Love and relationships have been (ab)used to death in popular culture, which is why it is a surprise that video games, with their “younger brother” complex in regards to the older mediums, haven’t tried imitating them more often in this regard. Sure, there have been ventures into romance before, but they have either ended up as the fairy-tale romance of Link and Zelda or the hormone-driven emo teen romance of Squall and Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII.
This is where Catherine steps onto the scene.
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date Feb 23,2012(EU)
Genre: Adventure, Block Puzzler
Developer: Atlus Persona Team
Publisher: Atlus
Catherine, by the virtue of its very decision to focus on themes of loyalty in relationships, is venturing into new territory. Further, it surrounds itself with characters suffering from an acute mid-life crisis. How depressing. They even go further by giving it a surreal horror twist and taking generous inspiration from the master of Japanese surrealism himself – Haruki Murakami. But despite the bold ambition, Atlus does manage to create the enticing illusion of a highly believable world that teeters dangerously on the edge of insanity.
Players take up the role of Vincent Brooks, a thirty-something who is as trapped in the boring daily routine of his life as he is in his long-term relationship with his girlfriend Katherine. Besides being pressurized into what men often call the “final death sentence” by Katherine, he is increasingly unmotivated by absolutely anything in his life. Highly relatable in every possible sense, Vincent’s character acts as a balanced platform for players to observe as events from the twisted story of Catherine unfold. After a pregnancy curveball courtesy the nagging Katherine and a one-night stand with a mysterious seductress named Catherine, Vincent’s life delves into the surreal as his internal dilemma is brought to the fore. Worse, amid the news of men mysteriously dying in their sleep, he keeps having nightmares of sheep-men and climbing tall, intimidating towers made up of blocks that slowly crumble from the bottom.
But Atlus being who they are, they’re never going to be satisfied with just that. An absorbing setting and an intriguing horror mystery? Not enough. A cast of well-written adult characters? Nope! Still not enough. Where most developers would have been satisfied with their creation and would have stopped thinking and started looking for ways to find a gameplay system as a placeholder—as a means to merely keep the players entertained while the urge to watch the next cutscene drives the player forward—Atlus—typically Atlus—had to go one step beyond everyone and make gameplay equally important and essential to the whole experience as well.
Typical to the style of Team Persona, the internal studio within Atlus from which the twisted minds behind Catherine hail, they combine two entirely different genres, in this case, block puzzles and adventure — two genres you will not imagine placing side-by-side no matter how drunk or high you get. But Team Persona happens to be on stuff not meant for us mere mortals, and they have managed to yet again combine two disparate and unrelated genres into a system that is so engrossing and intense to play that part of the pure genius of Catherine would be lost if it weren’t for its odd, challenging, and intense block puzzles.
Another thing that struck me differently about Catherine initially was the simplicity of its design. It is neatly divided into its two halves – gameplay and story. Atlus doesn’t waste time performing any clever tricks to keep its players under illusion—no interactive cinematics or anything. Catherine’s two halves remain distinctly individualistic, but it’s how these two separate halves interact with each other and affect events in one another that is part of what makes Catherine so memorable.
