Catherine demo is weird, awesome
The demo for Atlus’ Catherine game is now available on PS3 and 360 over in Japan, so I fired up my seldom-used Japanese PSN account and grabbed it. I’ve mostly been interested in this game because it’s from the team that makes the Persona games, which have been some of my favorite games of the past generation. I was very interested in seeing what they would do with the power of the PS3. The first bits of information that started leaking were awfully confusing, something about a guy and two girls, Catherine and Katherine, and a nightmare where you’re climbing up blocks? It sounded crazy and left me with no idea what to expect. So I eagerly downloaded the demo to get a clear answer of just what kind of game Catherine would be.
The levels take place in Vincent's nightmares are weird!
The demo basically gives you the first two stages of the game. You’re given a pretty simple objective; climb to the top of the structure of boxes before whatever is chasing you catches up! The first stage is pretty simplistic, I got to the top on my first try. The second stage howver was much more difficult, and I spent probably four or five lives getting to the top. Figuring out how to get up a series of boxes by pushing and pulling may not sound exciting, but when there’s a horrible monster two floors below you trying to skewer you, it becomes much more intense! Between the two levels we get to see some of the story aspects, taking place when the main character, Vincent, is awake. During these scenes, there were a couple of instances where I would get a text from Catherine (Vincent’s girlfriend) and I could reply which would effect a good/bad meter that I can only assume will have some basis on the outcome of the story.
The anime cell-shading looks great!
My initial impressions were that the gameplay was simple but pretty darn addicting; even after multiple deaths I was convinced that I just needed one more try, which is usually the sign of a pretty compelling gameplay hook. I wonder how many structures I would have to climb to fill up an entire game, though, but I have a feeling that later on there will be more playable segments that take place during his waking hours, as shown in a large gameplay trailer after beating the demo.
Every time the anime cell-shaded characters were on screen, I couldn’t help but think how awesome the eventual Persona 5 game will look. The characters and locations were gorgeous. Overall I really hope this makes it to the states. Being that it’s an Atlus game, I have hope that we’ll see it here eventually, and come E3 in June I’ll be keeping close watch on what Atlus has to show there. It would be a shame to have to import it, and even thought the main tower-climbing gameplay would be perfectly playable in Japanese, it’d be a shame to miss out on the story, and not knowing what actions I’m doing to effect the good/bad meter. (I entered pre-selected sentences in Vincent’s cell-phone, but I have no idea what I said)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVQ61rMTytw&w=640&h=390]
Any other Atlus fans out there looking forward to playing this game? Has anyone else downloaded the demo and if so, what are your impressions?