WARNING: This is not a review, it is a frustrated rant. If you’re looking for an objective review of Catherine click one of links at the bottom of this post.
Have you ever read a book or watched a movie that you knew absolutely nothing about? They always turn out to be the most amazing books/movies you’ve ever read. Have you ever wondered why that happens? Expectations. Our lack of expectations is almost ALWAYS a good thing. It’s impossible to be disappointed when you’re not expecting anything. Oh how I wish that had been the case for me with Catherine.
After having a bad (read “buggy”) experience with The Sims 3, I exchanged it for Catherine. I was talked into it by my room mate and the GameStop guy who described it as “a puzzle RPG.” (I probably should have gone with Deus Ex but I suffer from simulation sickness and wasn’t ready to risk being nauseous.)
Puzzle RPG…a bunch of things come to mind, but let me tell you what doesn’t. I sure as hell wasn’t thinking about climbing @#$%-ing boxes for 28 levels! I played each level angrier than the first, silently wishing there was something else to the game, a different puzzle… SOMETHING! But no. I was surrounded by sheep, trapped in a nightmare trying to learn new techniques to climb the same lame boxes.
Ok…Ok… I’m willing to admit that my expectations are what really ruined Catherine for me (that’s the last time I ask you to describe a game to me GameStop guy,) so I might as well tell you about some of the cool stuff. The story itself was interesting (for the most part though it kind of takes a dive at the end.) The main character, Vincent, finds himself torn between his long time girlfriend Katherine and some chic he meets at a bar named, Catherine. All the while, the town he lives is in an uproar about a series of unexplained male deaths. The “RPG” part consisted of talking/drinking with your friends at the bar and texting one of the two K/Catherine’s on your phone. The rest of your time will be spent climbing blocks in between really long cut scenes and load times.
I started the game on normal but quickly changed it to easy. I was still angry at The Sims and the last thing I was looking for was a challenge.
In between every 3 (or so) levels the game would ask you a moral question, the first one being “Is marriage the beginning of life or the end?” The cool thing about this was after answering, it displayed a pie chart of what other player’s chose.
For the most part I tried answering all the questions honestly (which was essentially what I considered to be morally right), unfortunately the answers weren’t always black and white. I found my karma meter going into the red more often than I was expecting.
Thankfully the character progression and story line were enough to keep me playing. I really felt like I HAD to know what happened between Vincent and Katherine. The adult themes in the game were pretty cool (cause you know, we can only save so many princesses.) Oh, there’s also an arcade game (Rapunzel) within the game which was fun at first…. however is was just more box climbing (and princess saving LOL), so it got old really quick. Rapunzel has 128 levels combined (64 levels in each mode) – so, yeah. That wasn’t happening.
So if you think you’d be cool with doing the same thing over and over again then this game is totally for you! If you’ve already played this game let me know what you think in the comments. Remember though, this was in no way meant to be a review. I just wanted to share my subjective experience.
EDIT: After doing a little research I found that Catherine actually has 8 endings. So maybe it was just the ending that I got that sucked. I’ll consider playing it again when I get over the fact that this game wasn’t at all what I expected it to be.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Expectations cause suffering. (I should have remembered this from when I was studying Buddhism.)
Objective Catherine Reviews:
