The Catherine demo has been out for some time and I have finally been able to hook up my PS3 in order to try out this seductive puzzler and I gotta say, it was a pretty good game.
When you try out the demo you can only play the game on easy mode, no biggie, at least I get a chance to redo a block I pushed if I make a mistake. Once you actually start to play, there's no movie or story at first, you just jump into the first level with tutorials on how to play the game. You play the role as Vincent though, a man in his pink polka-dotted boxers carrying a pillow while sporting ram horns in a nightmare filled with blocks that you need to manipulate in order to get to the top of block towers, and as you're trying to get your way to the top, the bottom blocks are disappearing. This is probably the easiest level considering it's just a tutorial.
After you get to the top, you pass through the door and the gameplay ends with a cutscene playing. Vincent is talking to Katherine, his girlfriend; after that scene, another scene plays where you're now in a bar with two of your pals talking and drinking. As time passes, your friends leave and you're still at the bar drinking until a girl walks up to you - Catherine.
Katherine - Your girlfriend
Catherine - A chick you see at a bar and in your bed that's in a nightmare
From there, you get to play another level where you still need to make your way to the top of a pile of blocks that you need to shift around. This time though, the blocks are disappearing because Katherine - you're girlfriend - is slashing away at the blocks with her giant hands!
Once you get to the top of that puzzler, you wake up, from what was obviously a nightmare, in your bed with Catherine holding on to your arms as she sleeps. But then you wake up from that dream to find out that you had a nightmare within a nightmare!
That's where the demo ends with clips from that full game, and one thing that caught my attention was this image right here; I really want to know what the story behind it is.
Let me tell you what I like about this game, it's not just a regular Puzzler, it's an RPG Puzzler, meaning that certain things you do outside of the block filled nightmares will affect the story line and most of this will be done via text messaging. In Catherine, Vincent's phone acts as a place to save your game and to talk to people who message you and what you say back to them will change the game around.
This Puzzler has a story, you really don't see many stories in games like this, besides something like Portal or whatnot. The story seems like it will be filled with fun and great moments by the looks of the scenes played at the end of the demo.
The animation was really different, but it really did work. Catherine switched from 3D to 2D; you played the game in 3D and watch most of the cutscenes in 3D; but during some scenes, you're watching them in 2D with some weird animation, like I said though, it seems to work for them.
The puzzles seem like they will offer a good amount of difficulty. In the second level, I had to retry from a checkpoint because I didn't realize that I had to move blocks in a certain order and from there Katherine stabbed me with her giant fork.
What I didn't like about that game was the sound, for some reason the 2D scenes were always two times louder than the 3D scenes and the gameplay. It's playable, but it's kind of annoying having to keep turning down the volume and keep turning it back up after the 2D scenes.
Overall, I enjoyed this demo and I really do plan on purchasing the game one day. I'm really interested to see what else is chasing you during the tower of blocks besides a giant baby and your girlfriend's bony hand slashing you wish a fork. The story also looks like it could have potential, it reminds me of a soap opera minus the bad acting and camera angles.
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