Mind-bending gameplay and an engaging story help to make Catherine one of the most unique games ever devised.
This strange game is centered around Vincent Brooks. Vincent is an average guy with simple goals on his mind, like being able to hang out with his friends and be able to be with his girlfriend Katherine without fear of commitment. Unfortunately for Vince, Katherine wants to start thinking about settling down and eventually getting married. Vince is unsure on what to do about the situation, and simply wishes for things to remain the way they already are. Things become even more complicated for Vince when he meets the beautiful Catherine one night at the local bar. Before he knows it, Vince finds himself in bed one morning with the blonde bombshell and desperately attempts to keep the two women apart, as well as dealing with his conflicting feelings. To make matters worse, the dilemmas he faces in real life get translated over to his nightmares every night, creating hellish monstrosities that he will desperately need to avoid. The story does a great job in dealing with a rather mature subject thanks to the excellent writing, voice acting, and characters. The game is presented with beautifully made anime-styled cutscenes, which occasionally switch between 3-D stylized cutscenes and 2-D animated ones. The game also features a superb soundtrack, featuring remixes of various classical pieces that compliment with the intense gameplay.
The game is split into two parts. During the day you are hanging out at Vince's favorite bar "The Stray Sheep" and watching most of the story unfold. It's here where you get to interact with your colleagues as well as various other customers, drink some alcohol (which does have an effect on Vince during actual gameplay), and receive/answer text messages from the two women. The way you respond to certain texts, as well as other people, will depend on where you will stand on the freedom versus order meter. It sort of acts as a morality system, but this meter doesn't have any specific right or wrong answers to it. Where you stand on that meter by the end of the game will determine one of the various endings you will receive.
At night is where Vince faces gruesome nightmares brought about by the problems he faces in reality. If Vincent dies in his nightmares, he dies in real life (a Nightmare on Elm Street ordeal if you will). The game has you start at the bottom of a tall tower of blocks. As Vincent (complete with sheep horns, a pillow, and boxers) you need to push and pull blocks to make your way to the very top to safety. Don't be deceived by how ridiculous the gameplay may sound, because this game is an ultimate test of quick thinking and patience. This is one of the most challenging puzzle games you could ever play (unless of course you wish to play on the easy difficulties). You are going to either end up dying or restarting a lot./>
As you climb the tower the blocks below you will begin to fall. You need to think quickly before you end up falling to your doom. Sometimes it's hard to do so in many spots since the block placements are fiendishly clever. Thus, you will often be panicking, especially when death is just a few blocks down and just as you are about to reach the top. Not only that, but there are special types of blocks you have to deal with. There are blocks you are unable to move, blocks that are heavier to move, blocks that explode and damage other blocks making them fragile, ice blocks you can slip off of unless you are lucky enough to find some footing, and booby-trapped blocks that can instantly kill you if don't step off quick enough. These puzzles are even more intense when you square off against a boss since the boss will try to either destroy/change boxes or simply try to kill you off. Thankfully the game eases a few stresses by offering helpful items, allowing redoes of mistakes you may have made (which is not available on hard mode), extra continues, and a checkpoint system. How fast you climb and how many enigma coins you collect as you climb up will add to your overall score at the end of a stage.
In between stages you will come across sheep. In actuality these are men in real life going through similar predicaments as Vincent. You see them as sheep and they see you as a sheep as well. Some sheep are helpful, while most view things as "survival of the fittest". It is in this safe zone that you can interact with the other sheep, learn/give techniques necessary for survival, and enter a flying confessional that will take you to the next stage. It is in the confessional that you will be given a question and you have to choose one of two choices. These choices will also affect the freedom versus order meter.
Unfortunately, the control does have a couple of issues. Often whenever you try to maneuver on the edge of blocks the controls will become inverted whenever you try to go on the other side of a block, which can be very bothersome considering the hectic nature of the game. It doesn't help that the camera doesn't always give you the best of views, mainly whenever you are trying to look behind blocks and when Vincent is behind some. Despite the often brutally difficulty and occasional control quirks, the hectic action is what helps makes the gameplay replayable and incredibly rewarding.
To sum things up:
PROS:
-Engaging story with great characters
-Nicely animated cutscenes
-Great voice acting
-Fantastic soundtrack
-Fiendishly challenging, but addicting and rewarding gameplay
CONS:
-Difficulty can be very intimidating
-Control and camera quirks
Catherine is a very special title for a couple of reasons. It presents us with a mature and engaging plot and it gives us a bizarre gameplay style that may seem a bit out of placed at first, but is also very challenging and rewarding. It certainly isn't for everyone, but it is certainly a unique enough experience that anybody should at least try out.