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Preview: Civilization World
Civilization World, now in open beta on Facebook, might be the game that proves there is something to this whole browser-based games thing.

Preview: Catherine (PlayStation 3)
Catherine is coming this July and it may not be anything like what you expect. Find out why you should care about the latest from Atlus.

News: Playstation Vita Vitals
Learn the basics about Sony's future handheld gaming device.

P

It’s easy to get excited about Catherine, the upcoming PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 title from Atlus. Just a glance at the development team responsible, the same one behind recent entries in the excellent Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series, was enough to catch my interest. Throw in some sexy artwork and you’re already halfway to a game that I simply must own. Yet despite seeing numerous screenshots over the past few months, and despite reading a number of press releases, I didn’t actually have much of a notion of how the thing would play… until today.

Today is the day that Atlus demonstrated the game to a number of members of the media, including me. Over the course of most of an hour-and-a-half presentation that passed entirely too quickly, I learned just how little I really knew about the game and I realized that Catherine could be one of the year’s most unique and endearing experiences.

In general terms, Catherine is a game about a man named Vincent who sucks at relationships. He’s been going steady with the eponymous Catherine for around five years now. She puts up with his shortcomings, which are many, and she’s looking forward to a lifetime of wedded bliss that she has recently decided isn’t falling into place quickly enough. With pressure mounting, Vincent does what any good computer programmer would do: he spends most of his evenings in a bar and the remainder of those evenings at home, having nightmares that involve a bunch of dark imagery and oversized talking sheep.

Perhaps you already knew most or all of that. Even before the presentation, I knew all but a few of the finer points mentioned. From the information gathered from press releases and screenshots, I had come to the conclusion that Catherine is a dungeon crawler with social aspects—not terribly unlike the Persona games, but with a bar instead of a dormitory or what have you—and that it would probably feature an intriguing combat system and perhaps even monster customization. That sort of setup certainly would have made sense, but I was quite wrong. Catherine actually doesn’t play out like that at all.

The only thing I sort of got right was the social element. Catherine emphasizes plot a lot, and most of that unfolds in the bar. As you talk to other patrons, you can down drinks or play an old arcade game or interact with Catherine on your cell phone by way of text messages. Your choices impact a meter that tracks your decisions over the course of the game and fills or drains accordingly, but don’t mistake it for a simple morality meter. Rather, it measures the impact that your choices have on yourself and others in a broader sense. There’s not an ‘evil’ way or a ‘good’ way to answer Catherine when she asks what you think about a lot of other couples getting married, for instance. Instead, there are ways to show your interest or disdain for the notion in varying degrees.

According to Atlus, most gamers can expect to spend between 8 and 14 hours working through the campaign, but multiple endings and choices along the way give you plenty of reasons to go through the affair again. It’s nice to see developers realize that lasting value is about more than the amount of time it takes you to get from Point A to Point B; it’s also about the amount of time that you find yourself anxious to spend doing so a second or third time. Let’s be honest, though: do you really want to play through a game multiple times when mostly it’s just about some guy talking to people at a bar?

If you’re me, that notion is unappealing. Fortunately, Catherine is about more than chatting it up with a bunch of drunks. That element is there, but it exists as a means of supplementing the main gameplay mode. More than perhaps anything else, Catherine is actually a puzzle/platformer title.

There are eight nightmare themes in the game, and you’ll overcome each of them outside of the bar. Nightmares all consist of a varying number of “stages,” and those stages provide the core gameplay. Vincent starts at the bottom of a tower of huge blocks and must climb quickly to the top ahead of lower levels that fall into the abyss far below him. Along the way, he’ll have to avoid crushing pieces of the architecture and he must find ways to keep ascending, lest he delay too long and wind up falling to his death.

As Vincent ascends the tower, he can collect and carry one item at a time, like a Belmont working through Dracula’s castle and deciding between the dagger and the holy water. An example of an item that was demonstrated today was the magical block that Vincent can use once to create a foothold for himself, the better to swiftly scale the wall. There also were some other examples, including a pillow that he can collect to give himself an extra attempt at scaling the wall (the pillow doesn’t actually count as an item that you carry, which is a nice touch).

Besides the items, Vincent’s efforts are also helped by a system that allows you to undo the last several moves. The number of moves that you can undo depends on the difficulty setting. The rating you get for helping Vincent up a wall also depends on the skill of that performance. Those who attended today’s presentation witnessed the PR representative scaling one wall in what seemed like record time, yet the game only awarded him a silver trophy. Stages can be replayed, so there’s a lot here to appeal to the hopeless perfectionist.

Today’s presentation also included a number of other surprises. For example, there’s a cooperative mode where one player shares the screen with a local friend as the two of them try to be the first to scale the wall. A cooperative mode plays out in the same general way. If you want to play with a friend, though, keep in mind that he’ll have to be in the same room. It sounds like a flaw as more and more games incorporate online modes, but I’d almost consider it a perk; multi-player will work even if you can’t take the game online.

Of course, I’ve touched only briefly on the things that look likely to make Catherine a worthwhile experience when it arrives next month. I look forward to eventually playing it for myself, either in the form of a demo or a final retail build. There’s a pre-order campaign in place that allows folks to snag a copy of the game with a soundtrack and other content. I’m having a hard time thinking of a good reason not to take advantage of that…
N4G : News for Gamers

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