: Feb. 17, 2011

Genre:  Puzzle/Adventure

Nerd Rating: 9 out of 10

Reviewed by Space Invader

It’s not often that I get drawn directly, mercilessly, hopelessly, into a video game these days, but something about the unusual formula for Catherine had me twisting solutions out for its puzzles at work, pondering the story, rushing home to play it, even minimizing social encounters in order to sneak one more level in. The games that succeed in dragging me directly into the television screen are always odd ducks (Deadly Premonition for example – six of you groan, six of you applaud, and the rest say “what game is that?”), and Catherine is decidedly no exception.

That said, it’s hard to remember any video game since the onset of adulthood that has gotten its hooks into me quite as thoroughly as Catherine.

I encountered Catherine a few years after her publish — a bit late to the party, and if you scroll around and check out my contributes to this magazine, you’ll see I’m not precisely up-to-the-minute with the games I tend to visit.

In any case, gamers who watch the trailer for Catherine are excused for scratching their heads and muttering, “… the fuck… ?”

Give it a click. It’s in Japanese, but it may as well be in Greek, recorded backwards for all the sense you’ll make of it. The flashes of an anime story, occasional partially-clothed upright sheep, and apparent sex-driven nature presented in the trailer surely left players wondering just what in this bizarre interactive anime they would actually have any control over.

Meet Vincent Brooks

The gameplay in Catherine is divided into three basic modes: The story, in which a pretty well-animated and engaging anime tells the tale of our hapless protagonist. Another third of the game is set in the bar where the protagonist and his pals hang, in which player talks to people, drinks, checks his phone and gathers information. Finally, the block-puzzle, “nightmare” levels, in which the player must get to the top of the tower by shifting blocks into staircases and ascending.

The story follows our hero, Vincent Brooks, as his long-time girlfriend, whose name is incidentally Catherine, is beginning to pressure him into taking their relationship to the next level — which eventually culminates in (SPOILER ALERT) dropping the bomb that she may be pregnant. These characters are in their early thirties, so the request for commitment giving pending parental possibilities isn’t precisely unreasonable.

But that wouldn’t make a very interesting story, and thus Vincent is hide-under-the-table terrified about the idea of commitment. The possibility of sudden-onset fatherhood doesn’t help much when it crops up, and as a result he drinks his troubles away, like any decent red-blooded man should (joke, kids, alcohol will not solve your problems). In one scene, after the bar, Vincent sits in his room, chain-smoking and popping his sixth beer, muttering “Why can’t things just … stay the same?”

You do not play Catherine; Katherine plays you

At the conclusion of each day’s cinematic helping of drama, you find yourself at the bar where Vincent and his pals go to unwind and catalog the events of their days together. Conversations with patrons are essential, and your responses to their conversation influence the story. Every time you finish a drink, a voice pops in and gives you trivia about the type of alcohol (whiskey, beer, cocktail, or sake) you just pounded. They tend to be fascinating. If you knew before that a bit of the whiskey in the barreling process evaporates off the top, the “angels’ share,” and that preventing this evaporation sours the taste of the stuff, I sure didn’t.

The bar scenes build the world of Catherine, populating it with zany characters you can have lengthy conversations with. It’s cool just to wander around and explore the bar, noting little touches of decor as the patrons scurry around. You can sit with your crew, or get up and become a social butterfly, bellying up to the bar and partaking in the Boss’ sage wisdom. Or, wander over and get some tunes out of the jukebox(in-game music!) — it sounds a bit lame, but the music is heavy beats laced over very modernized classical tunes, many of them compelling. You can also play the arcade machine, which is essentially a new set of block puzzles in a retro-80s, Donkey Kong-style wrapper. You order more drinks, and check your phone – all at will.

Vincent’s cell phone allows him to save and check messages, although the occasional saucy picture he receives he must go to the bathroom to drool over.

Eventually, Vincent has to go home, which becomes the setting of the last cinematic of the game’s “day.” Her he will usually smoke, ponder and commit mental self-torture, subject himself to more drinking yet, and eventually drift into restless slumber, only to be thrust into:

A block-puzzle nightmare! These stages are the main meat of Catherine‘s gameplay. A stack of blocks must be scaled each night. In order to ascend, Vincent must push and pull blocks into makeshift stairways. All the while, the bottom layer of the tower is falling off, bit by bit. You don’t outrun the falling blocks, you fall in your dream, hence dying in your sleep.

The puzzles of Catherine can be pretty mind-bending, and mastering the techniques to the point that you can operate on-the-fly is a source of great satisfaction. Boss encounters, in which giant and horrific nightmare creatures chase Vincent as he climbs, add some intensity to the dealings.

At the top of each level of the tower, you discover a platform with a chapel and confessional booth. Here mope a bunch of other sheep whose real-life counterparts are also dreaming. You can often recognize them by articles of clothing as people who attend your bar – “sheep with sunglasses,” for example, is a journalist who sits at the end of the bar each night, and wears, you guessed it, a vest. Yes, and sunglasses. It is revealed that, while Vincent sees the other climbers, but not himself, as a sheep, the other sheep see themselves as their human counterparts, and see Vincent and the rest as sheep.

Walks like a sheep, talks like a sheep …

Your conversations with these sheep affect their will to go on, and influence their waking selves. These effects are noticeable when you bump into them at the bar (which is subtlely called the Stray Sheep). The more encouraging you are, the longer they go on. After enough nights, though, most of your fellow herd will perish, reflected by news on the television at the bar. The town is in a panic, with this epidemic of mysterious sleeping deaths, always of relatively young men.

Catherine’s unusual combination of elements of puzzlers, adventure games and its long anime story may seem like an odd fit, but Catherine ends up far exceeding the sum of  its parts. It’s amazing how each of the three main parts of the game feeds the others. Decisions you make affect the course of the lives of the others in the game, which in turn affects the actual animated story, especially the ending — which was enough to make me want to complete the game a few times, making different conversational and moral decisions along the way.

The animated story in Catherine is strewn with your occasional anime trope. Characters who are stressing out (in this game, only Vincent) will freeze while thousands of little seat droplets fly off their heads at some velocity, for example, or mouths will drop in shock, becoming unusually large. It’s all very well done, attention to detail has been paid to every bit of furniture, and it’s fascinating that you can change the route of the animation through the puzzling and RPG-ish bits.

The puzzle scenarios introduce new elements virtually ever level of the tower, and are beautifully themed with backgrounds that are symbolic of Vincent’s current real-life struggles. There’s a certain darkness to it all that doesn’t usually pop up in puzzle games – you can murder sheep into bloody, bursting blobs of blood and bone, and the whole game really does look pretty nightmarish.

The story was compelling enough that I often just wanted a particular night’s puzzle to be done with so I could get back to it and find out what happens next. On the other hand sometimes I was in such a block-puzzle mode that I couldn’t wait for the story to end so I could get back to some brainwork. I’ll probably play through Catherine a number of times yet. It’s that good.