What’s appealing is its unusual
subject matter. You’re Vincent, a
30-something in a long-term
relationship with Katherine, who
wants to settle down, and for Vincent
to find a better-paying job.
Vincent, though, wakes
up next to another girl
called Catherine. After
cheating, he begins to
experience nightmares
where he’s in his
underpants, climbing
towers of collapsing
blocks. The men who
fall to their deaths in
this hellscape are dying in real life.
The main part of the game is
climbing and pushing the blocks in
order to ascend these towers, dealing
with occasional modifiers like slippy
blocks made of ice, or blocks that are
traps. It’s about figuring out your
next few moves in advance: building
a staircase to reach the next rung of
the column, or pushing out a few
base blocks to make the entire tower
drop down by one.
At the end of each set of levels, a
kind of boss creature appears,
manifesting as one of Vincent’s
worries: a giant screaming demonic
baby, for example, or a giant evil butt
(seriously). It can be incredibly tricky,
and it’s possible to push enough
blocks away to make it impossible to
reach the exit at the top. Luckily,
there’s a rewind function to take back
your last few moves, and even on
normal mode, checkpoints and retries
are fairly generous.
The life sim element of the game
breaks up these intense puzzles.
Before Vincent sleeps, he hangs out
with his friends in a bar. Here he
interacts with his pals, some of whom
admonish him for his repeatedcheating, as well as the interesting
patrons of the bar who all have their
own stories. You’ll meet people in
this bar who’ll then appear in your
dreams as sheep, which is kind of
eerie – they’ve cheated too, and
they are now paying
the price.
I like Catherine as a
puzzle game, but I
don’t love it. The
towers are repetitive to
climb, and a couple of
the modifiers are really
annoying: being
knocked off a specific
block by a boss’s super ability, for
example, or encountering enemies
who can knock you down as well.
I actually think Catherine is
slightly stronger as a life sim, where
you can pore over Vincent’s situation,
and make decisions based on what
you think is right or wrong. You can
text back both Katherine and
Catherine, and whatever you choose
to put in the text from a number of
predetermined options will push agood or evil slider a certain way. If
you want Vincent to cheat, go for it.
If you want to be faithful to
Katherine and make up for your
mistakes, you can do that too.CHEAT CODE
You don’t shape the story, really –
mostly just the ending – but the
subject matter is so unusual that just
being asked these things by a game is
refreshing. Its portrayal has some
problems. By never remembering the
times he sleeps with Catherine, he
doesn’t really have to take
responsibility for it. Likewise,
Katherine’s depiction in the game
frames commitment as being this
incredibly scary thing that’s being
inflicted on Vincent, a man who’s
pathetically helpless when it comes
to making his own decisions.
Catherine, meanwhile, represents
the opposite of that – she’s interested
in Vincent and designed to be the
object of his lust, allowing him to
throw aside the things he’s afraid of
and cheat. Both women are depicted
as controlling figures in his life and
not much more. While the game
definitely has interesting things to say
about adult relationships, this is also
an excuse to have an anime lady send
you naughty pictures, or for
gratuitous camera angles. It can be
insightful, but heavy on fan service.
It’s such a strange combination, to
have these puzzles and life sim
elements awkwardly welded
together, but it just about works.
Catherine is a memorable experience,
and while my opinion of its themes
changes the older I get, I still find
being asked questions like, ‘Who’s
responsible when someone cheats?’
by a game exciting. The fact it’s now
on PC, in a well-priced edition like
this, is a treat.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
2011 console puzzle/
life sim game about the
priceofcheating.
EXPECT TO PAY
£15
DEVELOPER
Atlus
PUBLISHER
SEGA
REVIEWED ON
Core i5-8600K, GTX
1080 Ti, 16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
Local
LINK
http://www.catherine
thegame.com73
An odd hybrid of life
simulator and puzzle
game where both flawed
halves somehow work
well together.VERDICTIt’s about
figuring out
your next few
moves in
advanceW
hat next, Persona 5 on PC? It’s hard not to believe
that’ll happen someday soon, now that I have got
Catherine in my Steam library. It’s been an exciting few
years for previously console-only cult classics coming
to PC, especially from the likes of SEGA. Catherine is a
real oddity: part-relationship and life simulator, and part-pretty good
block-climbing puzzle game.WAKE UP, SHEEPLE
Cheat on yourpartnerandpaythepriceinCATHERINE CLASSIC’s offbeat
mix of puzzle game and life sim. By Samuel Roberts
PERSONA SHOPPER
Other Atlus games that should come to PC
SHIN MEGAMI
TENSEI 3:
NOCTURNE
I loved this moody
JRPG, which is like a
more grown-up
Pokémon,featuring
Dante fromDMCfor
some reason.PERSONA 4
ThePersonagames
blendRPGsandlife
sims together in a
waythat’sreally
interesting – and
this game’s small
town setting is a
neat backdrop.PERSONA 5
The latest entry in
the series is
considered its best
yet, and Phil spent
over 100 hours
binging it on his
couch to deal with
mag deadlines.Catherine Classic
REVIEW