Catherine Review

As Catherine approached its launch day, many were wondering how it would fare in the Western market. The game was fundamentally strange and highly unique in a market saturated by first-person shooters and action games. As the reviews trickled out though, most fears were laid to rest. Many accredited websites and publications hailed it as a breath of fresh air and a truly mature title for an audience that had been craving such an experience. It was a game for the kids who had grown up playing older, more difficult arcade games and still craved that challenge, but also wanted an intriguing, nuanced story that related to the experiences of adulthood. Supposedly, Catherine was this game. I wondered if this was indeed the case. Could such a seemingly obscure game speak to people on a deeper level than your average video game? By the time I was finished with Catherine, I wasn’t entirely sure on the answer to that question.

Catherine tells the story of Vincent Brooks, a young man now in adulthood, but not entirely sure what exactly that means. The essential conflict of this game finds its center with Vincent’s relationship with his girlfriend, Katherine, and Vincent’s competing concepts of what adulthood really is. As the story begins, you quickly determine that Vincent is less than fully comfortable in his relationship with Katherine because of her pressuring Vincent towards the married life. His hesitation towards the whole issue clearly shows a lack of complete commitment. His commitment is further tested when the titular Catherine, a vixen who loathes attachment and views sex in a casual, flippant manner, enters Vincent’s life. The two women represent the two potential views of the true meaning of adulthood. Does being an adult mean taking on responsibilities and striving to live a peaceful, orderly life? Or does being an adult mean shirking responsibilities for the benefit of personal liberty and chaotic delight? You, the player, determine Vincent’s responses to situations he encounters and ultimately his view of what becoming a man means. The core concept here is a fascinating one: a conflict not between broad, sweeping definitions of good and evil, but between two views on a specific ethical issue. The player never forgets this conflict either, as you are reminded of it when the game frequently reminds you of how your choices have reflected your beliefs through a simple meter when you make a choice.

Note the meter. Your decisions do affect Vincent’s view on things.

As players wrestle with this issue, they interact with the game in two primary ways. The first is in Vincent’s favorite bar, The Stray Sheep. In it, Vincent discusses events that have occurred with his friends and acquaintances, while communicating with Catherine and Katherine via his cell phone. The dialog further fleshes out the story and allows Vincent’s attitude towards life to be further defined by the player. While not exactly compelling to play, it does allow for some well-needed contemplation and relaxation time in between the other more stressful parts of the game. What parts are those, you ask? Well, as the story progresses, Vincent finds himself in a bizarre situation. Every night, he finds himself trapped in a nightmare where he is forced to climb a tower of cubes. Not that bad for a nightmare, right? What makes it a nightmare is that the cubes are falling away into an infinite void below him, and he must find his way to the top first. Also, there are occasionally giant mutant zombie babies chasing after him wanting to murder him.

Nope. Not nightmarish at all.

OK, that’s pretty bad, but it’s just a dream, right? While that’s the case normally, Vincent pieces together rather quickly that death in these dreams mean death in reality. For just before he began to experience these nightmares, men all over the city were experiencing the same dreams and mysteriously dying in their sleep. Considering this, navigating to the top of the dream towers is imperative every night. And that’s when the puzzler gameplay begins. Moving and shifting the cubes to climb to the top of the tower is infuriating at times, even on the easiest difficulty setting. I wouldn’t even recommend playing above normal because of the maddening frustration that is bound to occur as a result. Nevertheless, when you do complete a puzzle by getting to the top of the tower, it can be immensely satisfying in ways only a few games, like Portal, are these days. There are some mechanical difficulties however; controlling a character when moving from block to block can be maddeningly imprecise. This is especially the case when moving behind the tower, because the camera obscures your view and controls flip back and forth between inverted and standard movement. This type of maddening, frustrating, rewarding, and exhilarating puzzler gameplay will not be enjoyed by everyone. When taken together with the story-focused interactive drama elements of the game, and its anime art style, that potential audience is shrunk even further. However, this isn’t bad in and of itself. It is merely something to be mindful of when determining whether or not to spend your time on this game.

So what is bad in and of itself in Catherine? A few things come to mind. The first, and perhaps most important, failings of the game is in its, to use a couple big words, ludonarrative dissonance. What does that mean? Ludonarrative means “play narrative” and dissonance means discord. In other words, the way the player interacts with the game and the world/story the game creates do not blend at all, and sometimes actively oppose each other. Take for example the very concept of the tower climbing nightmares. In the game, it fundamentally makes the player stop thinking about, shaping, and being surrounded with the story. The game separates that time as if to say “OK, it’s time to play the game now, we can get back to the story stuff later” and doing such a thing creates a double-mindedness in both the player and the game. It sucks the player out of the game world as soon as you realize that no story advancement or depth is added during these portions. It robs the game of any momentum or any modicum of consistency. What makes it even worse is that the whole subplot involving the nightmares, and the nightmares themselves, could have been completely removed from the game and not only would the game have been tighter and more focused, it would arguably have been better for it. Indeed, the nightmare epidemics introduce a supernatural element that is never fully fleshed out. This, along with some other vexingly pretentious elements, ultimately makes the player write it off as the flawed work of “those crazy Japanese game designers” who feel the need to shoehorn in supernatural, bizarre, and ambiguous elements with minimal explanation given.

The second failing of the game is its illusion of choice and consequence. No matter what choices the player makes, Vincent’s story will be identical. The only exception to this is the ending, which checks against a few decisions you make at the very end as well as where you are on your meter. At that point, it plays one of eight possible endings, after which the credits roll. Individual choices, except for the choice few at the end, have no consequences. To use another game as a counterexample, Mass Effect’s choices have consequences. If you don’t stop a certain character from letting his emotions take control of him, he dies, never to return. Or the player may send the wrong crew member to do a task on a suicide mission, resulting in his or her death. Contrast that with telling Catherine to leave Vincent alone. Does that change anything? No. What if the player encourages her advances, does that do anything? Why yes! She sends another text message! Now, consider if that is a choice that “matters.” Personally, I arrived at the conclusion it is not. The same goes for the player’s responses towards Katherine. In the end, all of it is just tallying points for the game to know which ending cutscene to play. It’s really laughably archaic when compared with the choice and consequence mechanics in other games. Still, one might think that you wouldn’t be able to detect the illusion of choice until you’ve played the game multiple times, however that would be incorrect. Vincent acts bafflingly neutral in cutscenes and conversations, no matter how extreme the player’s choices are. There will be times you think “What the hell Vincent, why aren’t you doing X?” Obviously, that can lead to frustration with the character of Vincent or frustration with the game for not recognizing the player’s choices. It isn’t until a subsequent playthrough when you play the game differently that you discover that the game’s plot does not change based on your input.

Want Vincent to dump Katherine early on? Sorry, no can do.

Clearly, Catherine is a game with major flaws at some truly fundamental levels. Yet, it still ultimately is an interesting and unique experience. The puzzles, in the right frame of mind, are entertaining. And the story, while sporadic at times, is an interesting one. Does it make the player think deeply and consistently? Not in the least. Is it the truly “mature” game that some older gamers have been waiting for? Probably not. Still, it tackles issues we have not seen in the gaming realm with a sense of boldness that is far too rare as of late. And while it doesn’t engage the player on a deep level, it does make them think on a slightly deeper level than your average game. All things considered, I think on those principles alone it deserves consideration.

FINAL GRADE: C+